#steph farrow

Steph from Home Fires

While #HomeFires won’t be returning to the screen, it will be returning via novels, to explore what the characters have been doing since the explosive show finale. 

Erica Campbell hasn’t been a fan of trains, ever, but when necessity calls for it she can and does use them. This time she needs to see her daughter. So she makes her way to the train station, a small station in the middle of the fields that surround the small village she lives in. She’s surprised to see Miriam and Steph also waiting. Steph, she knows, prefers to stay alone on her farm and she hasn’t seen Miriam since the plane had crashed and killed both their husbands. Steph had been their bond, taking messages back and forth with food deliveries for shops or homes. Then she realises. Steph’s husband had been killed too, away at war. It was more than likely that Steph would need to see someone to get the payment owed to her husband. They are alone on the train carriage and Erica moves to join the other women slowly, smiling a little weakly when Steph greets her, settling into the space the two women make between them with clear meekness. They travel home later, of course. Steph has the money from her husband, Miriam has several books that they have all needed to pick up from the WI headquarters for a while and Erica, finally, has seen her daughters and told them exactly what happened to their father. It’s a quiet trip home but Erica finds she is soothed by Miriam and Steph’s closeness.

“That… more jam? Really?” Miriam sounds surprised enough that Steph laughs and shrugs. She’d been expecting someone to protest but she’s not sure she really expected it to be Miriam. The woman was, after all, her dearest friend and secret beloved, the two moving on together after losing their husbands during the war, nobody questioned it at all, even when Frances seemed determined to move on alone where they were almost always together. “Apparently people have been missing it.” “Is that even manageable? With the… with the farm and the shop? Not to mention the new Doctor due any day now…” “It will have to be.” Steph’s smile is quick, small and hopeful. “At least we’ll have each other this time.”

Alexandria ‘Alex’ Swallow has long been wanting to get away from the factory she works at, so when her aunt invites her to Great Paxford she is quick to agree. What she never really expected was to meet someone like Steph Farrow... Steph, a local farmer, seems stressed and Alex smiles softly as she moves to help her with the harvest, finding herself offering to move up to Great Paxford and help for the rest of the war... but can she protect Steph when things spiral out of control?