She sat down beside me, and we huddled close together like spooked sheep. I inspected the wound on her arm and changed the dressing, wrapping a clean bandage around and around, and fixing it with a safety pin.

‘So Faith did make it to Dunkirk,’ I prompted.

‘Only just,’ murmured Kipper.

‘The crossing was fine,’ Mags said quietly. ‘There were lots of planes in the sky, though. I saw a German fighter brought down by Hurricanes, and another by the guns on a minesweeper.

‘That was where I lost you – in the confusion of that plane coming down,’ said Kipper. ‘We still had a couple of miles to go till the French coast when I last saw you in the rust-bucket.’

Mags gave him a look.

‘In Faith, I mean.’

‘She packed up about a mile from Dunkirk, just after I passed the minesweeper,’ Mags said. ‘The engine puttered out and stopped, and there was nothing I could do to get her started again.’

‘What did you do?’

‘A very kind man helped me.’

‘Who?’

‘Our Pa.’

‘Pa found you?’

‘He had spotted me behind him and was already on his way back to meet me when I broke down. I imagine he was planning on sending me straight home, but when it became clear the motor boat wasn’t going anywhere, I joined him in the lifeboat and we towed Faith behind us. I think he was very angry with me, but he didn’t say anything. He seemed sort of . . . proud as well as angry.’

I knew exactly how he felt.

‘When we got to France, the soldiers were lined up on the beaches, waiting to be collected. It reminded me of playtime at school, when we were little. The teacher rang the bell and we would line up on the field to go back into the classroom. Do you remember?’

‘Yes.’

Kipper nodded too. School felt like something from another lifetime. We were different creatures now.

‘There were dead bodies,’ Kipper said in a low voice. ‘Shot, or killed in explosions, or drowned and washed up on the sand. Some men looked like they’d given up hope and were sitting by themselves, all bent over and shaking. Others were trying to wade or swim out to the ships waiting in the deep water.’

‘We could go right into the shallows to collect them, though,’ Mags went on, ‘because the lifeboat was so much smaller. We took fifteen men at a time – ten in the lifeboat itself and five in the motor boat, tagging along behind. We ferried them to the destroyers and paddle steamers. We must have taken a hundred men out to the Margate Queen alone.’

‘I saw her,’ I said. ‘I saw the Margate Queen coming home.’

‘They got back safely, then?’

‘Yes.’ Mags held her mug of tea against her chest, as if her heart needed the heat.