The weight of the idea, the vastness of it, hangs over us, heavy and penetrating as the fog, yet lighter than air. The impossibility, the idea of his bare skin on mine, the touch of his hands, the surrendering of myself to him.

The mingling of our blood.

‘Hetty, it’s okay. We don’t have to. We shouldn’t. We won’t. I’d never do anything you didn’t want.’

And after that, we don’t talk of it anymore. He simply holds me and I breathe him in.

13 May 1938

I know I should end it. That day we went to the zoo – I was weak. I should have done it then, because now it is so much harder. But every time I sneak away to see you, I’m terrified we’ll be seen. I won’t get a second chance from Tomas. And now he calls for me once a month or so, to see a film or to go for a walk. Sometimes I can make excuses, but mostly I don’t. For your sake. Luckily his shifts at the factory are long, so he doesn’t get many days off. Walter, I’m so afraid we’ll be spotted together again. Today, though, was a blissful day, warm and sunny, blossoms everywhere. With Mutti and Vati out celebrating Lord Mayor Otto Schultz’s birthday, we had time to take the tram south to the Leipziger Auenwald, where nobody we know could find us. You told me you loved me, that you wish we could spend the rest of our lives together. Then we kissed. I could do that all day and never bore of it. But now my heart aches with the bittersweetness of it all.

I pull up the loose floorboard at the back of my cupboard and place my journal inside this new, safer hiding place. I return the floorboard then cover it with piles of spare linen and blankets. It’s early evening and Mutti and Vati are not yet back from their champagne lunch.

In the afternoon sitting room, I find the Leipziger and flick through the news section. There are several national stories about zero unemployment and the country’s industrial successes.

I skim the editorial articles and Vati’s weekly section, The Leipziger Moral Crusade. There is a feature on the capture of a number of known ‘asocials’, guilty of the most foul moral degradation. I recall Vati mentioning that these people had been sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The words ‘concentration camp’ are rarely mentioned. When they are, people whisper them, as though, if you speak them out loud, you may bring bad luck and end up in one yourself. They are tucked away from view, hidden in remote places. It adds to their mystery – and the fear of them.

Vati says these terrible rumours are caused by foreign newspapers printing false articles; stories supposedly gathered from inmates who’ve escaped from such camps. Foreign propaganda, he said, whipping up hatred for the German people. But now I wonder… I think about Tomas’s father and I feel a rush of fear. It seems impossible. After all that Walter has told me, could it be possible that these disturbing stories are true?