She knew better than to ask if she could have a donkey ride but Maggie and Mutti saw the yearning in her eyes and exchanged smiles. She’d always been horse mad. Goodness only knew where she got it from, because apart from on the big screen, on rare trips to the cinema, the only horses Vi had ever seen were the rag-and-bone man’s skinny nag and the coalman’s dray horse. The coalman’s horse had long hair on his feet, which Violet told them was called feathering.

‘Ach, Violet. You must have been a grand Dame in another life,’ Mutti said. ‘A lady who rode to hounds. Side-saddle!’

They picked themselves up off the sand. Mutti gave Violet a sixpence and nodded in the direction of the donkeys. ‘Komm!’ she said. ‘Wir gehen mal gucken.’

Maggie shot her a warning glance. Although war still seemed a remote possibility, they couldn’t risk anyone hearing her speak.

‘English, Mutti,’ she said. ‘Always English, now. Remember?’

Meanwhile, Violet had raced down the beach ahead of them and when they caught her up, she was patting the donkeys’ woolly necks and reading out their names from the browbands.

‘There’s Neddy, that one’s Ted and this is Samson. Oh look, there’s even one called Winston!’

Violet chose Dandy, the prettiest of them all. She gave the man her sixpence and he swung her up into the saddle as though she weighed no more than a pound of sugar.

He tapped the metal bar that stood up from the saddle. ‘’Old on to that.’

As soon as he moved away, Violet took her hands off the bar and folded her arms across her chest. ‘That’s for babies,’ she told Maggie.

They had to wait until a few more customers arrived before the donkey procession down the beach could start.

‘Let’s wait here,’ Mutti said. ‘They will soon be back.’

They watched the retreating donkeys for a minute and then Mutti turned to Maggie and stroked her fingers gently over her cheeks. Her eyes were filled with tears. She started to say something but a woman nearby suddenly screamed blue murder as a seagull flew too close, aiming for her ice cream. By the time the commotion was over, Violet and the donkeys were back and so was Mutti’s smile. The moment had passed.

Maggie shook herself back to the present; they’d almost reached Snowden’s front door. This must be what it felt like to be a lady of the manor, arriving home, even if she were in a cart pulled by a blinkered old horse rather than a carriage.

If only Mutti could see her! Maggie imagined her clapping her hands in delight. ‘Clever girl! Look at you! Going up in the world!’

Against all the odds, against her dad’s wishes and her own doubts, Maggie was here. She’d escaped or she’d arrived, depending on which way you looked at it.