She nodded, and so did Pa. That made me feel very odd indeed – both our parents saying that they wanted us to go and live somewhere else. I felt I was about to cry too, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I was feeling sorry for myself, or if it was because Mutti was so upset.

‘But we wouldn’t know the people we were staying with, would we?’ Mags said then. ‘They could be anyone at all, couldn’t they?’

‘Well – someone with a spare bedroom who wanted to help others. You will find that most people are kind, Mags,’ Mutti said, blotting the tears from her eyes with Pa’s handkerchief.

‘And what happens when they discover that we are half-German, Mutti? Do you think most people will still be kind to us then?’

There was a leaden silence. My chest tightened. We looked at Mutti, and Mutti looked at Pa, fresh tears welling up in her eyes.

They had not considered this.

The logs in the kitchen stove crackled. The drizzle outside thickened, running down the kitchen window in thin grey worms of water.

Part Two: Spring 1940

Chapter 9

9

So we weren’t evacuated, and nor were any of the other children from our village. Not yet, at any rate. The early months of the war slid quietly by. Christmas and New Year came and went. The blossoms of spring had just started to fade when Hitler invaded France, and the war truly began. Terrible things started to happen one after the other then, with the dreadful, unstoppable momentum of storm waves at sea.

We listened to the wireless every night, and every night it was clear that the German army was getting closer and closer to our little island: sweeping through the Netherlands and Belgium; surging up through France. It is difficult to describe what we all felt, but I can tell you that my Wyrm nightmare tormented me every single night – a monster crawling from the water and clawing its way up the cliffs to the Castle. A monster from which I knew there could be no escape.

After the eeriness of the Twilight War, the darkness was now upon us at last. People continued to go about their everyday business, of course – weeding the garden and sweeping the step, and their words were defiant . . . But everyone was afraid. They were afraid that we would be next.

At about six o’clock one morning, I sat up in bed, suddenly and completely awake. Something was wrong. Smoke.