‘And has young Sam Chadwick got anything to do with this decision?’ he asks.

She grins at him.

‘None of your business,’ she says, and they sit down companionably together and begin to eat.

As Sam drives away from The Keep after breakfast, he has a plan. It’s a soft grey late autumn morning, berries burn brightly in the hedgerows, and the trees are beginning to show their winter shapes.

‘Guess where we’re going?’ he asks Cara.

‘Don’t tell me you need another breakfast?’ she asks.

He laughs and shakes his head. ‘No, but we can have coffee and a walk along the beach.’

He is aware that Cara is still in an emotional state, coming to terms with yesterday’s extraordinary events. Her story shocked him, and he feels very guilty for precipitating such a drama – Hal gave him quite a bollocking for that later – but Sam feels admiration for her; that she was able to tell them. How hard that must have been, after so many years. Once Cara went upstairs Fliss had a moment of inspiration and invited Susanna and Gus over for an impromptu supper, which diffused the tension and covered any embarrassment Cara might have felt when she came back downstairs. This morning she seems quietly happy, and he hopes that the diversion to Blackpool Sands will suit her mood and bring her further away from tragedy and into the light. As for himself, he knows why he is feeling happy. Amy’s texts, treating him as confidant and friend, have brought a whole new aspect to his situation. Suddenly the uncertainty of his future, that weird sense of impending doom if he were to join the navy, even memories of Shanghai and those inspiring children and Ying-Yue – especially Ying-Yue – all these have reformed into a clear pattern, a template from which he can build, move forward. It’s as if Amy’s trust, her need of him, has enabled him to throw off all his anxieties and tempting distractions, his looking back to the past, and to concentrate instead on the one true thing.

‘I can see why everyone says you’ve been chosen to be a leader of men,’ she said to him and, although it was said jokingly, he’s begun to see where his strengths and loyalties lie and how he needs to stick with them. He laughs to himself, knowing that it would all sound rather fanciful if he tried to explain it to anyone else, but he doesn’t have to. The crisis is over. He’s back on track, following in his father’s footsteps.

When they pass the Britannia Royal Naval College gates, on the way down the hill into Dartmouth, he gives a mental salute, and when Cara says, ‘You must be very proud to be going there,’ he is able to answer honestly, ‘Yes, I am.’