Mags laughed. It wasn’t a cruel laugh as such – more relief than anything, I think – but it made Kipper even angrier. Now he was humiliated too. ‘You’ll be sorry!’ he snarled at us both, as if we had done this to him on purpose. He pushed himself up, blinking back tears and clutching the side of his head. ‘You’ll be sorry! Everyone knows what you all are – and everyone knows what you’re up to!’ He stumbled towards the cliff path and flung the dirty parcel towards us. It landed soggily at my feet. ‘She’s been seen!’ he spat. He pointed a trembling finger towards the lighthouse. ‘My dad told me – he’s seen her. And I’m going to make sure everyone knows.’ Then he finally turned and limped away.

We were both silent for a moment. The clouds over the sea were as heavy as boulders. I could see a thin, dark line of liquid trickling down the standing stone where Kipper’s head had cracked against it.

‘Seen who, Mags?’ I breathed, not daring to look up at my sister. ‘What was he talking about?’

‘He’s talking rubbish, Petra,’ she muttered. ‘Kipper’s an idiot. Just ignore him.’

But, as she turned back towards the cottage, I saw that my sister’s face was white as chalk.

Chapter 5

5

We didn’t see Kipper again until the day the gas masks arrived. What a horrible day that was – and what a horrible thing a gas mask is. I know it could save my life, of course – I’m not stupid. I just can’t help finding it terrifying. Sometimes I can feel my gas mask looking at me from its home on the kitchen sideboard – with its round, glassy, goggle eyes, and its round mouth too – fixed in an O of horror. It is always there, ready to be strapped on in an ugly, rubbery panic should the moment ever come.

We were summoned to collect our gas masks just a few weeks after the blackout started. Everyone queued up in the village hall and we were issued with a mask one at a time, while the vicar’s wife ticked our names off her list with a blunt pencil. Then we all had to sit down in rows.

There must have been about fifty of us there in the village hall that day. Kipper Briggs sat at the back with his father and, when I turned around to look at him, he raised his chin and just glared past me towards the front of the hall, where Mrs Baron, our headmistress, was demonstrating how the gas masks worked.