The nine-year-old boy felt tears flow over his cheeks, and was ashamed. He needed to be strong for the princess. Be a hero like his papa.

What would Captain Declan Broekhart do?

Conor imagined his father’s face in front of him.

Try something, Conor. Use that big brain your mother is always talking about. Build your flying machine.

Not a machine, Papa. There is no mechanism. This is a kite.

Flame was climbing the parapet wall, blackening the stone with its fiery licks. Crossbeams, carpets, files and furniture tumbled into the hungry fire, feeding it.

Conor lifted the princess, dragging his friend upright.

‘What?’ she said grumpily. Then the smoke filled her windpipe and any words dissolved into a coughing fit.

Conor stood straight, feeling the massive flag flap and crackle in the wind.

‘It’s like a big kite, Isabella,’ he rasped, words like glass in his throat. ‘I will hold you round the waist, like this, and then we move to…’

Conor never finished his instructions, because a further explosion, funnelled by the tower caused a massive updraught, plucking the two children from the parapet and sending the flag spinning into open air like a giant autumn leaf.

The circumstances were unique. Had they jumped, as was Conor’s plan, they would not have had enough height for the flag to slow their descent. But the updraught caught in their makeshift kite and spun them up another hundred feet, and took them out over the sea. They hung there, in the sky, at the plateau of the air tunnel. Weightless. Sky above and sea below.

I am flying, thought Conor Broekhart. I remember this.

Then the flying finished and the falling started, and though it was drastically slowed by the flag, it seemed devilishly swift. Sights dissolved into a kaleidoscope of fractured blues and silvers.

The flag caught a low breeze and flipped. Conor watched the clouds swirl above him, stretching to creamy streams. And all the time he held on to Isabella so tightly his fingers ached.