Esther’s jaw was clenched, her eyes angry, defiant.

‘Ya father – Matthew Hilton – got Beth pregnant before he married me.’

Kate gasped and stared at her, eyes wide. ‘Didn’t – didn’t he know?’

Esther twisted her arm from Kate’s grasp, turned and began to walk swiftly away again. ‘No,’ she said shortly.

Kate took little running steps to keep up with her. ‘But Mam . . .’

Esther put up her hand as if to fend Kate off physically. ‘I dun’t want to talk of it. You can’t marry Danny. Not ever. I’ve tried to warn you, all these years. But you wouldn’t listen. Now you know and there’s an end to it.’

Kate stopped and stood watching the slim figure of her mother walking towards the farm, her back rigid, her face turned away from her daughter.

Kate bit down hard upon her lower lip, drawing blood. The pain she caused herself was almost a relief. Then, tears blinding her, she turned towards the dunes and began to run.

‘I want to die. I don’t want to live any more. Just let me die!’

She was standing at the end of the Spit, at the very tip of the promontory of land that jutted out into the Wash. It was the place where the land, the sea and the sky all seemed to meet. Like the end of the world . . .

The water of a high tide was swirling around her. Dropping to her knees on the shingle, she wrapped her arms around herself. She closed her eyes, screwing up her face in an agony that was a real pain in the pit of her stomach.

‘Kate – Kate, don’t.’

He was there, picking her up, turning her unresisting body towards him and enveloping her in a fierce embrace. Danny was stroking her hair and murmuring words which made no sense to her, for she was crying hysterically, sobs shaking her body.

‘I – don’t want – to live – any more.’

‘Shush, shush. You must live – for me. What would I do if you were no longer in the same world as me?’

Her arms slipped around his waist and she buried her face against his chest. Beneath his shirt she could feel the rapid beating of his heart. It matched her own.

Her sobs lessened and, muffled against him, she said, ‘It isn’t true, is it? Tell me it isn’t true.’

His hand stroked her hair gently. ‘I – can’t, Katie. But – oh, how I wish I could!’

She raised her head then and looked up into his troubled face. Tears glistened in his eyes too and he pressed his lips together as if to prevent their trembling. For a long moment they gazed at each other whilst the water lapped at their feet and seagulls screeched mournfully overhead.

Haltingly, she began, ‘Me mam won’t tell me much, but she said my dad – me real dad – and your mam . . .’