Script quote along the side ribs

The ewes have started lambing early, which Dad says is the mildest February he can remember, though he says that every year. I've been up since four doing the night checks with the lamp, and the frost on the yard gate was thick enough to write in. I wrote your name in it before the light came up, then felt daft and rubbed it out with my glove.

Mum found your old trainers under the stairs yesterday, the ones with the split sole you wore to the bottom field and back. She put them on the Aga rail to dry, and they're still there, stiff and white with salt from the road. Nobody has moved them. We keep waiting for the sound of you thumping up the back steps, shouting that the milk van's late again.

Do you remember what you said at the top of Cold Hollow the last summer, when we were both gasping and I wanted to quit? You took the stile in one jump, turned round and shouted it across the valley: tomorrow we will run faster, as if it were a promise I'd signed up to. I thought it was daft. I still do, but I've copied it onto the back of the feed book in pencil, in my own hand, so it's there every time I reach for the bag.

Come home for lambing if you can get the leave. Bring the trainers back out of the grate, and we'll go up Cold Hollow together in the dark, slow as you like. I'll be last. You can wait at the stile.

Love, Jo