‘They’ll understand,’ said Dave. ‘They’re just happy you got away.’

‘I could wait in front of the Hollandsche Schouwburg where they’re being held,’ I suggested. ‘They might see me when they’re being brought out.’ But Dave wouldn’t let me. He thought it was far too risky.

From our neighbours on Sarphatistraat we heard that ever since my escape someone had been keeping an eye on the house all day long. Because they now had my identity card, they also knew what I looked like; and because all my clothes were still hanging there, they assumed I’d come and get them.

So before venturing outside again, I underwent a metamorphosis. First Lotte bleached my hair. I sat in front of the mirror with a sheet wrapped around me, while she applied a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia with a toothbrush. It stung my scalp and caused my eyes to water, so that I was constantly blinking like a child struggling to hold back its tears. I tried to follow the process of my hair discolouring in the mirror, but all I could see was the white foam of the peroxide that smarted and hissed. After being washed and dried, my hair was red. But Lotte assured me that I would turn blonde after several more applications. I plucked my eyebrows until only thin lines were left. There was no longer anything dark about my appearance. Since I have blue eyes, the bleached hair matched my complexion better than it did Lotte’s. She had dark brown, almost black eyes with long blue-black lashes, which made her blonde hair look unnatural.

At first we thought that nothing more could happen to us. We now had fake identity cards, which made us feel like ‘ordinary’ people. Yet we never felt totally safe on the street. Whenever we saw a policeman, we expected him to make a beeline toward us and it seemed as if every passer-by looked at us and knew what we were. In the end, Mrs K., the woman Dave had rented a room from under a false name, realised it as well.

‘Are you and your sister-in-law so enamoured of bleached hair?’ she asked when she saw me changed from one day to the next.

‘We think it’s terrific,’ I said. ‘Not to mention that we have a really good dye that doesn’t harm your hair in the least.’

She might not have given it another thought if Dave hadn’t bleached his hair as well. He had emptied the entire bottle over his head. It wasn’t a very smart thing to do because it’s impossible for a man to maintain a dye job and after a few weeks Dave’s hair would start looking noticeably peculiar.

‘You too now?’ observed Mrs K. with feigned amiability.

‘My husband accidentally poured peroxide on his hair instead of shampoo,’ explained Lotte.

Mrs K. laughed heartily. ‘I wondered,’ she said.

That evening she asked us over for tea. She was having company and it would be nice if we could join them. Later it turned out that her guest, a plump man with shrewd eyes, had been invited in order to size us up and confirm her suspicions.