I followed him. I didn’t know if I had the courage to speak to him, or what on earth I would say if I did, but I had to find out what he knew.

I followed him all the way down to the harbour. The rain was drumming down on my umbrella, I wove around puddles and dodged wobbly cobblestones. Eventually, Pinstripe came to a halt at the harbour wall and I stopped too – a safe distance away, lurking behind a post box while I thought about the best way of phrasing what I wanted to say. The sky over the Channel thundered again.

‘It’s a terrible sound, isn’t it?’

Was he talking to me? I waited behind the post box, not sure what to do. He can’t see me, can he? I crouched a little.

‘I can see your umbrella, Petra,’ he laughed. ‘It looks as if the post box is wearing a rain hat.’

Oh, Pet, you really are a first class idiot . . . I blushed as red as the treacherous post box, and stepped out.

‘Sorry, sir,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t spying on you or anything . . .’ I faltered at my poor choice of words.

He smiled and was about to speak again when the sky boomed once more.

We both looked up at the heavy grey clouds. ‘But there’s no lightning,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s because it isn’t thunder.’

I looked at him. Not thunder?

‘It’s guns.’

Guns.

‘The German artillery.’ He beckoned to me and I went to stand next to him at the harbour wall. He gestured towards the sea, towards France.

‘Just over there,’ he said, ‘about twenty miles away, there is a little seaside town just like this one, with a beach and cafes and shops and things. And right now it is being bombed to bits by Hitler’s guns.’ His voice became quieter, and the creases on his forehead grew deeper. ‘It’s remarkable how close they are now. One is so much more aware of it down here.’

I stared out over the water, and swallowed. A little seaside town just like this one . . .

‘Twenty miles isn’t very far at all, is it?’ I said, remembering some of the blisteringly long hikes Pa had taken us on over the years. ‘For an army, I mean.’

Pinstripe shook his head. ‘I came down from London on the train this morning, and that was about eighty miles,’ he said. ‘So, no. Twenty miles is not very far at all.’

We both looked out over the grey water.

‘I need to tell you something, sir.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Mm?’

‘Mutti is innocent. My mother, I mean. It wasn’t her who did those diagrams and things. It couldn’t have been.’

He nodded, but his craggy brow was all bunched up. ‘And how do you know that, Petra?’