We had never spoken about it, but I knew why Mags had lied about Michael having been there in Dragon Bay Cave after he cut the phone line, why she didn’t want to believe that he was a saboteur, why she wouldn’t come to the police station, why she was so angry with me, and why she was desperate not to be evacuated.

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ I said, when I saw her all dressed up for his memorial, a layer of Mutti’s pancake make-up covering the purple hollows beneath her eyes.

She looked at me for a moment, and then she nodded.

‘Yes.’

She and Michael had been meeting for months – up on the cliffs or down in Dragon Bay Cave. I remembered that misty morning when I had followed Mutti and discovered that Mutti was following someone else. She had been following Mags after all. She knew Mags was meeting someone.

‘But why didn’t you say anything, Mags? Why did it all have to be so secret?’

She just shook her head. ‘I can’t explain, Pet.’

I helped her put her hat on, pinning it carefully and tucking the curls around her ears.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ I said. ‘You can push me in the wheelchair.’ But she shook her head again. And she went to the memorial alone.

One of the dreadful things about war is that it doesn’t pause to let you catch your breath. There is no time to grieve. It rattles on, like a monstrous juggernaut. Within the space of a few months, Mutti had been taken away, Pa had died, the bomb had fallen, Michael had been killed, and now my sister was disappearing in front of my eyes.