‘Yes, they probably will,’ Pa said. ‘And we’ll learn to tell the difference. But for now, we won’t know which is which until it’s too late.’

That was the first time I really understood that the war had started and that we and our lighthouse were in danger. But I still felt safe. As we descended into the dusty dark of the coal cellar together, I felt so very, very safe.

Mutti tried to encourage me to curl up in an old armchair and go to sleep, but I wanted to poke about amongst the piles of bric-a-brac stacked up in the cobwebby corners. The smell of coal dust and mould was mysterious and exciting. I started clambering through a stack of broken furniture – I was an insect in a dusty jungle.

‘Be careful please, little Pet,’ Mutti said. ‘That furniture is very old – you will hurt yourself.’ I was twelve years old. I wondered just how old I would have to be before I stopped being Mutti’s ‘little Pet’.

I stopped climbing and stood quietly for a minute or so, writing my name in the dust that covered an old writing desk. Pet Smith, I wrote. Then I wrote my full name (including my middle name that comes from Mutti’s family): Petra Zimmermann Smith.

That is the name of someone extraordinary, I thought. An explorer. An adventurer, or a mountain climber. Someone who does wonderful and fearless things. I wasn’t brave enough to be an adventurer, though, I knew that. I wasn’t bold and fearless like Magda. What I really wanted was to be an artist. I sighed, and stared at my name. I had always felt it was several sizes too big for me. Was it a name I could grow into? I scribbled it out and wrote plain Pet Smith again. I was anonymous once more – small, mousey and unimportant.

I started looking through the desk drawers one at a time, to see if I could find any little bits of forgotten treasure. Apart from a few dead earwigs they all seemed to be empty. Everyone was quiet. Mags lay down on an old mattress with her book clasped to her chest. I watched her close her eyes tightly, but I knew she wasn’t asleep – her breathing was all wrong. Pa sat next to Mutti and took her hand. I saw my mother stealing glances at Mags every now and then – she’d been watching her like that since the fight earlier that week. After a while Mags opened her eyes and huffed impatiently, as if Mutti’s anxious looks were keeping her awake. She moved beneath the fanlight and opened Essential Motor Boat Maintenance, squinting at the pages as the last dregs of evening light faded into darkness. I caught the faintest trace of the air-raid siren in the wind, still wailing mournfully from the village below.