Rosie’s mother was always having another baby, Kate thought. Rosie, at five, already had two younger brothers and now there was another child on the way.

‘She’s been sick ev’ry morning this week, but that’ll go after the first three months,’ the child added, frighteningly knowledgeable for one so young. Rosie paused and looked about her as the trap rattled on. ‘Funny without Danny, in’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Kate mumbled, but could not trust herself to say any more. Rosie was the last person she wanted to see her tears. The child idolized her and Kate loved Rosie as she might a younger sister – more, if she were honest, than she loved her real sister, well, half-sister.

Rosie chattered on. ‘We might be coming to live at the Point, in that cottage that’s empty near me Grannie Harris’s. I’ll like that.’

Jonathan Godfrey looked down at the excited little girl. ‘Your father will still work at the smithy, though, won’t he?’

Rosie’s father, Walter Maine, had been wounded in the war and had lost a leg. When he and Enid Harris from Fleethaven Point had married some six years earlier, Kate had been their bridesmaid, and the newly married couple had made their home in the two small rooms above the smithy where Walter worked.

‘Oh yes.’ The bright curls bobbed as Rosie nodded vigorously in answer to Jonathan’s question. ‘But there bain’t room there for all us lot now, Mester.’

Kate saw the slow smile on her stepfather’s face, and despite her unhappiness at missing Danny, she wanted to smile too. She well knew the cramped conditions the Maine family lived in, even though they had brought it upon themselves by having so many children. But it would be nice to have little Rosie living nearer.

‘You tell your dad and mam that if they want to borrow the horses and a wagon to move, they’d be most welcome.’

The child’s pink cheeks shone and her pretty mouth stretched wide in a grin. ‘Thanks, Mester, I will,’ and as the trap pulled up outside the school gate, Rosie jumped down and was gone, running into the playground.

‘She’s like a little whirlwind,’ Jonathan murmured, and Kate smiled thinly in return.

‘Bye, Dad. See you tonight.’

‘Kate?’ The soft tone made her look back at him. ‘Be careful coming home tonight.’ He paused, as if knowing that what he felt obliged to say would cause her more pain, ‘You – you’ll be on your own when you leave Rosie at the smithy.’

Kate closed her eyes against the tears and swallowed the lump in her throat. Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded, turned and ran into the playground without looking back.