Morag never swears. Has she guessed where I am going? I have caught her reading my books. All the papers Dad has in his office that I took over here to read without worrying he’d catch me. The worst are so hard to read. Eugenics and racial cleansing was the focus of the last one I found her going through. It’s horrific. She cried a lot that day. Morag would not be against it if I told her what I want to do or where I am going in the morning. I know she wouldn’t. But she would worry about me and I won’t have that for her. I hope she stays in this country forever and lives out her days – happy and beloved to someone. I love her more than time. If I can take even one action to keep someone as good as her safe, I will do it.

– Nothing has been right since they took France.

– I know.

– Do you know what I heard, Ivy?

– No.

– That it says above one of those camps – ARBEIT MACHT FREI – Work Makes One Free. Those people are imprisoned by others, and they are working them to death, aren’t they? I’ve heard even worse things. They are doing experiments. Trying to work out how to create a perfect human and then sterilise everyone else. It is so creepy. There are kids in there! Families! How can they do it, Ivy? How can anyone do that to another human being? What is wrong with them? Do you think it is true?

She is crying.

I am numb.

I hold onto her and rock her gently and stroke her hair as lightly as I can to soothe her.

– I don’t know, Morag. Some people make no sense whatsoever to me.

I want to tell her about the tickets in my purse and that by the time she sits down to Christmas dinner, I will be in France. I have heard so many worse things about what they are doing in the camps. My brother went into one and he did not come back out again. I feel rage in my stomach, like the beginning of a kettle whistling. I swallow the lump in my throat. I am not telling her one thing. All we do in this war is worry. Everyone does all the time. I will not add anything more for her to feel sad about.

– That man is insane, Ivy!

– I know.

– Why do the papers publish his propaganda?

– I don’t know.