I want to hear Marco’s voice. I want to feel him slip his hand into mine. What would he look like without his black hair dye and eyeliner? I don’t know what colour his real hair is. His eyes are hazel, warm and golden, not like Billy’s fishy grey gaze. I think it’s brave of Marco to wear make-up, especially in Suffolk. He told me that as soon as his course at the Civic College ends, he’ll go back to London and focus on his music. There’s a band that’s interested in him. I wish I could go with him. If we got married, we could have a gothic wedding, and I’d wear long, trailing black skirts with purple lace and backcomb my hair and stick plum roses in it.

  There is a picture of Mum and Dad on their wedding day in the living room at home. It was in the sixties and Mum wears a white mini-dress with big fabric daisies around the hem. She’s carrying real daisies and smiling up at Dad. They look so happy. But when I remember what happened to me the night before the storm hit, then suddenly the photograph that I’d grown up with doesn’t mean the same thing anymore and everything is muddled and wrong.

  Billy is reeling in the line with quick movements. A grunt of triumph escapes as he leans back to swing a fish in, unhooking it. It’s smallish, silver bellied, with a speckled back. ‘Hardly more than a codling,’ Billy complains. It flails on the stones: eyes shiny, tail flapping. We stare at it for a second before Billy takes a large stone and brings it down on the head. Once I would have been repulsed. My mouth is already watering.

  When it’s dark, Billy will risk lighting a fire. Firewood is scarce–there are only a couple of stunted trees–so we collect driftwood and store it inside the pagoda to dry. He tips out the kindling, arranges it on a scooped out space and leans down to blow on the spark. Flames catch and crackle. He unties me with a look that says, don’t think of it, gives me the gutted fish on a stick, gesturing to hold it inside the heat. My fingers grow hot. The cooking smell makes my stomach clench in anticipation. I stare at the fish, watching as flesh bubbles and weeps. The golden circles around the eyes dim; bright scales scorch and char as skin shrivels across flesh.

  He hands me a portion of steaming pink flakes, dropping them into my palm. I burn my tongue, filling my mouth with tender fish. I hardly pause to pull out a sharp bone, threading it between my teeth, before I continue chewing and swallowing. Billy is eating greedily too, crouched over the fire stuffing bits of fish into his mouth with both hands. If he was to choke on a bone, I could run. It might give me enough time to get to the other side of the island and find the boat.

  Billy turns and stares at me as if he knows what I’m thinking. His eyes narrow into slivers of light. Grease slicks his lips; bits of fish are caught in the rough scrub of his beard. I think of Marco’s smooth chin, how his inky hair always felt clean between my fingers. I drop my gaze but I can’t pause in cramming fish into my mouth. The relief of food makes me want to cry. Tiny burning embers rise into the sky. They flare gold above our heads and disappear, dying in the wind.

  ‘D’ you know about the German invasion in the Second World War? The one that happened here?’ he asks suddenly.

  Startled, I shake my head. ‘What, on the island, you mean?’

  He nods. ‘But the English army knew they were coming, see.’ He taps his nose. ‘They’d prepared a surprise for Jerry.’ He gestures towards the land behind us, jerking a thumb towards the unseen water. ‘The sea was set on fire–petrol on the surface–burnt the lot of them to death when they tried to cross it. The sky was ablaze. Must have been a lot of screaming.’

  His voice is matter-of-fact. He lifts up the remains of the charred fish to inspect it for further scraps of flesh. The fire throws strange shadows across his face, widening his nostrils, casting bleak caverns under his eyes.

  ‘There were burnt corpses washing up on the shore for weeks afterwards.’ He gnaws at the head, uses his thumb and finger to gouge out a blackened eye, puts it in his mouth and swallows. ‘Ministry kept it hush-hush. Churchill thought it would be bad for morale.’ He licks his lips. ‘But my granddad told me about it. Locals all knew because some of them were paid in fags to get rid of the evidence.’

