They stood together for a moment and then Will repeated his initial question. ‘Where’s my little Katie?’

In the daytime, Esther met Jonathan on the seashore at his insistence. He was still hoping to protect her from the prying eyes of those at the Point.

‘I think they know anyway,’ Esther told him.

He sighed. ‘I was afraid of that.’

Esther didn’t care about the gossips, but she loved Jonathan all the more for his concern for her. Theirs was a love that would not – could not – be denied. Sometimes they walked quietly hand in hand at the water’s edge, sometimes they cavorted in the shallows like children, splashing each other, till their clothes were wet and clinging. Their eyes would meet and desire would flash between them and they would fly into each other’s arms, the salt water mingling with their kisses. Then they would run towards their own hollow in the dunes, pausing to kiss and running again, eager for the moment their bodies would entwine, their souls meet and they were the only two people in the world.

All through that summer of 1916 he stayed. She tried to keep the war news from him, clinging to the hope that if he was cut off from how things were, he would not be forced to go back by feelings of guilt. But he must have seen the newspapers at the Seagull for some days he would come to work on the farm silent and solemn. She would watch him at work, seeing deep in his eyes that he was reliving the horror.

Nineteen sixteen was a year of killing. Daily, terrible reports appeared in the papers and names that were to become synonymous with tragedy – Ypres, Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele – were on everyone’s lips. The people of the little community of Fleethaven hardly knew where these places were and yet they became as familiar on their tongues as their own home town.

Still Jonathan stayed.

Through haymaking and into the corn harvest, he worked on Brumbys’ Farm and at night they made love in the loft in the barn, warm and snug in a sweet-smelling bed of hay. Late at night they took reluctant leave of each other, lingering in the soft starlight, the sound of the sea music to their love, the salt air its perfume. Esther would creep back into the farmhouse whilst Jonathan sneaked in the back door of the Seagull.

One night as they lay in each other’s arms in the aftermath of their passion, Esther said, ‘You still haven’t told me about yourself. You know all about me. What you don’t see for yourself, I’ve told you.’ She ran her fingers across his chest. She revelled in the feel of him – his smooth, slightly bronzed skin, marred only by the bandage wrapped around his shoulder covering the wound he refused to let even her see.