‘And now we have to do it all again,’ Danny said. ‘It’s sad for the older folk, when you think about it. They called it the “war to end all wars” and yet here we are only twenty odd years later into another. All those families who lost folk in the last war risk losing loved ones this time around. Like Grannie Harris – she easy might, and there’ll be plenty of families like her. Ya can understand ’em feeling bitter.’

It was not quite as Kate had imagined. When their papers arrived on the same day about three weeks later, she and Danny were told to report to training camps miles away from each other. Some romantic notion had led her to imagine them arriving together, being kitted out together, training together, working together.

Reality was entirely different.

As she packed a small suitcase – so different from the huge trunk that had been filled with ‘three of everything’ when she had been leaving home to go to school – she glanced around her bedroom. On the window-sill was the whelk shell. Smiling wryly at her own sentimental foolishness, she popped it into the corner of her suitcase and snapped the lid shut.

They were able to travel as far as Lincoln together but then they had to catch different trains, one going north, one going south.

‘Seems as if they’re hell-bent on separating us,’ Kate grumbled.

‘How – was it when ya came to leave?’ Danny asked. They had said their goodbyes separately to each set of parents. ‘I got the shock of me life when ya mam put her arms round me and gave me a real bear-hug. I reckon there were tears in her eyes.’

Kate stared at him. ‘Really?’ She shook her head wonderingly. ‘She’s a strange woman, my mother. I think she’s fond of you, deep down, but it takes a war to make her to show it!’

‘What about you?’ he persisted.

Kate shrugged. ‘Almost off-hand really. She just said, “Well, ya off then – tek care of ya’sen” and that was it. Of course,’ she added wryly, ‘she still has Lilian.’

‘Oh, come on, Kate. You’re not still jealous of that poor kid, are you?’

Kate pulled a grimace. ‘No – no, I’m not. If anything, I feel sorry for her. She seems such a lonely child.’

‘Not so much a child now. What is she – fourteen?’

‘Almost.’

‘Well, there you are then. She’ll be leaving school in another year.’

Kate shook her head and, mocking her mother’s voice, she said, ‘Oh no. Our Lilian’s clever. Our Lilian’s going to university.’ She smiled then and added, ‘To be fair, the kid is clever and she’s happy at the Grammar School – well, as happy as she’d be anywhere. She’s so serious all the time – no wonder she hasn’t any friends.’