  I burp, putting my hand in front of my mouth, the habit of politeness still there. ‘Really?’ My mind is racing. It’s the first time he’s given me any hint about where he comes from. He doesn’t have a Suffolk accent; but I’m not good at judging how people talk. With his drawn-out vowels, I’d thought maybe he was from the North somewhere. And there’s something else that I can’t place, a kind of nasal twang. I hadn’t realised that he was local. Gradually I’m gleaning information about him and it feels important.

  ‘The military is full of lies, full of cover-ups. You don’t know the half of it.’ He jabs a finger towards me, his mouth pulled down.

  I stay silent, afraid of making him worse.

  ‘That German stuff was child’s play compared to what goes on now.’ He glares at me. ‘Under everyone’s noses.’ His left eye is twitching. A quick spasm of nerves flickering under his skin.

  I shake my head tentatively.

  ‘Bastards. All of them.’ He stands up abruptly. His chest is heaving and he clenches his fists. ‘Cover the fire. Make sure nothing is left.’

  Eyes down, I hurry to gather stones, using my feet and hands to shovel shingle across glowing embers. The stones clatter as I rearrange them. They sound cheerful, as if I’m playing a game. I make the most of using my arms, swinging them freely, easing out any last feelings of cramp. Billy hides the remains of the fish. He’s already pulling the rope from his pocket as he inspects my work, pushing at stones with his foot until he is satisfied. He grabs my wrists, wrapping the rope around them, his breath coming fast and hard.

  Far under the surface, buried beneath the blackened wood of our fire and the fish skeleton, are bones of German soldiers. I think of how their families waited at home in Germany for news of their son or brother or husband, years going by, and never finding out what happened to them, the lost bones falling apart, drifting among stones, unclaimed and anonymous.

  5

  I swing my legs as I eat my boiled egg, the hard wooden edge of the chair banging against my shinbone. Mum boiled the egg for too long and the yolk is rubbery. There’s nothing to dip my soldiers in. Sophie the new au pair arrived this afternoon. Dad went to pick her up from Ipswich. She arrived holding a glass thing that Dad said was a coffee maker. Mum took her straight up to her room before I could get a proper look at her.

  Mum leans against the sink. She folds her arms. ‘She seems OK,’ she tells Dad. ‘She liked her room. But I’m still wondering if we’re doing the right thing.’

  He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up straight. ‘We agreed, Clara, we talked about it,’ he says quietly. ‘I don’t want you to be ill again.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’ Mum makes a funny noise in her throat. ‘Oh, never mind.’ She turns her back on him. ‘I’m sure it will be fine. Just ignore me.’

  I catch all of this without moving my head, carving out rubbery orange with a teaspoon, dusting it with salt. Neither of them asked me if I’d like an au pair. I’m too old to need someone to look after me, to fuss over me and tell me what to do. Mum only works four days a week, and on those days I can let myself in after school, make myself something to eat. I’m quite capable. Before she went away, Eva used to make us toast and chocolate milk, standing in the kitchen in her socks, with her school tie undone.

  ‘Come on, Clara, just think,’ Dad says, forcing a smile into his voice, ‘you’ll have more time to read and you can let someone else burn the food.’

  It’s his idea of a joke. Funny. Ha ha. Mum doesn’t laugh. She just keeps her back turned, picking up her cup of tea.

  He watches me pour out a mound of salt. I put the egg in my mouth and chew, looking at him. ‘That’s a lot of salt.’ Dad frowns. I scrape out the remains in the shell hat, load them with white crystals and pop that in too. I swallow the bitterness quickly.

  I watch him, waiting to see what he will do. In the days before the accident he would have given me a lecture about how salt was bad for you. Maybe he would have shouted and he would definitely have taken the salt off the table. I wish he would shout at me now. Then I’d know he could see me. I keep being invisible. Like a ghost. Mum drinks her tea standing at the kitchen sink, staring into the garden. Dad hunches his shoulders and takes a wincing sip of coffee.

  I wonder if he ever thinks about another summer day, years ago, when we’d been a normal family sitting down to breakfast: two parents and two children and no au pair. Eva and I had been eating boiled eggs then too, and squabbling. I remember Mum leaning across Dad to reach for the butter, bending to kiss the back of his neck. That was the moment Eva had screamed, throwing down her spoon with a clatter, her hands over her mouth.

