October was a cold, dark month and Hallowe’en was the coldest, darkest day of all – one of those very cruel autumn days that feel like a dress rehearsal for winter. All day long, the weather crouched over the lighthouse like a giant spider. Grandpa Joe went to Dover – to the magistrate’s court. Mrs Baron called by in the morning and asked him to meet her there in the afternoon. She said there were some forms to do with legal guardianship that he had to complete, so he caught the bus just after lunch. I thought how kind it was of her to be sorting things out for us when she must have been grieving terribly for Michael.

Mags baked bread. I sat up in the lantern room and listened to her moving around in the kitchen below, the dough thudding rhythmically into the flour on the kitchen table. Yesterday, she said there was something important she needed to talk to me about, but she wasn’t sure if she was quite ready yet, and today it seemed that she could hardly look me in the eye. She had been spending more and more of her time out of the house. I watched her walking over the cliffs – through the rain or fog. I wondered if she went up to the south cliff to feel close to Michael, in the same way that I felt close to Pa when I was looking out to sea.

At last I heard her footsteps coming up towards the lantern room.

‘Can I get you anything, Pet? A cup of tea or anything?’

She could have asked me that through the speaking tube.

‘I’m fine, thanks, Mags. Is Grandpa Joe still not home?’ I knew that he wasn’t.

‘Not yet.’

She sat down next to me. She was wearing a pale yellow scarf that might once have belonged to Mutti. Her hands were folded in her lap, and that made me think of Mutti too – at the tribunal, her white hands twisted together.

‘I need to ask you something, Pet,’ she said. ‘The day the bomb fell – you said some things about Michael . . .’

We had not discussed it since. I had never told her that he attacked me, that he was chasing me across the clifftop when the bomb fell. Her heart had been broken enough.

‘Were those things true, Pet? Was he really the saboteur?’

What could I say? There are times when the truth can be so much more cruel than a lie. Mags was staring right into my eyes, and I was so close to saying, Yes, everything I said about Michael was true – and much worse besides, but then I said, ‘It must have been the fall – I can’t remember much about that last day. I can’t remember what I saw, Mags.’