Bertie nodded, his eyes sad. ‘We’re sorry, dear, but Polly and Daisy had to be sold. We couldn’t afford to bring them up here.’

Kate stared at him wordlessly. She thought about the gentle Shire horse she’d loved. She and Daisy had a special bond. The big horse had always been so careful and kind around Kate when she was little, standing like a statue, afraid to move her huge feet in case she trod on the little girl who loved her.

Kate noticed her parents’ doleful expressions.

‘Oh, I expect it’s for the best,’ she said, ‘don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty to be happy about. Now I must be off to work or I’ll be late. I’ll take the toast with me.’

Bertie was looking at her with a perplexed expression in his eyes. He got up and followed his daughter’s straight back out into the morning light. ‘Wait a minute, Kate. I’ll walk to the gate with you.’

She turned and gave him a smile that turned his heart over. ‘Come on then, Daddy.’ She linked her arm into his and they set off on the half-mile walk to the racing stables, Kate carrying Little Foxy’s bridle which she’d been cleaning.

‘I want to give you some advice, Kate,’ said Bertie. ‘If I can get a word in edgeways.’

‘Of course,’ she laughed.

‘This is serious, Kate. I love you dearly, and you don’t fool me. I know how upset you must be over those two horses. I admire the way you keep so cheerful, it’s a wonderful gift you have, Kate – and – and don’t waste it.’

‘How could I waste it?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Don’t waste it on someone you don’t love. It’s your life, Kate. I don’t want you to suffer because you want to please us. You be true to yourself. Do you understand me?’

They stopped in a gateway, and Kate looked thoughtfully at her father. He always knew exactly what was in her heart.

‘I never want to leave you, Daddy. You’ve been like a guardian angel,’ she said. ‘But yes, you’re right, I’ve got some thinking to do.’

‘You may have to leave me one day. But we’ll always be close, Kate – even when I’m gone. I want to see you happy – truly deeply happy, dear, not just putting a pretty face on it. I’ve watched you, Kate, and I know – I know there’s some deep-down thing bothering you. You’ve lost your sparkle.’

‘Have I?’

‘You don’t have to tell me, Kate. But please – think about your life and your future. Don’t let me, or anyone, hold you back, girl. You do what you’ve got to do.’ Bertie was looking at her intensely and his words were full of passion as they stood in the gateway overlooking the estuary. ‘If you love someone, you let them go, let them be free. You are a blessed gift to this world, Kate, you spread your wings and fly free.’

Kate’s eyes stared past him, across the shining water to the distant hills, then back to the brimming flood of love and caring in her father’s gaze.

‘You’re not responsible for Ethie, or me, or your mother.’ Bertie gave her a little pat. ‘You spread your wings and fly free.’

He wagged a finger and looked at her under his brows, a fixed stare that put a seal on his words.

‘Thank you, Daddy. I’m glad you care so much.’ Kate kissed him on his pale cheek and walked on by herself, swinging the bridle. She looked down at her legs in the long boots and riding breeches, and thought how lovely it would be to wear a swishy red skirt again and feel like a woman. She found herself slowing down, dawdling a little, listening to the hum of bees in the blackthorn blossom, and suddenly she remembered Freddie telling her the Innisfree poem, explaining to her about the ‘bee-loud glade’. It had been a magic time.

‘That’s what I’m missing from my life,’ Kate thought suddenly. ‘The magic. The magic is missing.’

She remembered Freddie’s story of how he had saved up and bought the lorry at sixteen. It inspired her. Surely if Freddie could do that, then she could ‘spread her wings’ and take charge of her own life, couldn’t she?

Chapter Nineteen

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

‘I’ll be perfectly all right,’ Ethie said impatiently to her father. ‘I know the tides by now. I’ve been doing it for six months now.’

Bertie nodded, his face pale as he sat in the wicker chair by the stove. ‘I wish I was well enough to go with you.’

‘Well you’re not,’ said Sally, ‘so stay there, Bertie, or I’ll tell you off.’

Bertie grinned, and wagged a finger at Ethie who stood half in and half out of the door. ‘Tonight is full moon,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a spring tide, and big bore up the river.’

Ethie rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to upset her father when he wasn’t well, but she wished he wouldn’t fuss over her and keep telling her the same things.

‘Let her go,’ she heard Sally saying as she closed the door. ‘She loves the river. And I hope she does come back with a fish. We could do with it.’

Ethie scowled and trudged out into the clear March sunshine. She walked down to the river, swinging the metal bucket. She wanted to be alone, like she was now, free of the expectations and the jealousy. The walk to the river was a wooded path with chaffinches and chiff-chaffs singing and blackthorn in full blossom, the verges yellow with celandine and dandelion. Corners of the river shone blue through the branches, then the whole vista opened up between two gnarled old pines, their bristly foliage covered in new cones. Wooden steps made from railway sleepers led down to the narrow beach and Ethie bounded down them.

After checking that she was alone on the sand, she ducked under the steps, put her arm into a deep crack in the low cliff, and extracted the long-handled fishing net she’d hidden in there.

‘Just check the putts, Ethie. Don’t go trying to fish the pools,’ her Uncle Don had said. ‘You’re not experienced enough for that.’

But Ethie had taken the net from the barn and hidden it. She’d use it to check the shallow pools that shone like opals in the sand at low tide. She found it more exciting than dragging a trapped fish out of the putts. Paddling up to her knees she often caught smaller fish, and once she’d gone triumphantly home with a conger eel in the bucket. How she had caught it was one of Ethie’s many secrets.

In the warm March sunshine she stripped off her boots and socks, something else she’d been told not to do. The velvet sand and the chill of the water on her skin was soothing to Ethie. It cooled the eternal burning of her thoughts, the inner loneliness, the longing for transformation. She felt part of the river, a rare contentment as she wandered from pool to pool, following ridges of hard sand encrusted with the myriad pinks and greys of tiny clamshells.

Far out in the estuary, close to the deep channel of the main river, Ethie felt dazzled by her freedom, as if she looked down on herself and saw her spirit like a flickering candle, reaching out, longing to escape from the body she hated. Why bother to catch a fish? It was hot for March and she was sweating in her heavy farm clothes. Why not strip naked, roll in the crisp sand and let the cool river heal her burning skin? She looked back at her life and it was a switchback of rage and injustice, jealousy and pimples. It coiled after her like a poisonous snake. The only place she remembered being happy was in the water, swimming in the school pool, in the summer river at Hilbegut, rowing a boat across the winter floods with the white wings of water birds all around her.

Ethie lay down on the sand and allowed herself to be sucked into a whirling dream where her itchy clothes became the soft satins of forgiveness, where her hair was long again and rippling like waterweed. She lay on her back and gazed through the shimmer of the sky to whatever was out there, to whoever may know she was lying there, a pearl in the oyster shell of day.