‘Category A,’ Gibbons announced.

A triumphant release of breath from the back row.

‘Eh?’ said Sir Alan Darsdale.

‘CATEGORY A.’

Excited muttering all around me.

‘Mrs Angela Helene Zimmermann Smith, you are to be indefinitely interned as a matter of national security . . .’

Everything was blurred now – the faces in front of me, the white wigs and wooden thrones, the sound of Mr Gibbons’s voice, the words themselves . . . Interned. Indefinitely interned. Imprisoned. Taken away. My Mutti.

‘Pa?’ I grabbed his sleeve, but he was just staring at Mutti. His lips were moving silently, as if he were trying to say something.

Mutti stood up, but the policeman had to help her. He took her by the elbow and led her out of the courtroom. Her eyes did not leave Pa’s until she was forced to turn at last through the dark doorway.

On the steps of the court outside, the sun was shining as brightly as it had before, but now it felt all wrong. Everything felt all wrong. Four of us had gone into the court, but only three of us had come out. I had that horrible, incomplete feeling you get when you know you have forgotten something very important. I felt sick.

Pa was in the middle of us, holding our hands – Magda’s and mine – and we descended the steps slowly, looking down. We did not want to talk to the chattering crowd that waited for us.

Mrs Baron was there on the steps too. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry, girls, but our hands were absolutely tied.’ She hugged Mags, and then she hugged me too. But I didn’t want hugs from Mrs Baron; I wanted my Mutti. I was so frightened I could hardly breathe. For some reason, all I could think of was the grip of the gas mask, the choking bitterness, the suffocation . . .

Chapter 15

15

After the tribunal, the police came to the lighthouse. Mutti had to wait in the police car while the officers collected some personal belongings that she could take with her to the internment camp, but she wasn’t allowed in, and we weren’t allowed to go out and talk to her. I stood in the kitchen staring out at the police car. Mutti was just a silhouette in the rear window – so far away from us. I felt all buzzy and strange, as if I were lost in a bad dream.

Mags was sitting on a kitchen chair, drumming on the table with her fingers. The drumming grew louder and louder, faster and faster. Eventually she stood up, shoving her chair back so hard it fell on the floor with a crash. Then she strode out of the door, slamming it back against the cottage wall. A policeman was standing by the car and she was walking right towards him.

Pa called out, ‘Magda – WAIT!’ But she ignored him.