  ‘It’s got something in it, oh God.’ She’d been pushing her chair back from the table. ‘It’s a baby…’

  ‘Let me see!’ I crowded forwards, peering at Eva’s egg.

  ‘Oh God, oh God! I’m going to be sick!’ Eva was standing up, shaking her hands. Her eyes like goggles.

  I managed to catch a glimpse of wet feathers curled inside shell, the small hook of a claw, before Dad removed it. The tiny creature had been cooked in its own gooey white. Then Dad tipped the whole lot, egg and chick, into the bin among carrot peelings and empty tins. The lid flipped shut as he wiped his hands on his trousers.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said, pulling Eva onto his lap. She allowed herself to be held even though she must have been about fifteen. She hid her face in his shoulder. He wiped her tears away, his face puckered, eyes glistening, and a sudden fear that maybe he loved Eva more than me pushed itself into my head.

  She sighed and wriggled further into him, her head hard against his chin. ‘It was horrible–did we cook it alive?’

  ‘No.’ Mum was reassuring and brisk. ‘It would have been dead already.’

  ‘I’m never going to eat egg again,’ Eva whispered.

  Dad stroked her hair with clumsy fingers, planted a kiss on her forehead. I was itching to scrabble about in the bin, wanting to find the chick and take it to my room, to keep with my box of treasures. I already had the delicate hollow of a bird’s skull, a dead beetle with the iridescent shine still on it, a collection of stones with holes worn through by the sea, a fallow deer’s antlers and a handful of fossilised shark’s teeth found in the mud.

  ‘Please! I’ll keep it in a matchbox,’ I begged.

  ‘It’ll rot and start smelling to high heaven,’ Mum exclaimed. ‘Don’t be so silly, Faith.’

  Eva pinched me as we cleared the table, piling plates into the sink, back to her normal self. ‘What is it with you and bones?’

  I stuck my tongue out at her.

  Sophie wanders into the kitchen yawning. I glance at her in snatches so that she won’t think I’m staring, noticing her blue eye make-up and how the light catches in her hair. We all smile politely, using simple words, talking as if we are bad actors. Dad looks awkward. He shuffles his feet and says something to her in French. She answers in English. ‘Excuse me,’ he tells her, speaking extra loudly, ‘I have some work to do.’ When he leaves the room Mum offers Sophie a cup of tea, but Sophie says she only drinks coffee. Looking flustered, Mum sits down at the scratched pine table and explains about what housework needs doing and looking after me, and which days she spends at the library. She’s a librarian there and she works from Monday to Thursday.

  ‘You have a big house,’ Sophie remarks, staring at the flagged floor and high ceiling. Mum makes a sort of agreeing sound. ‘It must be…’ Sophie frowns, as if searching for a word, ‘much money to keep it warm.’

  I think about how we wait until November before the heating goes on, and even then it’s only for a couple of hours. The clanking radiators never give out proper warmth. Instead we have a smoky fire in the living room. Eva and I usually go around with hot-water bottles strapped to our stomachs, gloves and hats layered on indoors. I don’t think Sophie will last a winter here.

  I can tell that Mum is uncomfortable because she shifts in her chair and clears her throat, tucking bits of hair behind her ears. We’ve never had anyone to help in the house before. She says she doesn’t agree with employing people to do her dirty work, although when she was a little girl in Egypt she had a nanny and lots of servants. She’s written a list out for Sophie and the biro has leaked, staining Mum’s fingers blue. Mum explains that Eva’s room needs to be cleaned, but that nothing should be moved in there. She pauses. I bite my lip, willing her not to cry. Sophie crosses her legs and nods with serious dips of her chin. Her face is a mask. I can’t tell what she feels or thinks. She has a habit of examining her nails, as if they have something interesting on them.

  Mum glances at me and says why don’t I take Sophie to see the castle? I frown and shake my head quickly behind Sophie’s back. But Mum presses her hand to her forehead, smudging inky prints. She half-closes her eyes as if she has a pain, muttering that maybe seeing the village would help Sophie to get her bearings, and I know that I don’t have a choice.

