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Lil shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘But it’ll be over for us here, won’t it? I mean, we’re not likely to get kamikaze pilots over Britain, are we?’

Lil gave a wry laugh. ‘I don’t expect so, duck, no.’

‘So your Irene and little Tommy will be coming home. Ee, I can’t wait to see him. He must have grown. All that good country air and farm food – he’ll have shot up since
we last saw him. And my Reggie too. Oh Lil, I can’t wait to have all my family back together.’ Her face fell. ‘There’ll be one missing, of course, but to have everyone else
back safe and sound . . .’ Her voice faded away. Dare she begin to count the days just yet?

Lil touched her hand. ‘Just be patient a bit longer, Edie. All we can do is hope and pray. Just like we’ve been doing for the past six years. And then they’ll all be home, the
boys and your Shirley and Beth too.’

‘It’ll be five years at the end of this month since Laurence . . .’ Edie said and then fell silent again as she remembered that dreadful morning the telegram had been
delivered.

‘I know, duck, I know. I hadn’t forgotten.’

Archie had been at sea when the news had arrived and Lil had been the one to whom Edie had turned. Never had Edie needed her good friend more than she had at that moment.

Edith Riley had been born and brought up on the same street in which she still lived. The elder daughter of Jim Riley, a trawler skipper, and his wife Patricia, she’d
always longed to be part of a large family. Patricia, however, had had high expectations for her two daughters, Edith and Jessie. She dreamed of them both taking shorthand and typing lessons and
working in a nice office, so she was not too pleased when Edie fell in love with the tall and handsome deckie learner, Archie Kelsey. When Edie fell pregnant, Patricia’s hopes for her were
finally dashed and a wedding was hastily arranged. Edie married at nineteen, and her son Laurence had arrived six months to the day after their marriage and Archie had found a house to rent just up
the road from Edie’s parents. Before many years had passed, the little house was bursting at the seams, the children sleeping top to toe: the boys in one bed, the girls in another.

After Laurence had come Elizabeth – Beth, as she’d soon become known. She was a pretty, merry child with dark curls and soft brown eyes. Archie had been her willing slave from the
moment of her birth, for which he had been home from the sea to witness. He had been the first to hold the wriggling infant and the bond formed in that moment had never been broken.

In September 1919, Lily and Tom Horton had moved into the house next door. The two young women had soon become firm friends and helped each other when their menfolk were at sea. Only two months
later, though, Tom was tragically lost and the young mother-to-be leaned on Edie’s broad shoulder, both literally and metaphorically. The birth of Lil’s daughter, Irene, brought joy and
sorrow in equal measure and Lil wept in Edie’s arms. ‘She’ll never know her dad. He’ll never play with her like Archie plays with your two.’ She’d given a
tremulous smile as she’d added, ‘Three soon.’ For Edie was heavily pregnant with her third child.

Frank Kelsey had been born two months later and with two children almost the same age, the young mothers grew even closer. Beth, though a year older than Irene, became the younger girl’s
friend and protector. It was Beth’s hands that Irene clung to as she learned to walk and the older girl’s hand she held on to tightly on her first day at school alongside Frank. Beth
watched out for both of them in the rough and tumble of the playground and stuck up for them if there was the slightest sign of bullying from anyone, no matter how much bigger than her they might
be.

‘She’s a fiery piece, that Beth Kelsey,’ was the general consensus in the playground. ‘Don’t lay finger on her little brother – or Irene Horton either –
else she’ll ’ave yer.’

Beth was a motherly little girl who not only championed her brother and the little girl from next door at school or out playing in the street, but also now had a baby sister – Shirley
– to help feed and bath and dress.

‘That’s the last,’ Edie declared to Lil as they sat watching Beth and Irene amusing the new baby.

‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ Lil said, smiling.

‘No, no, I mean it, Lil. Four kids in six years – I mean it. I’ve got the family I always wanted. And she’ – she nodded towards the most recent arrival –
‘isn’t an easy baby like the other three. She’s still waking up two or three times in the night. She’s a grizzly baby, an’ all. I hardly knew I’d got the others,
but this one . . .’ she cast her eyes to the ceiling – ‘and she’s keeping Beth awake. The boys seem to sleep through anything, but Beth’s losing sleep and she’s
only five. She’s too tired to go to school some mornings.’

