But Eva wasn’t with her now and there was no mental escape from the grim reality of streets packed with tense, frightened civilians scrounging for whatever food supplies they could lay their hands on. Tanks and troops were thick on the streets too, all heading eastwards in the direction of the approaching Russians.

She manoeuvred around a ruptured water main, entering the desolation that was now the Tiergarten with a heart so heavy she wondered how it would ever again feel light. The trees that had so far survived the bombing were blackened, their newly sprouting leaves shrivelled. In the lake, the tail of a British aeroplane rose from the water like a piece of avantgarde sculpture. It had been a small plane, one of the two-seater reconnaissance planes that led in the British bombers.

She averted her eyes from it, not wanting to think of the deaths of its pilot and navigator. Even though she was cycling towards the western half of the city, the incessant booming of big guns was still deafeningly loud. A squad of the Hitler Youth division, aged about twelve or thirteen, sprinted past her towards an anti-aircraft-gun placement in uniforms that were far too big for them.

She skidded to a halt, overcome by nausea. Was this who the defence of the city was going to be left to? Children? Ahead of her, where the path she had been cycling on merged with a main road, a stream of heavy-loaded limousines were high-tailing it out of the city southwards, towards the Obersalzberg and Austria, every car bearing a silvered swastika medallion marking it out as belonging to a highranking official.

Her heart began to slam against her breastbone. If men like these were fleeing the city, then time truly was running very short and there were perhaps only hours left before the Russians overran it. What on earth was she doing attempting to reach Spandau, in the uncertain hope of obtaining a gun when, even if Claus was in Spandau and able to give her one, she would have to return to the centre of the city with it, leaving her mother unprotected at Charlottenburg? She and Ilse should be at Charlottenburg with her; and as Charlottenburg was halfway to Spandau, once she’d left Ilse with Zelda, she could still continue with her gun-hunting mission.

She turned the bike around, beginning to retrace her route, appalled to see that the children were now helping to man the massive anti-aircraft battery.

Once clear of the park her way was hampered by the many rolls of barbed-wire standing in readiness for use as barricades. Barbed-wire that hadn’t been there a bare fifteen minutes earlier. With growing panic she realized that nothing could be taken for granted any more. She might not be able to reach Ilse’s apartment and, even if she did so, the two of them might not be able to reach Charlottenburg. As for Spandau, if there was street fighting by the time she set out for it, that too would be an impossibility.