‘I suppose you had a bigger house?’ asked the man.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And enough beds?’ asked the woman.

‘Lots,’ I said. ‘We often had guests.’

‘How many?’ the woman wanted to know.

I thought about it. I no longer had a clear image of the house. I could picture the street in Breda, the meadow on one side and the front gardens on the other side, the pothole in the road that I always biked across, the sagging kerb where I used to veer onto the pavement, the door hatch that you could push open and reach through to get to the lock. I saw the swinging door that creaked as it fell shut, the hallway, the doors to the rooms. The staircase.

‘I forget,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘there must have been enough.’

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘It’s such a pity,’ she said, ‘a house like that.’

‘What’s such a pity?’ asked the man.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘a house like that, with everything in it.’

‘When the war is over,’ I said, ‘I’m certain we’ll go and live in it again.’

‘Maybe so,’ said the man. He looked at me as he rolled a cigarette. ‘Maybe so,’ he repeated after wetting the cigarette paper with his tongue.

It was the last night I spent with them. I was leaving the next day. The money Dave had left for me in his bag was running out. Now that I could no longer pay, I didn’t want to burden this poor family. Wout had found a place for me in Heemstede.

I had seated myself at the kitchen table and was bleaching my hair. The black was beginning to show through again. Thanks to frequent use, the peroxide that had turned my hair light blonde had ceased to hurt.

‘It’s better to be a natural blonde,’ said the woman.

‘But she’s not,’ said the man. ‘If she was, she wouldn’t be here.’

‘You people are always dark, aren’t you?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not always.’

‘Anyway, you can always tell what they are,’ she said, pensively rubbing her round belly. ‘I once knew a Jew,’ she said. ‘He was a decent man. He often visited the lady I used to work for.’

The following day I met Wout at the bus stop. I saw him looking at my hair.

‘Is there something the matter?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing suspicious about you.’

But I wasn’t so sure. Although I had become used to the idea of getting caught one day, I still felt ill at ease during the trip.

‘Just act normally,’ said Wout.

I thought back to the time when I actually had been normal and wondered how it had felt. I’d forgotten how I looked when I walked down the street, how I felt when I boarded the train, what I said when I entered a shop. Wout had brought along my new identity card and had given it to me before we’d got into the bus. I’d already thrown away the old one. It had cost a fortune but had been of very poor quality. This one had cost nothing.