It is a glorious spring day today, and Grandpa Joe and I are the only ones at home. Mags has gone into Dover with Kipper Briggs. They have been stepping out together for a couple of months now. He holds his head up high these days and I swear he looks handsome in a way that he never did before. Kipper the Skipper. It’s funny really – there was something terrible inside Michael Baron that we did not know was there, and there was something wonderful inside Kipper. He and Mags spend every Sunday together, working on his fleet of fishing boats. Not my idea of romance, but I’ve never seen Mags look so strong and happy. She has stopped using hats and hair-dos to disguise her sticking-out ears, and she has Essential Motor Boat Maintenance on permanent loan from the library.

Grandpa Joe has asked Mags to pick up a copy of The Times while she’s in Dover (‘because you get a much better shine when you polish the lantern with a good quality newspaper’), and a part we need to repair a worn-out section of the optic mechanism. He says the lighthouse is a beacon of hope and, when the war is over, the lamp will shine all the time, so we need to look after it properly. I am looking forward to the light very much, but I find I am now much less afraid of the darkness.

I am sitting up here in the lantern room, as usual, with Barnaby curled up beside me like an enormous purring cushion. Grandpa Joe is making lunch downstairs in the kitchen. He is singing a sea shanty: ‘I’ll come home to my darling one, home to my love . . .’

I listen, and gaze out into the bright morning. My sketchbook is on my lap, my pencil in my hand. There is a peculiar quality to the light today, I think. The sea shimmers strangely, as if it is merely an illusion – a mirror of the blue sky above. The Wyrm lies quiet – deeply asleep. There is no breeze. No sea birds are calling, and there are no boats humming through the water or planes rumbling above. I think I can hear a high, fine thread of song – is it coming from the stones on the clifftop, or is it inside me? It seems to shimmer: it is taut, expectant, magical.

I manage to shift my chair around a little to face inland. I want to draw a different view today.