‘You’re off to the museum again?’ asked Vee, on the Thursday morning, looking through her handbag for a missing glove.

‘Yes. Where are you going?’ She was wearing her best hat, the one on to which she’d sewn a jay’s feather he’d found on the Heath.

‘You remember,’ she said. ‘Brighton.’

‘Brighton?’

‘I told you.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did, I said that I was going to the seaside for the day, with Mario, before he goes away. You’re in a daze at the moment. I wonder if I should try and get you some cod-liver oil, you might be anaemic.’ Vee reached for Noel’s lower eyelid and he jerked his head away.

‘I’m not anaemic, and that wouldn’t help me even if I were. Anaemia’s caused by a lack of iron, whereas cod-liver oil contains vitamin A.’

‘Yes, very good,’ said Dr Parry-Jones. ‘Besides, boys of Noel’s age are rarely anaemic, not being subject to monthly menstruation.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Reddish, ‘must we mention that at the breakfast table?’

Vee continued to give Noel an appraising look, and his eyes met hers and then slithered away, his expression one that she hadn’t seen on him for years: sealed, almost furtive. He was never going to be like Miss Appleby (thank Heavens), blithely broadcasting every idea that fluttered through her head, but neither was he especially secretive – a straightforward question usually gained a straightforward answer – but when she’d asked him where he’d disappeared to on the afternoon of Christmas Day, he’d muttered, ‘A walk,’ and she’d got nothing further out of him. ‘A walk’ that had turned him back into the silent ten-year-old she’d first met five years before. She’d wondered, briefly, if Major Lumb’s minx of a grand-daughter had seduced him in the woods, but the Lumbs’ house was empty and shuttered; Mrs Lumb, apparently, had had enough of the V-2s.

Vee found her glove in the side pocket. ‘I’ll try and bring you back a strand of seaweed. Remember you used to have one you told the weather by?’ Noel nodded, his expression softening a little. ‘Everything’s in the larder for this evening,’ she added. ‘I should be back before it’s dark, it’s only a little jaunt.’

She stopped to adjust her hat in the hall mirror, just as Mr Jepson left the kitchen.

‘I haven’t seen the sea since 1939,’ he said, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Funny to think of it.’

‘I’ve never seen it,’ said Vee.

‘Really?’ He said the word without derision – eagerly, as if lit by her own excitement. ‘Well, I’ll be very interested to know what you think. It’s one of those events that happen to most people so early that they can’t remember its impact. I hope it’s everything that you imagined.’

‘Thank you.’ Though what she imagined was the illustration on the packet of desiccated coconut she’d pounced on at the grocer’s (a reckless twelve points, but worth it for Noel’s face when he saw it): a tropical island with palm trees and yellow sands, and a sea of sparkling sapphire. Mario had already told her the beach at Brighton looked like a quarry; she’d be foolish to expect too much.