‘Oh, don’t let her miss school, Edie,’ Lil said swiftly, mindful of the gaps in her own education because of being kept at home to help with younger siblings. ‘Tell you
what, let her come and sleep at our house on school nights, if that’d help until little Shirley gets more settled. Irene’d love it and we’ve plenty of room.’ The last few
words were spoken without any hint of self-pity, yet Edie was aware of their poignancy.

‘Well, if you’re sure. She’d have all her meals at home, of course, but if she could come round some nights just to sleep, that’d be a huge help, Lil. Ta,
duck.’

Edie was sensitive to the fact that Lil didn’t have any spare money to be feeding her neighbour’s child, though the children ran freely between the two houses, always sure of a
welcome, always sure they were loved by their adopted ‘aunties’. And happily, the children liked each other too. Though Laurence found playmates of his own age in their street and
beyond, he was nevertheless a kindly boy and was not above entertaining his younger brother and sister and Irene too, who followed him about with the devotion of a little puppy. He was tall for his
age, with fair hair like his father and blue eyes that, for the most part, twinkled merrily. But Laurence was no good with the baby, Shirley. With a bemused and wary expression, he would look at
her in the battered pram that had served all the Kelsey babies, at her little red face screwed up, at her tiny fists waving and her feet kicking in anger. He just didn’t know how to cope with
a screaming infant, but he would take Frank into the street and teach him to kick a football, he would play Ludo or Draughts with Frank, Beth and Irene, patiently explaining the rules.

‘But no cheating,’ he would say firmly, trying hard not to laugh, ‘else I won’t play.’

Watching them fondly, Edie would say, ‘He’s a good lad, Lil. He’ll make someone a lovely husband one day.’

God willing, Lil would think, but she was not going to voice such thoughts aloud. No doubt Laurence would be destined to follow his father into the fishing industry and they all knew what
dangers that job held.

Despite Edie’s adamant pronouncement that her family was complete, it had been no surprise to Lil when, over five years after Shirley’s birth, Edie had come through the door in the
fence between their two backyards one morning looking bemused and strangely sheepish.

‘Put kettle on, Lil, I’ve had a bit of a shock.’

‘Oh Edie, what is it?’ Lil was at once anxious. ‘It’s – it’s not Archie, is it?’

Edie gave a wry laugh that told Lil that the news, which Edie was about to impart, was nothing very terrible. ‘He’s got summat to do with it, yes, but not the way you
mean.’

‘What is it, then? One of the kids? Or your Jessie? Don’t tell me – she’s fallen pregnant at last. Oh, how lovely—’ But Edie was shaking her head.

Jessie was Edie’s younger sister. She still lived in the same street, too, at the far end in the house where both the sisters had been born. She’d married a lumper. Harry Charlton
worked nights unloading the fish from the trawlers, sorting it and preparing it for sale at the early morning auctions on the pontoon. He was a big, strong man, who said very little but who adored
his vivacious, gregarious wife and shared her sorrow that they had not had children.

‘No, no, it’s not Jessie who’s been caught. It’s – me.’

Lil’s mouth dropped open. ‘But you said . . .’

‘I know what I
said
, Lil – me an’ my big mouth – but there it is. I’m in the family way – again.’

Lil sat down at the table and reached across it to touch her friend’s hand. ‘But you’re pleased, aren’t you, Edie? I mean . . .’

‘Oh, I expect I will be – once I’ve got used to the idea. But what Archie’ll say when he gets home, I don’t know. I’ve given all me baby stuff away.
I’ll have to get new.’

‘Archie’ll be as pleased as punch,’ Lil tried to reassure her, though she couldn’t quite keep the note of wistfulness out of her tone. She’d have loved more
children, but there was no way it was ever going to happen now. ‘He loves his kids and this one’ll be no different.’

Seven months later, Beth, at eleven and Irene, ten, had another little baby to play with, though six-year-old Shirley was not so pleased to see the arrival of a tiny infant who usurped her
coveted position as the youngest of the family. Reginald, who swiftly became known as Reggie, was a placid little chap, quite the opposite of what the fretful Shirley had been. Shirley now scowled
every time she heard his gurgles and saw his round, beaming face.

