Mags had gone out early – probably down to the harbour to work on her boat, as she often did early in the mornings – and I had been lying there in bed, unable to get back to sleep. When I heard the kitchen door opening and closing again, I crept to the window, lifted the blackout blind and peered out into the mist. I could just make out Mutti’s shadowy figure moving down the path towards the gate. What was she up to? It must have been around seven o’clock, and it was still quite dark. Mags sneaking out of the house to work on her boat was perfectly normal, but I’d never known Mutti to go for an early-morning walk – and certainly not in weather like this. And there was something about the way she had opened and closed the kitchen door. So softly . . .

I pulled the collar of my coat up and huffed into my scarf to try to keep my face warm. My hands were tightened into fists in my coat pocket and I wished I had taken a second to find my mittens. I trod carefully, trying not to make a sound. The figure of my mother was about twenty paces ahead of me. Every now and then the fog became so thick that I couldn’t see her at all. We were out on the cliff path now. In the darkness and fog, so near the cliff edge, it would have been dangerous for anyone else, but I had grown up here – I knew every twist and turn of these paths, in the same way that I knew the ruts and potholes of the track to Stonegate and the wobbly steps of the spiral staircase in the lighthouse.

We passed the turning that would have taken us down to the harbour and instead we kept going, climbing the path that led up to the south cliff. The army had started to build something up on these cliffs. There was a tall barbed-wire fence and, beyond it, several half-built concrete structures. Amongst the bare wilderness of the clifftops, the wire and the concrete were so ugly, so out of place. The half-built shapes looked eerie in the mist – squat and sinister, like crouching toads. There was nothing else up here at all, just windswept gorse bushes and frost-bitten grass. The fog was thinner up here, and Mutti’s shape became clearer. As she walked, ribbons of mist swirled around her feet like snakes. Why is she going up here?

I thought about that cryptic accusation from Kipper Briggs – She’s been seen. Had he been talking about Mutti? What was she doing out on the south cliff in the darkness and fog?