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hillock above the beach so that its tower would be a beacon, a marker, for ships seeking a landfall and safe water, and it was not difficult to imagine those bygone galleons, their sails filled with wind, moving in from the open sea, and upstream with the running tide.
    As well as discovering places, she got to know the local people. The Cornish love children, and wherever she turned up she was welcomed with such pleasure that her inherent shyness swiftly evaporated. The village fairly buzzed with interesting characters. Mrs Berry, who ran the village shop and made her own ice-creams out of custard powder; old Herbie who drove the coal-cart, and Mrs Southey in the post office, who set a fire-guard on the counter to keep bandits at bay and could scarcely sell a stamp without giving the wrong change.
    And there were others, even more fascinating, residing farther afield. Mr Willis was one of them. Mr Willis had spent a good chunk of his life tin-mining in Chile, but had finally returned to his native Cornwall after a lifetime of adventure, and put down his roots in a wooden shack perched on the sandy dunes above the shore of the Channel. The narrow beach in front of his hut was littered with all sorts of interesting bits of flotsam; scraps of rope and broken fish boxes, bottles, and sodden rubber boots. One day, Mr Willis had come upon Judith searching for shells, got talking, and invited her into his hut for a cup of tea. After that, she always made a point of looking out for him and having a chat.
    But Mr Willis was by no means an idle beachcomber, because he had two jobs. One of them was to watch the tides and raise a signal when the water rose high enough for the coal-boats to sail in over the sandbar, and the other was ferryman. Outside his house, he had rigged up an old ship's bell, and any person wishing to cross the Channel rang this, whereupon Mr Willis would emerge from his shack, drag his balky row-boat down off the sand, and oar them over the water. For this service, fraught with discomfort, and even danger if there happened to be a roaring ebb-tide, he charged twopence.
    Mr Willis lived with Mrs Willis, but she milked cows for the village farmer, and quite often wasn't there. Rumour had it that she wasn't Mrs Willis at all, but Miss Somebody-or-other, and nobody talked to her much. The mystery of Mrs Willis was all bound up with the mystery of Heather's Uncle Fred who hadn't got it in him, but whenever Judith broached the matter with her mother, she was met with pursed lips and a change of subject.
    Judith never talked to her mother about her friendship with Mr Willis. Instinct told her that she might be discouraged from keeping company with him, and would certainly be forbidden to go into his hut and drink tea. Which was ridiculous. What harm could Mr Willis do to anybody? Mummy, sometimes, was dreadfully stupid.
    But then, she could be terribly stupid about a lot of things, and one of them was how she treated Judith exactly the way that she treated Jess, and Jess was four years old. At fourteen, Judith reckoned that she was mature enough to have really important decisions, that were going to affect
her,
shared and discussed.
    But no. Mummy never discussed. She simply told.
    I have had a letter from your father, and Jess and I are going to have to go back to Colombo.
    Which had been a bit of a bombshell, to say the least of it.
    But worse.
We have decided that you should go to St Ursula's as a boarder. The headmistress is called Miss Catto, and I have been to see her, and it's all arranged. The Easter term starts on the fifteenth of January.
    As though she were a sort of parcel, or a dog being put into a kennel.
    ‘But what about the holidays?’
    You'll stay with Aunt Louise. She's very kindly said that she'll take care of you, and be your guardian while we're all abroad. She's going to let you have her best spare room for your own, and you can take your own bits and pieces with you, and have them there.
    Which