Mrs Baron’s face was white, stricken. Both her hands were pressed flat to her heart. Mags had gone pale too. They were both looking at the policemen, who had retreated a few paces away and were talking to each other quietly.

‘It doesn’t look good . . .’

‘A search party . . .’

‘Check the beach under the cliffs, we’ll need to go through the rock-fall . . .’

Then Mags’s voice: ‘I’m sure it’s all right, Mrs Baron,’ she said, standing up. ‘I’m sure he’ll be all right. I’ll help search.’

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Baron looked genuinely grateful. ‘We’ll search together, Magda.’

‘Did you say the girls should have been evacuated yesterday, Mrs Baron?’ one of the policemen asked then.

‘What? Yes,’ she said, distracted. She could only think of Michael now.

‘I was just going to suggest that I could contact the authorities on your behalf so you don’t have to worry . . .’

But another voice cut the policeman off. ‘There’ll be no need for that,’ Joe said very steadily. ‘I’ll be looking after them both now. I’ll take care of my granddaughters.’

Chapter 39

39

Spooky Joe was our grandfather. He was Pa’s dad. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he just sat beside me very quietly, his hand on my arm. My thoughts were blurred and strange, but I was dimly aware that a few pieces of the puzzle were falling into place at last: his piercing blue eyes and familiar, square shoulders; the fact that I had mistaken his silhouette for Pa’s in the rowing boat that night; his face when I called the King Edward ‘our boat’ (he had built the boat for my Pa when Pa was just a boy). I remembered seeing Pa wave to Joe on the morning the German bomber crashed into the cabbage field, and it had been clear that Mutti knew who he was too, though she had refused to tell me when I’d asked.

I thought sleepily about all the children I knew who had grown up with their cuddly grans, who gave them pennies for sweets, and their kind old grandpops, who took them to play cricket on the beach. And I thought how odd it was that I had never even thought to ask Pa about his parents. I had always just accepted that it was only the four of us. Why had they never told us about him? Why hadn’t they spoken to him since he moved back to Stonegate?

It was a few days later that I found out the answers.

I woke up from a long deep sleep to find Joe sitting beside my hospital bed. I tried to sit up and roll towards him, but then remembered – for what felt like the hundredth time already – that my legs didn’t seem to be working properly. I turned my head instead, the hospital sheet cool and crisp against my neck and cheek.