‘Hello,’ he says distractedly, coming inside the blue screens with us and looking at Moss, who’s propped up by pillows. ‘Poor guy. Do they know what’s wrong with him?’

Dinah pats a footstool for him to sit on. She smooths her skirt over her knees, covering the holes in her dark stockings. ‘A virus, they think. They’re doing tests,’ she says.

‘Tests. Good. How are you bearing up?’

‘I’m fine. I called you not for help but because it’s good for you to keep busy. Take your mind off your broken heart.’

‘Off my …? Yes.’ He turns his attention to me. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘You’ve got these … black smudges on your face.’

I get out my make-up mirror. Crikey. ‘Smuts,’ I explain. ‘Dinah was having a bonfire.’

He looks at me quizzically.

Dinah takes her husband’s limp hand and strokes his fingers tenderly. ‘I’m thinking we can move into the Otto Schiff care home for the elderly. Where you go, I go.’ She turns to us. ‘You know Otto Schiff?’

David and I shrug. ‘Sorry.’

She’s surprised we don’t know him. ‘Otto Schiff helped us to come to this country as refugees. He was a lovely man, very English-looking, in a nice, sober suit, of German origin but looking very British, very understated, apart from the monocle. The first thing he gave us when we got here was a little blue book, a handbook: Helpful Information and Guidance for every Refugee. Written by German Jewish refugees who knew the ropes. You remember the handbook, Moss?’ she asks, shaking his hand.

Moss’s breathing doesn’t change.

‘It was important not to be a burden on our new country. We wanted to integrate. The Jewish community supported us, every last penny. Coming here, I was fifteen, still a child really. I’d left my country, my home, everything – and now I was in a new land feeling … what can I say? Not just relief, but also self-pity. This handbook, it told us how to behave so that we’d fit in and be treated with respect, and it was a very good handbook except for one thing.’

David and I sit forward in expectation.

She holds her hands up in the air. ‘It advised us not to dress in a way that would catch the eye! We were guests here, you see, and like now there was anti-Semitism; it was better for us not to attract attention to ourselves.’ She chuckles to herself. ‘After all we’d been through! Don’t catch the eye! It’s crazy! But you know, it was helpful.’

She straightens the sheet covering Moss’s chest and she sighs.

After midnight, Moss is moved to a ward and put on an intravenous drip.