The girl nodded and then suddenly flung her arms around Kate’s waist and buried her head against her. Just as suddenly, she let go and stood back, her face flaming red. Kate wasn’t sure which of them was the more embarrassed. She gave the girl a quick grin, said, ‘Take care, Lilian,’ and was gone.

Funny child, Kate thought as she hurried back to the Point. At her age I’d have been begging to go along too. Lilian hadn’t even asked where they were going. Perhaps that was just as well, though, Kate thought shrewdly. But the sudden display of emotion from her sister had surprised Kate.

Danny was standing on the edge of the jetty, the mooring rope already unfastened.

‘Hop in and start her up, will ya, Kate?’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Thank goodness for ya dad and his engines!’

Kate knew the boat and its workings almost as well as Danny did, for she had often gone out to sea with him on her visits home. Good job too, she thought, Mam’ll think nothing about it when Lilian tells her.

But she would when Kate did not arrive home that night, she thought with a stab of guilt. Well, she reflected with wry humour, me mam’ll just have to break years of silence and go and ask Danny’s mother where we are if she’s that bothered!

Kate smiled to herself as she guided the boat into the centre of the river and made for the channel which led out through the intertidal marsh and into the North Sea. She doubted very much that even a war would make Esther Godfrey speak to Beth Eland!

They chugged steadily out to sea and turned southwards, following the coastline. It was a long way and would take them a long time to get there.

‘I just hope we’re in time for whatever it is they want,’ Danny said, as they settled themselves for the hours ahead.

‘Just look at all them boats!’ Danny was standing up in the prow of his boat. It looked as if hundreds of small craft of all shapes and sizes were heading for Sheerness. He turned and looked back at Kate. ‘This looks like something big, Kate, I dun’t reckon you ought to have come . . .’

Kate gave him one of her looks and he raised his hand, palm outwards, as if to fend off an impending attack. ‘All right, all right . . .’

She grinned at him but kept her hand firmly on the tiller. ‘I never said a word,’ she shouted across the breeze.

‘No – but ya looked it!’

Somehow they found a place to moor and joined the rest of the boatmen on the quay.