I was allowed to return home a few weeks later, strapped into a heavy back brace. Grandpa Joe collected me and took me home in a taxi. He had arranged with the coastguard to take up his old job as lighthouse keeper again, so that he could look after me and my sister and we wouldn’t have to be evacuated. Mags made a sponge cake to welcome me back and Grandpa Joe bought me a beautiful new sketchbook and set of pencils. Every morning, he carried me up to the lantern room so that I could sit and watch the sea and draw the things I saw through the windows, and the things I saw in my mind too. I drew my whole story – from Mags’s black eye on the first day of the war through to the pink geraniums in the hospital window boxes. And while I sat up there, sketching and shading, bathed in summer light, the war continued – and so did life in the rest of the Castle. Barnaby still hunted rabbits every morning and dozed on my lap in the afternoons, but some other things had changed a great deal.

Mags was now a paler, quieter version of the heroic big sister I used to know. She volunteered with the lifeboat crew, and when she wasn’t working down at the harbour, she was out walking across the cliffs all by herself. She became dreadfully thin. When I looked at her I thought of the word dwindled – yes, that’s the word – dwindled. Like a dying fire. And it was all because of Michael Baron.

They had searched for Michael for days after the bombing. The police concluded that his body must have fallen all the way down to the beach below, and been swept away with the tide. Mrs Baron’s hair turned as grey as sea spray, and her eyes were no longer as bright as a kestrel’s. They were red and small, and seemed to have sunk deep into her skull.

The inquest returned the verdict of accidental death and there was a memorial for Michael in the church. Nothing was ever said about my accusation of sabotage, and I never told a soul what had happened before the air raid – Michael’s zealous speech about Hitler, and how he had tried to push me over the edge of the cliff . . . Now that he was dead, I thought it might be best to keep these awful things to myself. It wasn’t like keeping Pa’s secret, though – to protect his memory. This was different. This was to protect Mags.