Then a hand fell heavily on my shoulder and I screamed.

‘Pet – good grief – it’s only me!’ My sister was behind me, all buttoned up and ready to go. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing – I thought I saw someone. There – by the stones . . .’

But the only movement to be seen near the stones was the dancing and bending of the long, pale grasses that surrounded them.

‘You and your imagination, Pet. There’s no one there. Come on – we need to get down to the cave before Mrs Baron comes looking for us.’

I tried to convince myself that it was an adventure. As we squeezed our way through the tunnel with an assortment of bags, I tried to pretend that Mags and I were playing some kind of childish game. We were camping out for the night; we were being smugglers or pirates; we were running away to sea. When we got to the cave, I lit the oil lamp while Mags found the driest area and made us up two beds out of the blankets she had brought. Then she opened one of the bags from the kitchen and produced a pile of freshly made jam sandwiches wrapped in paper. I suddenly realized how hungry I was. We sat down together on Mags’s bed and devoured the sandwiches.

I looked at my sister then – with a big blob of jam at the side of her mouth – and I saw a flash of the old Mags. I grinned, pointing at the jam, but my mouth was too full of bread and butter and strawberry jam to say anything coherent, and we both ended up laughing through our noses.

We could have been any two sisters laughing together in that moment, but beneath the silliness of the moment and the excitement of our escape was the numbing fear that we were completely alone now; we had no idea what was going to happen to us.

I don’t know what made me think of it then, but I went to my bag of clothes and brought out the photograph of Mutti and Pa’s wedding. I had taken it from the coal cellar that morning, just before the funeral, thinking I might keep it in my bedroom, and I had decided to pack it at the last minute. To be honest, I just couldn’t bear to leave it behind.

‘Look, Mags,’ I said, unwrapping the soft, woolly sleeves of an old jumper from around the chipped frame. ‘It’s Pa and Mutti when they got married.’ I held it out to her.

She looked at it, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, just look at our Pa,’ she said, touching the glass. I looked at the young man with his gentle face and sticking-out ears and I felt tears starting in my eyes too.

‘Isn’t Mutti’s dress lovely?’ I said, my throat aching.