A Safe Harbour by Benita Brown

lost not only Jos but the affection and companionship of his mother, too. She couldn’t remember a time when she had ever felt so hurt and alone.  
     
    The high tide reached the mouth of the cave before retreating and Kate stepped over the usual jumble of seaweed tangled up with bits of driftwood. She rested her hands on the rough sandstone walls as she ventured further inside. The passage narrowed and the pale sand sloped upwards so that gradually there was less headroom. Eventually she came to the familiar outcrop of rock that formed a low platform wide enough to sit on. This had been their place.  
    When they’d been children they had gathered here, the four of them. Kate, Thomas, Jos and Jane. Even though the children of the village had to help their parents with tasks such as baiting the lines and spreading the nets to dry, there was sometimes a spare hour or two for play. They would gather here, bringing bread and cheese, a piece of cake (Jane usually brought that), a bottle of water or lemonade (Jane again), and candles and matches.  
    Jos had told them that the caves had once been used by smugglers and that, somewhere, there was a secret passage that led underground as far as the old priory where the monks had lived. But, although Kate and the two boys must have spent hours searching for it, scrambling over tumbled rocks and squeezing into narrow spaces until Jane called out to them in fright to come back, they had never found it.  
    It was years since the four of them had played here together but their names had remained, carved into the sandstone walls. As Kate’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness she ran her fingers along the uneven surface until she found the deeply grooved markings. She stared at them.  
    There it was, the heart with the names inside. Jos and Kate. Jos had carved them into the sandstone with the help of a nail and piece of rock. He’d told her that the heart and the names would be there for ever; that people in centuries to come would know that Kate and Jos had been sweethearts.  
    ‘Centuries?’ Kate had questioned.  
    ‘Yes. Look.’ Jos held the flickering candle closer to the wall of the cave and moved it backwards and forwards until he found the other markings. They were very faint, and although she peered at them intently she couldn’t make them out.  
    ‘It’s a list of names,’ Jos had asserted.  
    ‘Are you sure?’  
    ‘Yes, old names. Names that aren’t used any more. Many years ago – oh, a long, long time ago – folk used to live in these caves.’  
    ‘Live here?’  
    ‘Yes. You can tell by those soot stains. They were made by the smoke from fires.’  
    ‘Ugh! Fancy living here,’ Jane had interrupted. ‘How . . . how primitive !’ And they had all laughed at the way Jane had wrinkled her nose.  
    The next time they had met in the cave Jane had found something else to make her curl her lip. Thomas had followed Jos’s example and carved a shaky heart shape, and inside he had put his name and Jane’s. He had not been so expert as Jos and the marks were mere scratches, but they were clear enough and Jane was cross.  
    ‘You had no right to do that,’ she had told him. ‘I don’t want people to see my name along with yours.’ And she’d picked up a rough stone and scratched away vigorously until the words were almost obscured. Then she’d flung the stone down and flounced off.  
    Even then Kate knew why Jane didn’t favour Thomas. It was because she had set her young heart on Kate’s elder brother William, who, in those days, had not taken the younger child at all seriously. Poor Jane had always contrived to be there when William was around, looking up at him as though he were a hero in a romantic story book.  
    Eventually Jane’s devotion had been rewarded. One day William had looked at her and seen a beautiful young woman rather than a pretty child. He had fallen in love with her. Kate knew of their courtship although, for reasons