It wasn’t likely that the police would be looking for another suspect now – my sister, or Spooky Joe, or anyone else for that matter. They had a written confession from my Mutti – what more did they need? I didn’t say anything about Joe’s coded note or the fact that Mags’s initials had been on it; as far as Mags was concerned, the scrap of paper had been lost somewhere between the south cliff and Dragon Bay.

She took a breath. ‘We just have to wait to see what the police will do. Mutti will probably be transferred from the camp to a prison, and then there will be a trial . . .’ She stopped. She didn’t want to think about what happened after that. TRAITORS TO BE HANGED . . . The sea below us was swilling back and forth against the cliff – I was a ship in a bottle being tipped this way and that.

‘There’s nothing we can do right now, Petra.’ Mags paused. ‘Nothing we can do for Mutti, anyway . . .’ And I saw that she was looking towards France again. She was thinking about all those poor soldiers caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

‘You want to go and help them.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. Now more than ever.’

Mags got to her feet and held out her hand to pull me up beside her. We stood there together, quite still, hand in hand, looking out to sea, and I became aware of a strange, high-pitched resonance, a fierce energy filling the air all around us. Just for a moment, there weren’t four Daughters of Stone on our clifftop: there were six of us.

When we went back into the kitchen Pa was still sitting in his chair. He was bent double now, with his head in his hands. He didn’t even look up when we came in. ‘I can’t take it, Mags,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me again. I just can’t . . .’

Mags looked at him. For a moment, I was afraid that she was going to swear or storm out again, but she didn’t. She knelt down on the floor next to Pa. When she spoke, her voice was soft. ‘I want to help, Pa – we can’t just let this happen, can we? I can’t join up to fight, but I know how to man a boat. This is something I can actually do to make a difference. Please, Pa.’ She put her hand on Pa’s arm. ‘We can’t help Mutti right now, but we can do this – we can help them.’ Pa was still looking at the floor, his hands pressed over his eyes. When he looked back at my sister, I saw that his face was wet with tears. I had never seen my father cry before. A vast pit of fear opened up inside me.