Script quote with red heart on upper back

The beck froze solid on Tuesday, so Dad has been carrying water up from the yard tap in two buckets since dawn, swearing at the ice every step. The ewes are lambing early this year, four of them already in the shed under the lamp, and Mr Harker from the top farm came down to help on Sunday without being asked. He says the wind will drop by the weekend. He has said that every weekend since October.

I went through Mam's things in the back kitchen yesterday because the damp has got into the dresser. Her slate is still propped behind the flour bin, the chalk long gone to a grey smudge, but you can read it if you tilt it to the window. 'As long as there is someone in the sky to protect me, there is no one on earth who can break me.' She wrote it the winter you had the fever, and she never once rubbed it out. On the calendar by the door, the day the last ewe got up on her feet, she drew a small red heart, and nobody has turned the page since.

I'm not asking you to come back for good. I'm asking you to come for the lambing, just the fortnight, so Dad can stop pretending the shed is fine with only me in it. There's a bed made up in your room and the stove is lit at six each morning, whether anybody is up to see it or not.

The lamp is burning in the porch now, so you'll see it from the road.

Your loving sister, Ada