‘Lives? Somebody actually lives in a boat? But it’s sort of half on the land and half in the river!’

Matthew laughed then wrinkled his forehead. ‘I suppose I’ve never thought about it before. I’ve lived here all me life and Robert’s parents lived in it before him, so,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘I never thought about it bein’ odd.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Who, Robert Eland?’

Esther nodded.

‘He’s the lifeboat coxswain. The lifeboat’s moored about a mile up the road nearer to the town. All the men that live round are in the crew – Mester Harris, Percy Holmes from the pub, and then two or three from the town. Me too, I’m a launcher at the moment, but one day I’ll be in the crew.’

‘Is there much need for a lifeboat here?’

He looked at her incredulously. ‘Don’t you know nothing about the sea?’

Esther shook her head. ‘I’ve come from inland.’

‘Ah, that explains it, then. This Point is right on the edge of the Wash and the North Sea and you get a lot of boats coming into the Wash to the ports, an’ there’s lots of sandbanks and tricky currents, and . . .’ He shrugged, finding it difficult to explain to someone what he had known from childhood.

‘Is that all they do then? Just man the lifeboat?’

‘Course not!’ Matthew said scornfully. ‘They work on the land – for Squire Marshall, mostly. I told you, he owns nearly all the land hereabouts. And Robert Eland, he helps Dan Hanley with coastguard duties, an’ all.’

Esther listened, learning more about the people who lived so close to the sea that it was part of their lives just as much as the land. Sea and land, their life was ordered by the two. To a country girl the sea was a mystery, yet it held a fearsome fascination.

‘I’ll have to be going,’ Matthew said, as the dusk deepened around them, ‘else I’ll have old Sam after me.’

Before she could stop him, he had planted a kiss on her cheek and had dodged out of the range of her hand, raised at once to deal him a stinging slap. As he broke into a run down the slope of the Hump and back along the lane towards Brumbys’ Farm, she could hear him chuckling.

Her swift anger at his audacity softened and she found herself smiling. He was just a cheeky lad with an eye for a pretty girl, she told herself sternly, but the feel of his lips on her cheek still tingled and the thought that he found her pretty warmed her.

She took a last look around from her vantage point, then stretched her arms above her head and breathed deeply in the soft air. What a beautiful, beautiful place! Such a feeling of space and freedom. Such stillness and silence – and peace!