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couldn’t speak whole sentences yet and she was beginning to feel she was losing her mind, from all the one-sided conversations and repetitive games and songs he demanded.
    Jack often called by after he finished at the factory and Ellie longed to go with him down to the river, the seafront or just into the village. But she couldn’t leave Charlie and she certainly couldn’t manage with the pram or a wobbly-legged toddler in tow. Charlie’s forehead already had one fading bruise from a tumble on the cobblestones. The weather had held and it felt like torture staring out of the window and thinking about all the adventures she might be having. Normally the summer holidays were a time for freedom and wildness – at least as much as she could get away with behind her mother’s back. This year she had felt more imprisoned than during term time.
    Before she left for school, Ellie got Charlie his breakfast, and made some toast for her mother, which she and Charlie took to her in her bedroom. She was pleased to see that her mother was up and dressed, pinning her long, silvery hair into a bun.
    As so often in the past, Ellie worried about leaving Charlie alone with her mother. But delaying wouldn’t make it any easier. Kissing her brother on the cheek she ran back down the stairs, grabbed her worn leather satchel and swept through the door. She seized her bicycle from where it was propped against the fence and bumped down the steep and stony path that led down towards the seafront.
    When she reached the bottom, the path levelled out into a smoother track than ran along the beach. After so many days indoors, the fresh sea breeze felt wonderful against her hot, tight skin, and it lifted her hair off her sticky neck. As she cycled along the length of Big Beach (as the locals called it, though it wasn’t really big enough to merit the name), she glanced to the left, across the sea. If she could fly across the Channel in a straight line, it would take her to France, to her father. She felt as though maybe, if she could just get up enough speed she might take flight. She lifted her left hand from the handlebars and let it coast on the breeze like a hovering seagull.
    They had received several letters from Father while he was in Aldershot, one enclosing a photograph of him posing with some of the other men in their crisp new uniforms. In them he had written that they would be shipping out soon. But there had been nothing since he arrived in France. Ellie had hoped that he might come home before shipping out – Will and some of the other men had been back briefly – but sadly her father hadn’t returned to Endstone before leaving for France.
    Sometimes it felt as though he’d been gone for ever. On the other hand, sometimes Ellie would wake up in the morning and forget that he wasn’t just down the hallway in her parents’ bedroom.
    â€œCome home soon, Father!” she cried towards the waves, the wind tearing the words out of her throat, her dark brown hair snapping and whipping around her face like the rigging on the fishing boats.
    She put on an extra burst of speed for the last minutes of the journey and swerved to a halt in front of the school. Catching a glimpse of herself in the classroom window, she saw that her cheeks were pink and her hair more bedraggled than her mother would have tolerated.
    Miss Smith, who taught the girls was waiting by the door. She gave Ellie a smile as she stowed her bicycle, though one eyebrow was raised.
    â€œWelcome back, Eleanor. I see the holidays have done little to calm you down.”
    Ellie tugged her fingers through her hair in a vain attempt to tame it. Miss Smith was not as strict as Ellie’s mother, but Ellie knew she didn’t really approve of her unladylike behaviour. And although her teacher was kind-hearted, Ellie struggled to see anything of use in her lessons.
    Sure enough, any hope that school might provide a