He looked over his shoulder and, after a momentary hesitation, turned back towards the silence and open spaces of the hills that reminded him of Somerset. Ducking quickly out of sight of his mother’s kitchen window, he hurried up the steep incline until he’d reached the top. Pausing to catch his breath, he dumped his kit bag beneath a stand of bright yellow gorse and shoved it out of sight. He’d come back for it later, but for now he needed to think and clear his head.

He set off at a brisk pace across the tough, windswept grass, the salt-laden breeze ruffling his hair, the sun warm on his face. Gulls mewled and shrieked overhead as they swooped and hovered at the cliff edges, and he could see Frank’s small fleet of fishing boats coming in after a night at sea.

He stopped to watch until they were lost to sight beneath the overhanging chalk cliff where they would be beached. He enjoyed spending time with Frank and Brendon on the trawlers with the sound of the water slapping at the side of the boats and the night sky filled with stars as they’d heaved in the nets filled with silvery, flapping fish. He didn’t much like having to clean and gut them ready for market, but the money he’d earned during the summer had certainly been welcome.

Charlie accepted that his grandfather and uncle hoped he would follow in the footsteps of his family and join the long line of Reilly men who’d fished off these shores, but he already knew that wasn’t the life for him. Fishing was a precarious and sometimes dangerous way of earning a living, and although it held little fear for him, his heart was already set on being an engineer.

He loved engines in all their shapes and sizes, was fascinated by their intricacies, their faults and how to mend them so they ran smoothly again. He hoped one day to work on aircraft, for they were the up-and-coming thing with new technologies being tested almost every day, and he really envied Jane and Sarah’s journey on the seaplane. Air travel would soon be as normal as catching a train, and he couldn’t wait to be a part of this new and exciting venture.

The money he’d saved had paid for a covert bus trip to the county town where he’d had a long, interesting talk to an RAF recruitment officer. It was a thrill to know that if he passed the fitness test and all his school exams, the RAF would take him on at eighteen and pay his university fees. Once he’d gained his degree he would become a fully-fledged engineer and valuable member of the RAF.

It was something to savour and work towards, but he’d kept it to himself for the time being, as his mother seemed set on him going to the technical college and then staying on in Cliffehaven to work for someone like Jack Smith.