They’d driven down the long road to the peninsula of Spurn Point, where the sea lashed against the prominent finger of land and the estuary surged on the other side, and here it was that Harry told her about the tune he had whistled on that first day and again on this.

‘It’s an Irish folk song, I think,’ he said, when she asked him. ‘At least, I first heard it sung by a gang of Irish labourers who came to help with ’harvest one year.’

He’d taken hold of her hand as they stood watching the seabirds soaring above them, the first physical contact they had had. ‘It’s a song about a girl with nut-brown hair.’

‘Nut-brown hair?’ She turned towards him.

He nodded. ‘The colour of a chestnut,’ he’d said softly, and put her hand to his lips. ‘Just like yours.’

She’d seen the love in his eyes and she gently moved her hand and reached on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. It was the first time she had kissed a boy and she knew she would kiss no other.

They married the following spring, walking in procession to Hollym, for Holmpton church, as ancient as the nearby crumbling cliffs, was unfit for weddings or funerals in case its medieval walls collapsed on the congregation. All of her sisters and Harry’s were attendants, dressed in their Sunday best with flowers in their hair, and Billy was best man.

Mr Oswald had offered them a tied cottage on his land near the hamlet of Rysome and said that when the present foreman retired Harry would take his place. ‘It’s a job for life, Harry,’ he’d told him. ‘You’re a good lad. I wish I’d had a son like you.’

He had no sons at all, but three squabbling daughters and a mean-spirited wife, which didn’t seem right for such a generous and kind man.

‘So there you are, my lovely,’ Harry said, coming in on a cold March afternoon. ‘Why aren’t you working your fingers to ’bone instead of sitting there with your feet up all comfy by a warm fire?’

‘Because,’ she said, lifting her cheek to take his kiss, ‘I’m feeding your daughter who won’t wait a second when she’s hungry.’

With a gentle finger he stroked her breast and bent and kissed the top of the baby’s head. ‘What’s she having?’

‘Yesterday’s roast beef and Yorkshire pudding,’ she said, laughing, and patted her daughter’s cheek as she gave her father a milky toothless smile.

‘Shall I burp her?’ Harry asked, and she lifted Sarah, named after Ellen’s mother, into his arms.

‘Where are you off to?’ Ellen fastened her blouse. ‘Have you time for a cup of tea?’