We had known many wars, Mam and I, but this one was different. In all of the other wars, the fighting was nowhere near us. It took place in battles, fought by soldiers or navies, and we were not involved. The closest I had ever been was all those years ago when the tribe from beyond the Roman Wall had sailed up the Tyne and we had fled.

We had once had to travel past the fields where a huge battle had taken place weeks before, where the smell of war and unburied soldiers still lingered in the air.

But with this one, it was the bombs that made the difference. Now the enemy came to us, and it was all one battle, all the time. Again and again, in 1940 and 1941, the German planes would fly over us. Usually it was at night; sometimes it was in the day.

The bombs were aimed at factories in Newcastle, or at the shipyards in Wallsend and North Shields. But their aim was poor. Mam came back from the shops one day and sat down heavily in the chair in the back room.

“Nearly a hundred souls, they reckon, Alve. Sheltering from the bombs, they were. The shelter took a direct hit. And Mr. McGonagal from the shop was in there.”

Poor Jack. His dad.

(When they had counted every body, there were 107 dead from one bomb, which had hit the lemonade factory in North Shields with the air-raid shelter beneath it.)

Before the war started, I had been worried that gossip would begin about Mam and me. It only needed one person to start talking. As the wartime months turned to years, however, we found—as we had found before—that it was comparatively easy to go unnoticed.

If you keep your head down and cause no trouble, officials will ignore you. They have more important things to worry about, especially during a war. A woman and her “nephew” living a quiet life could safely be ignored.

So, for a year or more, we stayed put. There were forms to fill out for obtaining foods that were rationed. Mam was good at that: she had birth certificates and official deeds that would convince almost anyone.

Thanks to our chickens, we ate a lot of eggs, because meat was in short supply. We would also eat chicken now and then, when a bird stopped laying and we killed it. That was usually my job. It was what I was doing when Jack called round in his uniform.

Not a soldier’s uniform, though—he was still too young. He was a War Reserve Constable: part of the police force.

Jack’s War Reserve Constable uniform looked just like a policeman’s uniform, except ill-fitting, with the sleeves touching his knuckles and the trousers exposing his socks, but I could tell he was very proud to be wearing it.

I had not seen him in more than a year, and he was even taller and more grown-up looking than before. He must have been nearly eighteen, and I felt the familiar heart-wrench of sadness that I experienced seeing someone that I knew grow older and leave me behind.

He was cheery enough—cocky, even—when he let himself into the backyard where I was stalking an elderly chicken.

“Good morning?” he called. Mam turned first to see him in his uniform and tin helmet.

“Hello, Jack, love,” she said, although there was a wary note in her voice. “Ee—look at you in your WRC stuff. He looks so grown-up, eh, Alfie?”

I grunted a reply. I was not so pleased to see him. Mam, though, was very good at being “normal.”

“Have you cycled all the way here in this heat? Would you like a glass of water?”

“Yes, please, Mrs. Monk.” He avoided looking at me but I knew something was up. He was being too formal.

“And you can take your tin helmet off. I divvent think Mr. Hitler will be bombing us today.”

We sat in the backyard, looking up at the dense trees on the hill, and Jack drank his water, stealing glances at me.

“We were so sorry to hear about your father, weren’t we, Alfie?” Mam said. I nodded. Jack said nothing.

There was a long, tense moment before Mam broke the silence again.

“So what brings you out here, Jack? Have you just come to say hello? We’ve not seen you in so long.”

I could tell from Mam’s voice that she thought something was wrong.

“Well, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Monk…” And that is when I knew. Nobody uses that phrase “as a matter of fact” when it’s going to be good news.

“…As a matter of fact, I have some inquiries of an official nature. If I may?”

Mam used to say that a uniform could make someone a better person or a worse person, but never the same person. Jack turned to me as he took a notebook out of his oversized tunic.

“How old are you, Alfie?”

And so it began: an interrogation of me, Mam, how long we had lived here, why official documents (which Jack said he now had access to) did not seem to match up, and more.

Mam remained calm. “I’m sure it’s just a clerical mix-up, Jack, love. As you know, Alfie has a growth deficiency. Markandaya’s Syndrome, type three.”

This was a lie that had worked well in the past. A mysterious illness that “ran in our family” to account for my unusual appearance. It was not working on Jack.

“Ah, well, I remember you saying this before, Mrs. Monk. I’ve checked with Dr. Menzies in Whitley Bay and he knows of no such illness.”

“Well, it is very rare,” I said, but I came over as defensive, and not believable. Jack ignored me. At that moment, the chicken I had been pursuing before Jack’s arrival came close to me, pecking at the ground, and in one swift movement I darted out my right hand and grabbed it by the neck.

“Take its legs,” I barked at Jack as the chicken flapped around. “Go on—quickly!” Jack was flailing around, timidly trying to hold the squirming chicken’s legs. “Right, hold tight and pull toward you.”

As he did so, I pulled down sharply on the chicken’s head until I felt a soft snap and the bird went limp. Its wings flapped for a bit and then stopped. The whole thing was over in seconds.

“Is…is it dead?” Jack had turned pale and was shaking a little. Heaven help him if he ever goes into battle, I thought.

“I hope so,” I said. “Because we are going to eat it.”

Mam stepped forward and took the dead bird from me, placing it in Jack’s upturned helmet.

“No, Alfie. This is for Jack. Take it home to your mam, love. Come back in a month for another one, eh? But, erm…do not worry yourself any more about those mix-ups, eh? It happens all the time. I am certain a WRC has got far more important things to worry about.” She brushed a chicken feather off Jack’s shoulder and patted him on the chest.

And so Jack cycled off, his upturned tin helmet slung over his arm like a shopping basket, containing the dead chicken.

“It is war, Alve,” said Mam, shaking her head when he had gone. “It does the strangest things to people. You would think we had enough trouble fighting Hitler.”

For the next six months, Jack came back. He would always let himself in the backyard, and once Mam found him in our house, looking at our bookshelves. It was only years later that we discovered one of our signed Dickens novels was gone—A Tale of Two Cities. We always thought Jack might have taken it, but there was no way of knowing.

“He’s prowling,” said Mam. “He’s looking for something.” Each time, we gave him a chicken, until we had only three left.

Then he stopped coming and Mam heard he had been called up to serve in the air force and had been sent for training to Scotland.

We did not see Jack for many years.

But then I met his son.