‘He never cries,’ she overheard Edie telling Lil with amazement and took it as a personal insult when her mother added, ‘Not a bit like Shirley was. As long as he’s warm,
dry and fed, I don’t hear a peep out of him.’

So the two households grew, sharing their joys and troubles together as if they were all indeed part of the same family. They lived amongst fishing families and they all knew the hazards of that
life; a hard life, but one the men wouldn’t change for the world. Out at sea in atrocious weather, Archie would yearn to be home sitting in his armchair by the fire, cossetted by Edie and
with the chance to spoil his children of whom he saw little. But after two days ashore, he – and many fishermen like him – would long to be back at sea.

Edie never went to the docks when Archie left on yet another trip, though the children, Laurence, Beth and Frank and later Shirley and Reggie too – and usually with Irene in tow as well
– would wave him off.

‘Don’t forget to look at the listings in the
Grimsby Evening Telegraph
to see when we’re due back,’ he would remind them as he boarded his ship. And they’d
always be there to welcome him home, even if it was late at night, for Edie knew what it meant for all of them. They didn’t have long with him, his shore leaves were short, but for a day or
two they had his full attention. They’d be waiting on the dock, ready to rifle through his sea bag for sweets and chocolate whilst he collected his settlings from the dock offices. If his
catch had been plentiful, with his pay in his pocket, he would buy them gifts from the shops in Freeman Street, never forgetting to bring home something for Edie and even a little gift for Lil.

Freeman Street teemed with life; it was Beth’s favourite place in the whole of Grimsby. The street thronged with people; fishermen, dressed in their best suits, home for sometimes as
little as thirty-six hours before they were out with the tide once more. Women trying to shop for that extra tasty meal for their menfolk, children on bicycles weaving in and out of the path of the
trolley buses. Cars towing trailers and window cleaners with handcarts; a busy, happy street and Beth loved it.

‘Come on, Irene, let’s go down Freeman Street. You too, our Shirl.’

‘I’ve no money,’ Irene would say quietly.

‘Neither have I,’ Beth would say cheerfully. ‘But it doesn’t cost owt to look, does it? And we can all see what we want to buy the next time Dad has a good
catch.’

‘I can’t keep taking presents off your dad,’ Irene said. ‘It’s not right.’

Beth would link her arm with her friend’s and say, ‘’Course you can. You’re like a member of our family, Irene Horton, and don’t you forget it. Next time he comes
home, he said he’ll look out for two second-hand bikes – one for each of us. So there you are, you see. Dad always thinks of you too.’

‘What about me?’ Shirley had piped up. ‘Am I getting a bike too?’

‘I expect so, darling, but maybe not until you’re a bit older, eh?’

‘But I will get one?’

‘Of course you will. Dad wouldn’t miss you out, now would he? And when he’s old enough, he’ll get one for Reggie an’ all.’

‘What about Frank?’ Irene asked in a soft voice. ‘He ought to have one before me.’

Beth laughed, a merry sound that had the folks passing by them smiling at the sound. ‘Frank’s already got one. Dad got it after his last trip. He knows a chap in the next street who
does up second-hand bikes.’

‘I haven’t seen it.’

‘It’s in the shed at the bottom of the yard, but he’ll not let you see him with it until he’s learned how to ride it properly. And he hasn’t yet. Laurence takes him
up and down the street on it after dark. You watch out of your mam’s bedroom window and you’ll see them. But don’t let on I told you.’

And so Archie continued to spoil his children; they were the centre of his world for the few days he was at home, and he theirs.

‘I’m a millionaire for a day,’ Archie would tell them with a deep chuckle, but he was a careful man and whilst he spent freely on the day of his return from sea, there was
always enough saved for his wife who would have to manage the housekeeping until he returned from his next trip. And on the occasions when his catch was poor, he explained carefully to the children
why, this time, there would be no presents. He’d say, ‘And I can’t afford to take you to the ice rink this time, but we can go to the park or to the beach at Cleethorpes. What
would you like to do?’

Whilst Edie washed and ironed his clothes ready for his return to sea, Archie would spend time playing with his children. But she was careful never to wash on the day he left. Even
fishermen’s wives were superstitious. But their mother, anxious that Edie and Jessie would know nothing of the life, had kept them cocooned from such tales, dismissing them as nonsense.