By quarter to six, I was out of ciggies, the peas had turned to body-temperature mush and I was yawning every ten seconds. It had been a wet and chilly spring, but the sun was warm and gold that morning, the green smell of a landscape coming back to life in the air.

I crept through the kitchen, thinking I might have a chance of grabbing an hour of sleep before school. Dizzy with fatigue, I turned to climb the stairs. I was already on the first step, my back turned to the front door, when my brain registered what my eyes had just seen. For a few seconds, I didn’t dare turn round. And then came the smell.

One unlit match. A carpet soaked with lighter fuel. That was the first time.

We’re gonna burn your house down, Morcombe.

We’re going to burn it down when your grandad’s asleep.

He’s getting cremated, Ollie.

How stupid of me to imagine those words from Nate Mackie had just been idle threats. Nothing was idle with those two.

I stared at the floor, at the new carpet. It was like seeing Gramps himself, in his favourite clothes, being doused in petrol. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash my other hand to pieces.

But I did none of those things. Instead, I cleaned up the mess. I shook like crazy. I cried silently so as not to wake Gramps.

It was only after I’d got the place straight, when I had to leg it upstairs to be sick, that he woke up. He kept me home from school that day. ‘One of those twenty-four-hour bugs,’ we both agreed.

I spent the morning lying on my bed, pillow wrapped round my head. For a few beautiful hours, I’d dared to believe that I could actually be free. But I knew now we could never just leave. It would save Sophia, it would save me, but it would be like killing Gramps myself. With less than three weeks until the end of term, running away was no longer an option.

They were always one step ahead of me. Like a deadly game of chess, they were putting me in check with every move, delaying my defeat for their cruel amusement, clearing pieces from the board until I had nothing left to defend myself with.

It was lunchtime before I could muster the enthusiasm to drag myself out of bed. Nursing the mug of tomato soup Gramps had left for me, I wandered the house. I didn’t go looking for it – I think I’d forgotten it even existed – but there it was, on the top shelf in the spare room: The Home Guard Guide 1940, like it had been placed there decades ago, just for this moment.