The children were waking and Ellen took cups from the cupboard to make more cocoa to warm and nourish them. They could all have bread and jam for breakfast. She gave a deep sigh. Harry, and she hoped Mary too, would be home today, and perhaps there would be some better news about his mother’s health.

After breakfast Filip lit the fire under the boiler outside and offered to take the children for a walk to collect more firewood. The weather was still cold but it was dry, and there was a ripe smell of old apples and bonfires on the air. Anna said that Aron shouldn’t go out because he had snuffles, and Ellen was uncertain of letting Thomas go either as he was inclined to run off.

‘Not with Filip, he will not,’ Anna assured her. ‘He’s good with children. You needn’t be concerned; they always behave themselves with him.’

So she let Thomas go and the two women tidied the room, washed the dishes and made the beds, prepared the vegetables for soup and then sat down together, Anna with a cup of coffee and Ellen with tea.

‘Tell me about yourself, Ellen,’ Anna said. ‘You are very young to have three children already.’

Ellen gave a little shrug. ‘I was married at eighteen,’ she said, ‘and the babies came along.’ She stretched a hand flat to her stomach and raised her eyebrows. ‘And keep coming.’ She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Harry doesn’t know yet. But what about you? Tell me about your travels. That must have been difficult, especially with ’children.’

Anna gazed into the fire and nodded. ‘It was,’ she said softly. ‘Very hard. At first we had good life. We live in Warsaw, where there was a large Jewish community, for we tend to group in towns and cities rather than in the countryside. But over the years many Polish people came to see Jews as a threat because of our numbers.’

She shook her head. ‘When I first meet Filip he was full of idealism and was not afraid to speak out against injustice. He had qualified as engineer, but he could only work in Jewish factories, not for anyone else, because many Polish politicians saw us as competitors taking the work from Polish people. But we were Polish,’ she said vehemently, banging her chest with a tight fist. ‘We were born there, but we were no longer welcome. And then,’ she went on angrily, ‘some of our people began to move away to Prussia, where they thought they would have more freedom.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘Filip was marked out as a troublemaker by the Russians and I was afraid for him and our children; he was not a troublemaker, but he would not stand by without protest if he thought something was wrong.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ellen began, but again Anna shook her head, and then took a deep breath.