She pointed beyond him at the boat bobbing gently on the swell of the river. ‘You’ve always got a spare pair on board. I’ve seen ’em.’

‘Oh, you!’ Danny said, half exasperated, half amused. ‘Ya know too much for ya own good. Go on, then.’

‘You’ll wait for me? You’ll not go without me?’

Now he was grinning broadly. ‘I wouldn’t dare!’

She was away and running across the turf. At twenty-seven she could still run as fast as she had at fourteen. And for the moment, any dignity which her advancing years and her position as workroom supervisor in the department store in Lynthorpe had brought her, was forgotten.

‘Bring more blankets and some food, if you can,’ he shouted after her. She did not pause but lifted her hand in acknowledgement that she had heard him.

‘And don’t forget your . . .’

‘ . . . gas mask,’ she finished for him.

Breathless, she reached Brumbys’ Farm to meet Lilian pushing her doll’s pram around the yard.

‘Shouldn’t you be doing something more useful than playing with dolls at your age?’ Kate snapped. Lilian, a gawky thirteen-year-old, never failed to irritate Kate. From a whining child she had grown into a sulky, solitary girl who seemed deliberately to shun the company of friends of her own age. To Kate’s idea, their mother pampered Lilian, who was never asked to help with the housework or farmwork as Kate had been from a very early age.

‘It was different then,’ Esther would say when Kate grumbled. ‘I was on me own and there was a war on.’

‘There’s a war on now, for heaven’s sake!’ Kate would argue.

‘But none of our family’s involved this time, thank the Lord!’

So what would her mother say, Kate thought now as she raced upstairs to find her warmest clothes, if she knew Kate was about to involve herself deliberately in something to do with the war – even though at the moment she didn’t know exactly what?

Dressed in slacks, a thick woollen jumper and grey knitted socks, Kate ran down the narrow stairs carrying three blankets. Swiftly, she packed some bread and cheese into a bag. Sitting in her father’s Windsor chair to pull on her Wellingtons, she looked up to see Lilian standing in the door watching her. ‘Tell Mam I’ve gone out in the boat with Danny. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but tell her she’s not to worry.’ Snatching a warm coat from the hook behind the door and stuffing a headscarf and a wool beret into her pocket, Kate turned back to look at her young sister. The girl looked so forlorn standing there, awkward and, even in her own home, somehow lost. Strangely moved to a feeling of tenderness, Kate planted a swift kiss on the girl’s forehead. ‘You hear, Lilian?’