  The castle is at the top of a steep hill on the edge of the village. It is famous for being a twelfth-century keep. Sophie drags her feet beside me as we walk up to the market square. I point at the battlements appearing over the treetops and she looks unimpressed.

  ‘Whereabouts do you live in France?’ I ask.

  ‘Paris.’

  I think of the Eiffel Tower. I’ve seen pictures of it. A strange, half-finished building with black metal ribs showing, and a point on top like a needle threading the sky. It must be taller even than the castle. I’ve never been to Paris, but I know that it’s the capital city.

  ‘Why did you want to be an au pair?’

  ‘Je me suis échappée…’ She shrugs when she sees my puzzled face, and says carefully, ‘to go away from my home.’

  ‘Oh,’ I frown, ‘don’t you like Paris, then?’

  She glances at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Paris, c’est la meilleure ville.’

  I frown, not understanding, and she waves her hands impatiently. ‘The best city. The best in the world.’

  We’ve come to the entrance to the castle. It looms above us in the sunshine. Sophie regards it without expression.

  ‘So why did you want to come here?’ I gesture around me, taking in the scrubby grass and the old cannon at the foot of the hill.

  She puts her hands in her pockets. ‘It was the first job the agency… offered to me.’ She sniffs. ‘You ask many questions.’

  I open my mouth and close it again. There are lots more things I want to find out. She gives me an unexpected smile, and suddenly I can see how pretty and young she really is. I wonder if we could actually be friends. She isn’t much older than Eva. She points to the castle. ‘So, you will show me it?’

  Inside the first chamber, she leans forward to peer out of the slit window at the sunlit view outside. She’s chewing gum, her mouth open and slack. A smell comes off her: heavy sweet flowers. Lilies, like the ones at Eva’s memorial service.

  ‘Want to go to the top?’ I ask, my feet on the circular step. ‘It’s really high.’

  She has peppermint on her breath. She shrugs again, which I take to be a ‘yes’.

  I run up the narrow winding staircase, my feet hitting worn stone with a slapping sound. Thousands of feet over the centuries have climbed these same steps. Ladies with gowns trailing behind them and soldiers weighed down with chainmail. On the flat roof you can see across the village and over the marshes out towards the river and the sea beyond. Hands on hips, I stand and look at the long shape of the island. I have a different view of it from my bedroom window. Sophie is breathing heavily when she appears at the doorway. She leans against the battlement walls and pushes brown hair out of her eyes. A big seagull skims above our heads and she lets out a yelp, spitting out something in French.

  Merde! I repeat in my head, trying to remember, because I bet it’s a swear word.

  Down at the foot of the hill I see Robert Smith from the village and a couple of the other boys. He’s on his moped and the others are on bikes. They’ve stopped to have a smoke and chat. They stand in a group, shoulders slumped and hands cupped around their rollies. Sophie has seen them too. ‘I will go down,’ she tells me. ‘You must play around here…’ she gestures at the grounds. ‘But don’t go away.’

  I remain on the roof, touching the ancient grey stone of the battlements, feeling the rub of grain beneath my fingers, limestone with tiny fossils packed inside. I scratch at the surface with my nail, wondering how deep I’d have to sink my hand in to come up with a handful of ancient fish bones or a swirl of ammonite. Looking over the wall at the sweep of castle grounds I notice how untidy the grass is. When Eva disappeared it was green velvet. The summer has turned it scrubby yellows and browns, speckled with daisies. So much time has gone already.

  Sophie is making her way down the narrow steps cut into the hill. From this angle, her bobbing head looks too big over her pin legs, like a toy in a car window. She’s approaching Robert and his friends. They take her in with sneaky glances. She swings her hair and puts a bold hand on her waist. I can see her asking something and then she leans forward to take a cigarette from one of them. The wind carries the flutter of her laughter.

  I drop down below the battlements. I don’t want any of that lot to see me. They ignore me if I meet them in the street or on the river wall, looking the other way, spitting or whistling. Mum says they’re embarrassed. They don’t know what to say about Eva now that she has gone. A man climbs out onto the roof and nods in my direction. He has long bushy sideburns and green-tinted glasses. He’s studying a guidebook.