‘Never mind,’ said my father, ‘we don’t need anything else. Besides, we won’t be away that long.’

His boundless optimism was contagious. I often asked him what he thought of the situation, only because I knew he would say something reassuring. When I got scared by people’s stories about Poland, he always said, ‘Things won’t be that bad.’ I never knew whether my father actually believed it or only said it to give us courage.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘all the men are in the army, so of course they need young people to work in the war industry. Old people have to go and live in Amsterdam, where they’ll set up a ghetto. It will become a large Jewish community.’

‘Let’s hope it won’t last much longer,’ said my mother. I knew she was thinking of Bettie. ‘I’m fine,’ Bettie had written on a postcard that we received from her a few days after the round-up. ‘Please don’t worry.’

If it didn’t last too long, she’d be able to survive in Poland. ‘She’s strong and healthy,’ everyone said. ‘She’ll get through it somehow.’

After my parents had left, Lotte and I stood in the hall for a while staring at the seal on the door frame. It gave the room a mysterious air, as if there were something hidden that we weren’t allowed to see.

‘Let’s go in,’ said Lotte. She ran her nail down the crack, splitting the seal in half. We felt as if we were entering an unfamiliar room. Carefully, as if someone might hear us, we walked around the table, ran our hands over a chair, a cupboard.

‘Those men have made a list of everything in here,’ whispered Lotte. ‘We can no longer remove anything.’

I moved a small vase. ‘It also feels like it’s no longer ours,’ I whispered back. ‘Why do you think that is?’

‘Because they’ve put their filthy hands on everything,’ said Lotte.

We left the room as it was, torn seal and all.

In safekeeping

‘How you managed to put up with staying in bed for so many months is a mystery to me,’ Dave said. We’d been walking around in pyjamas for weeks now and sometimes stayed in bed all day because we’d heard so many rumours about sudden house checks.

‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘you do what you have to.’

‘True,’ he said. ‘And of course you get used to it. Like you get used to wearing a yellow star and not having a radio.’

‘Except that in the hospital I felt it was for my own good,’ I said.

Suddenly I heard a voice shouting from outside. ‘Hey, can I borrow your racket?’ The garden doors were open. The neighbour’s daughter stuck her head up above the fence, smiled and peered inside.

‘Sure,’ I shouted back.

She climbed over the fence and jumped into our garden.

‘Terrific,’ she said, brushing some sand off her full, flowered skirt.