Mrs Whitehead’s voice brought me back to the present moment. ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘You must have left when you were a baby?’

I shook my head and swallowed down my fears and my memories. ‘It was just over two years ago,’ I said. ‘I was twelve.’

Her eyes went all wide and she said, ‘I never would have guessed. You sound perfectly English to me.’

I walked back to my seat almost in a trance. Daniel gave me a nudge and smiled at me. ‘See,’ he whispered. He still had to tell me on a regular basis that I had nothing to worry about.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I could dare to believe it.

I sounded ‘perfectly English’.

I found myself breaking into a smile. It didn’t leave my face for the rest of the day. All day, I could feel myself walk a little taller, laugh a little harder, join in a little more.

I was perfectly English. I was no longer an outsider.

And yes, sometimes I wondered if I would ever get to see Vienna again, and I knew that it would always have a special place in my heart. But England was where I lived now, and it seemed that, at last, I could let myself think of it as home.

I floated on air through the rest of the lesson, and on into the next. Science with Mr Rogers.

We had barely started the lesson when we heard a familiar sound outside the classroom. The siren. Air raid.

Usually it was a drill, to make sure we knew what to do, but you never knew for sure and it had been drummed into us that we were to act as if it were real every single time.

‘Tom, Sally, Peter, fetch the gas masks from the cloakroom. Leo, Daniel and Mary, help hand them out. The rest of you line up by the door. When everyone has their gas mask, take it with you and let’s go.’

I hurried to do my job as quickly as possible. In less than two minutes, the whole class had their gas masks and had formed a line at the door.

‘Good,’ Mr Rogers said. ‘Right, come on.’

We followed Mr Rogers out into the corridor and joined the children coming out of all the other classrooms. We filled the corridor and hurried out to the yard.

The headmaster, Mr Salisbury, was outside directing us to the shelters. They’d only been built two years ago, especially for us in case there was an actual raid while we were at school.

‘Is it real or a drill, sir?’ a boy from another class asked as we passed him.

‘It’s a drill this time,’ he answered. ‘But remember, we treat it exactly the same as we would if it were real.’