Pa said people who were experts on megaliths had all sorts of theories about the stones – ideas to do with druids and rituals and the summer solstice. They believed the stones must have come from another part of England altogether, or maybe even France; they aren’t local rock, as our cliffs are chalky and these stones glitter with granite.

I’ve dozed in the long grass between the stones on many a summer’s afternoon. I’ve lain there for hours, listening to the lullaby of the sea and watching the slowly dimming sky. Mags doesn’t believe me, but I’ve heard them singing – on those still, dark dawns when the sun struggles to rise through the fret or the fog. It’s a strange, distant ghost-song, high and resonant, like four different tuning forks buzzing their soft notes from deep within the rock. It feels as if they are singing only to me.

Sometimes I speak to the stones – a sort of whispered, pagan prayer. I remember doing that on the evening of Magda’s fight. As I drew their four, rain-rounded shapes and the dark daggers of cloud that hung above them, I asked the stones to protect my Mutti and my Pa, and my stupid, surly sister.

I have always believed that the Daughters somehow guarded our Castle, and in a way I think they do, but I know now that it is much more complicated than that. This sort of old magic is not loyal to anyone or anything. It has its own laws. It is as cold and unknowable as an ancient god.

Chapter 2

2

It was just a few days after Magda’s fight that Pa received a very strange order from the government. We had to paint the Castle green.

We all painted it together. Pots of green paint shot up and down on pulleys and I was allowed to use the stepladder to paint the downstairs windowsills. It was much better than whitewashing, because if we splashed paint on the grass, it didn’t matter so much – you could hardly see it. Mags painted the very top of the lighthouse – the round roof. She scaled the highest part of the tower with a rope, just like a mountain climber, her paintbrush tucked in a back pocket. It took the four of us three whole days to paint it, and the closer it was to being finished, the more peculiar it looked. I couldn’t get used to the greeny-brown paint at all – it just looked completely the wrong colour for a lighthouse.

‘It’s camouflage,’ Pa said. ‘To make us harder to spot from the air. We don’t want the lighthouse to be bombed, do we?’

No.We didn’t.