Walli’s mouth fell open. He could not speak. His world turned upside-down in an instant. Karolin was pregnant. A baby was coming into their lives.

His child.

“Oh, my God,” he said at last.

“I was so torn, Walli,” she said in anguish. “You have to try to understand that. I wanted to go with you, but I couldn’t put the baby in danger. I couldn’t get in the van, knowing you were going to crash through the barrier. I wouldn’t care if I got injured, but not the child.” She was pleading with him. “Say you understand.”

“I understand,” he said. “I think.”

“Thank you.”

He took her hand. “All right, let’s talk about what we’re going to do.”

“I know what I’m going to do,” she said firmly. “I already love this baby. I’m not going to get rid of it.”

She had been living with the knowledge for some weeks, he guessed, and she had thought long and hard. All the same he was taken aback by her strength of purpose. “You speak as if it’s nothing to do with me,” he said.

“This is my body!” she said fiercely. The cleaner looked round, and Karolin lowered her voice, though she continued to speak forcefully. “I will not be told what to do with my body by any man, you or my father!”

Walli guessed that her father had tried to persuade her to have an abortion. “I’m not your father,” Walli said. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, and I don’t want to talk you into an abortion.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But is this our baby, or just yours?”

She began to cry. “Ours,” she said.

“Then shall we talk about what we’re going to do—together?”

She squeezed his hand. “You’re so grown-up,” she said. “It’s a good thing—you’re going to be a father before you’re eighteen.”

That was a shocking thought. He pictured his own father, with his short haircut and his waistcoats. Now Walli would be required to play that role: commanding, authoritative, reliable, always able to provide for the family. He was not ready, no matter what Karolin said.

But he had to do it, anyway.

“When?” he said.

“November.”

“Do you want to get married?”

She smiled through her tears. “Do you want to marry me?”

“More than anything in the world.”

“Thank you.” She hugged him.

The cleaner coughed reprovingly. Conversation was permitted, but physical contact was not.

Walli said: “You know I can’t stay here in the East.”

“Couldn’t your father get a lawyer?” she said. “Or exert some political pressure? The government might issue a pardon, if all the circumstances were explained.”

Karolin’s family were not political. Walli’s were, and he knew with total certainty that he was never going to receive a pardon for killing a border guard. “It’s impossible,” he said. “If I stay here they’ll execute me for murder.”

“So what can you do?”

“I have to go back to the West, and I have to stay there, unless Communism collapses, and I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.”