Natalya appeared in the doorway, her broad smile lighting up the whole place. She threw herself into his arms. He buried his face in her mass of curls. “You’re here,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “And I’m never going to leave.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Rebecca was tempted to be unfaithful to Bernd. But she could not lie to him. So she told him everything in a convulsion of repentance. “I’ve met someone I really like,” she said. “And I’ve kissed him. Twice. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again.”

She was scared of what he would say next. He might immediately ask for a divorce. Most men would. Bernd was better than most men, though. But it would break her heart if he were not angry but simply humiliated. She would have hurt the person she loved most in the world.

However, Bernd’s response to her confession was shockingly different from anything she had expected. “You should go ahead,” he said. “Have an affair with the guy.”

They were in bed, last thing at night, and she turned over and stared at him. “How can you say that?”

“This is 1968, the age of free love. Everyone is having sex with everyone else. Why should you miss out?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I didn’t mean it to sound so trivial.”

“What did you mean?”

“I know you love me,” he said, “and I know you like having sex with me, but you mustn’t go through the rest of your life without experiencing the real thing.”

“I don’t believe in the real thing,” she said. “It’s different for everyone. It’s much better with you than it was with Hans.”

“It will always be good, because we love each other. But I think you need a really good fuck.”

And he was right, she thought. She loved Bernd and she liked the peculiar sex they had, but when she thought about Claus lying on top of her, kissing her and moving inside her, and how she would lift her hips to meet his thrusts, she immediately got wet. She was ashamed of this feeling. Was she an animal? Perhaps she was, but Bernd was right about what she needed.

“I think I’m weird,” she said. “Maybe it’s because of what happened to me in the war.” She had told Bernd—but no one else, ever—how Red Army soldiers had been about to rape her when Carla had offered herself instead. German women rarely spoke of that time, even to one another. But Rebecca would never forget the sight of Carla going up that staircase, head held high, with the Soviet soldiers following her like eager dogs. Rebecca, thirteen years old, had known what they were going to do, and she had wept with relief that it was not happening to her.

Bernd asked perceptively: “Do you also feel guilty that you escaped while Carla suffered?”

“Yes, isn’t that strange?” she said. “I was a child, and a victim, but I feel as if I did something shameful.”