Fear shot through Ella like a knife and her knees began to tremble, but she could say nothing, ask nothing. She just stared and stared at Danny.

‘I thought—’ he was stumbling over the words. ‘When she didn’t bring the car back I thought – I thought she must have come straight home and – and that she’d bring it back next day . . .’

‘She’ll be in Lynthorpe. She’ll be in the town,’ Jonathan said and, trying to raise their hopes, added, ‘She’s probably the lucky one, keeping her feet dry.’

But in Danny’s eyes there was no laughter. ‘She – she went up the coast, didn’t she?’

In the boat, Rob, solemn and white-faced, sat beside his father. Ella began to cry, not caring now who saw her.

Her gaze never leaving Danny’s face, Esther said quietly, ‘There’s more, isn’t there, Danny? Come on, out with it.’

It was then that Danny began to tell them of the awful news bulletins that were coming over the wireless.

‘This . . .’ he waved his hand to encompass the floodwater all around, ‘this is nothing compared to what’s happened further north. We heard the news on our portable this morning. The whole of the Lincolnshire coast and, I think, Norfolk and Kent coastlines too, are devastated by flooding. The sea’s gone as far as two miles inland in some parts and this morning’s high tide’s been nearly as bad. We’ve just been up to the Hump and stood on the top . . .’ He glanced at Rob, sitting in the boat beside him. But the boy was pale, his eyes large and stricken. ‘I’ve never seen rollers like it out to sea. I felt sea-sick just looking at ’em. Forty foot high, I reckon they must be.’

Esther gasped, ‘You mean we’re goin’ to get more?’

Danny shook his head. ‘Not here, I don’t reckon. At least, no more than you’ve got now, but maybe that’s why the water’s not going down at all yet. It’s still coming in.’

‘What about the cottages at the Point?’ Jonathan asked.

‘Still standing – just – but it’s a good job they all got out when they did, else . . .’ Danny cleared his throat and said instead, ‘But the pub’s gone altogether now.’

Ella remembered Rob pointing out the crumbling ruins of a building that had been bombed in the war. His grandad Eland had been killed there, he’d said. Ella shuddered suddenly. And last night, his grandma Eland might have been drowned in her home if Grandpa Godfrey hadn’t rescued her.

But where was her mum? Had anybody been there to rescue her?

Noticing Ella shiver, Esther said, ‘Go on in, child. There’s no need for you . . .’