Lotti began paying professional interest. She was a chorus girl, not a stripper, but whenever she was given the opportunity of a solo routine, it was a routine nearly always performed almost naked. She had never worn nipple tassels but now thought they could be a very good idea.

‘Are the charges always the same?’ Max was asking Fritz, his voice showing little real interest. ‘Fighting with stormtroopers, illegal consorting with German girls by Jews—that sort of thing?’

‘Sometimes, but not always. We’re living in a world without regulations or rules, Max, my friend. Charges are no longer necessary.’

Lotti registered the remark with a shudder. If anyone could be picked off the street and disappear into Dachau, or a camp like it, what safety was there now, in Germany, for anyone?

The girl on stage was coming to the high point of her act. The nipple tassels were shaken vigorously, to noisy appreciation. Then, as Lotti’s eyes widened, the girl began moving in such a way that the tassels began circling in opposite directions. The audience let out a collective gasp. Lotti didn’t blame them. It was something she had never seen done before—and it was something she had to learn how to do.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to Max as the girl stepped down from the stage to enthusiastic applause. ‘There’s someone I have to speak to. I won’t be long.’

‘Was the someone you had to speak to as useful to you as Fritz was to me?’ Max asked a couple of hours later as they walked at an unhurried pace through the early morning streets.

‘Hard to say, as I don’t know in what way Fritz was useful to you and can tell you don’t want to tell me,’ she said, her coat collar turned up against the chill dawn air. ‘But I’ve made a new friend and will shortly be learning a new skill. Does that satisfy you?’

‘It will have to,’ he said, grinning across at her.

They turned into an alley heaped with pyramids of empty wine bottles.

‘Wouldn’t you rather be living on Unter den Linden?’ he asked, moving a bottle out of the way with his foot.

‘And have my father aware of the times I come and go? And what I wear? No. Sharing an apartment with other dancers is far preferable.’

They turned out of the alley and into a street of shabby four-storey houses. Somewhere near by a tram squeaked on its tracks.

‘You’re welcome to come in for a coffee,’ she said, coming to a halt outside a house fronted by a short flight of stone steps. ‘The girls won’t mind.’

‘Not this morning. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me and I need a little sleep. Give my regards to the girls. And to the boyfriend.’

She looked startled, but only for the briefest of moments. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, smiling sunnily. ‘Him. Of course I will.’

There was no need for him to say he’d be seeing her again while he was in Berlin, because for both of them it was a given.