‘Look! Come and see, Auntie Netta! I’ve found a helmet.’ Gus was waving an object excitedly. He watched his young aunt in her pleated shorts and plimsolls, picking her way through the boulders and shingle to the line of seaweed where he lifted up a leather helmet like a dead animal, slimy and with barnacles clinging underneath. He’d noticed that when he walked with her in town she always got wolf whistles from the seamen on the harbour. She pretended not to notice but he saw her freckles go pink.

Now she shuddered as he offered the mask for her to inspect. The face that must once have donned this pilot’s mask was probably sunk fifty fathoms deep in some lonely grave at the bottom of the Irish Sea like Long John Silver.

‘Put it down, it might have fleas!’ His aunt shook her head, not wanting to touch the slimy object.

‘Mammy’d say that.’ Why did grown-ups hate getting dirty and muddy and greased up? ‘Do you think it was a Spitfire pilot’s or a Jerry’s?’ Gus and his friend Jamie would play war all day long if allowed to.

‘I don’t know, dear.’

‘Did you know any soldiers who were killed in the war?’ Gus asked in his matter-of-fact voice, hoping she would tell him another adventure story like the ones in his comic. She nodded but said nothing. Why did everyone always clam up when he asked about the thing called war? He knew it was a great big adventure he had missed out on. The big boys played Japs and Jerries in the playground, knocking the littler ones over, but Mammy said nice boys didn’t fight. Gus was secretly a pirate so he always fought back. Netta was family and she didn’t usually mind. Now his auntie was staring out to sea and looked sad, like the woman in her soppy story.

He looked down, poking among the seaweed. ‘Have you got a golden necklace?’

‘No, but my mother had a lovely one made from polished pebbles all the colours of the rainbow: amethyst, amber, quartz, turquoise, all linked together with a golden chain. Father bought it for her on their wedding day.’

‘Do you wear it?’

‘No, Peg has it.’

‘Why? I’ve never seen it but I’ll ask her to show it to us,’ said Gus, burying the helmet in the sand.

‘No, Gus, I’d rather you didn’t.’ He could tell by her pursed lips that he was not going to be told why but it was worth another question.

‘Jamie Paterson telt me that you’re no my real auntie. Are you ma big sister then?’

Netta shrugged her shoulders. ‘Something like that but I like being called Auntie