I hugged her, but I couldn’t say anything at all, because these are the words that were in my head: Pa drowned in the sea between England and France. He is never coming home. But now he will never be tried as a traitor and no one will ever need to know what he did. I won’t tell Mags, and I won’t tell Mutti. I will keep his terrible secret all by myself and I will never let it go – it is my secret to keep for the rest of my life. And, no matter how much it burns, I will hold on to it tightly.

Part Three: Summer 1940

Chapter 28

28

‘There’s no question, I’m afraid,’ Mrs Baron went on. ‘I’m terribly sorry about your father, of course, girls, but I have a duty to ensure you are both safe and looked after, and you simply cannot stay here alone.’

She sat down, tucking her legs beneath the kitchen table. She was wearing a grey-brown cardigan. I was reminded of a kestrel again – the neatness of her, the precision of her bright, darting gaze. She seemed genuinely concerned, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept what she was saying. She turned now towards the lady she had brought with her – Mrs Peacock, from the local authority.

‘Don’t worry! We will be able to accommodate you both somewhere,’ Mrs Peacock said chirpily, picking up her cue. ‘There is always a way!’ She examined a piece of paper she had placed on the table, but had to lean forward slightly to read it as it was eclipsed by her enormous bosom. She tutted. ‘Given the circumstances, fostering doesn’t seem to make sense – we might as well just sign them up for the evacuation programme. If you’d gone a bit earlier, we might have been able to squeeze you both in together somewhere, but with things as they are now, it will probably have to be separate arrangements . . . Mags—’

‘Magda,’ my sister corrected sharply.

‘Magda,’ Mrs Peacock repeated, smiling at Mags very deliberately. ‘You’re a strong, useful girl and you’re pretty tall too. I think there might be a place for you working on a farm. You’re a bit young to be a Land Girl as such, but we could probably make it work . . . Now, Pet—’

‘Petra.’ My sister again.

‘Yes.’ Mrs Peacock cleared her throat. ‘At the moment, it is looking likely to be Shropshire.’

‘Shropshire?’ I blurted out. ‘Where is that, please? Is it by the sea?’ A sudden panic took hold of me. I was imagining being trapped inland, away from the sea and the clifftops and the never-ending sky. I would never have said this out loud, but I felt that my Pa was part of the sea now. I felt that leaving the Castle would be a terrible betrayal: I would be abandoning the lighthouse and abandoning Pa too – leaving him behind.