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only been here a matter of months. Takes most visitors half a lifetime before they can make folk start to trust them, let alone like them.’
    He turned to her with a quizzical smile. ‘But I’m not a visitor. I plan to stay.’
    ‘But you weren’t born here. If you live here for the next half-century and draw your last breath on the island, you’ll still be known as that English doctor. ’
    He laughed.
    ‘I’m not jesting. Some families here can trace their blood back hundreds of years. Back to before the Conquest, or so they’d have you believe. And, as I say, we’re a tricky bunch. See, we were part of French territory here, way back, but even when we were busy rebelling against the French, we were a law unto ourselves—we weren’t ever English . We simply chose to side with them when it came to picking our loyalties for battles. But we’re Jèrriais through and through. So if you’re English then you’re most certainly a visitor, Doctor, and a foreign one at that.’
    He smiled. ‘You paint quite a picture there. But surely you’ve all been English since 1066? Don’t the Channel Islands belong to England nowadays?’
    ‘Quiet with that sort of talk. There’s people here would have your eyes for saying that we belong to anyone, let alone the English. If anything, the English belong to us.’
    ‘You’re pulling my leg?’
    ‘Not at all,’ Edith said. ‘It’s like this you see: when William of Normandy took England for his own, we were part of Normandy. Part of the conquering army, if you like. Which means that we don’t belong to England—England belongs to us. Our oldest possession, she is. Never you mind that smile, Doctor. There’s some folk who’ve gone happily off to fight for the English, and that’s their choice. But there are others who would no more leave here than peel off their own skins. I’ll be buried here, even if it is the Germans who dig the hole.’
    He had remarkable eyes when he smiled. Really quite blue. But why was he smiling when she mentioned the invasion?
    ‘You’re not frightened at all?’ she asked.
    He gave a tiny shrug. ‘A little. I suspect we’ve chosen a raw deal. And you?’
    ‘Of course, I’d be foolish not to be terrified.’ She laughed, a high-pitched sound with an edge in it. It took her by surprise to say it out loud: she was petrified, losing sleep, queasy and knock-kneed with fear.
    His eyes searched her face. ‘You’re thinking of the rumours of what they did in France?’
    ‘Aren’t we all?’
    ‘And yet you chose to stay.’
    ‘As did you. You could have left, very easily. I know you’ve said you felt a duty and that’s very admirable. But there must be some other reason for a man like you to stay. Wouldn’t you rather be near your family, at home?’
    ‘Home…’ He shook his head. ‘No, I—I wanted to stay. Things cannot be as bad as all that, surely?’
    She frowned. Was he a simpleton?
    He looked at her for a long moment then leant forward and spoke quickly, earnestly. ‘Because this isn’t 1914. Because history doesn’t repeat itself. Because it’s only rumours, after all, and because the fear of the enemy is half the battle: if they have us running scared then they’ve already won, don’t you see?’
    She nodded, slowly. ‘I think I do. You speak a fair amount of sense. For an Englishman, that is.’
    He laughed and gave a small bow, as if at the end of a performance, and she suddenly wondered how much of what he said and did was just that: a performance, a brave face to scare the wolf of fear away.

    A HAMMERING on the door dragged Maurice from sleep and he sat upright with a gasp. It took a moment for him to remember: the bombs, the evacuation, the Germans coming… For a confused moment he thought it might actually be soldiers battering on his door. But that wasn’t possible, surely? Not so soon.
    He rubbed his eyes. There was that hammering again.
    Marthe grumbled in her sleep and Maurice heaved himself upright