‘Gosh, Mo, you’ve a head on your shoulders,’ Jimmy said admiringly. ‘I was so scared that I suppose I’d have run further into the hills, looking for a hiding place.’

‘Oh yeah? What about your footprints?’ Mo said derisively. ‘What you should have said is: I’d have panicked. Now if it had been me, I’d have persuaded Wynne to go down and tell a lot of lies whilst I sneaked off.’

Jimmy began to tell Mo, rather unkindly, that she was just as foolish as he was himself, but before his little sister could summon up a retort Glenys interrupted.

‘All right, all right, given the weather conditions it’s a very difficult question to answer. So let’s put it another way. How would you let us know the danger we were in? Pretend you’ve come down from the hills without being seen, but then you discover he’s hanging around the railway station. What would you do then?’

There was a short silence, and then Jimmy spoke sullenly. ‘I don’t know, and I’m tired of this silly game. I suppose whichever one of us found out that Cyril had caught up with us would make their way back here. Then the three of us could sort out the problem.’

He was looking at Glenys’s face as he spoke and saw that she was smiling. ‘Good lad; you’ve gone straight to the heart of the matter. There are three of us in this tangle and I really do think it’s important that we stick together. You know my job here ended today, so I’ve told Mrs Hughes we shall be off on Monday, and when we leave, which we shall do as unobtrusively as possible, we must carry on being Auntie Glenys, and her nephew and niece. Remember, if Cyril really is still looking for you, it will be for two ragged little children – sorry, Jimmy – who would scarcely stay in a nice house as paying guests.’ She pointed at Mo. ‘I know you don’t like plaiting your hair, or rather you don’t like me plaiting your hair, and you complain that the headscarf tickles your chin. But it’s things like that which will put him off the scent. Now, what are we going to do next? The railway runs from here right to the coast, so I thought we might go on to Bangor, since it’s possible I might get work there.’ She smiled at them. ‘How does that appeal to my fellow adventurers?’

Jimmy said it sounded like a good idea, for he had seen how his little sister’s face had brightened at the mere mention of the seaside. ‘You’ll enjoy that, won’t you, Mo?’ he said encouragingly. ‘If Bangor is a fair-sized town, we could both go to school, so I’d make friends of my own age. Come to that, if there’s a harbour I could probably get work on one of the fishing boats – I’d like that. In fact I wouldn’t mind if we never went back to Liverpool.’