I walk away.

‘So, this is it? Just like that?’ He runs after me. ‘Hetty—’

‘It’s for the best. For me, I can’t… Please, Walter. Just let me go.’

I feel him watching as I walk. Silently. In shock.

I don’t look back as I leave the park and pass quickly beneath the looming university buildings, casting a deep shadow across my path. I should go home, but I can’t bear to. I keep walking until I can no longer see Walter, nor him me. Then I collapse against a wall and sob. Deep, wringing cries, as though I’ve been told my life is to end. It might as well have done.

No longer caring if I’m late, I wander the streets for a long time. It’s one thing to accept Walter may have to live somewhere else, one day. But this. This? Walter to marry a girl called Anna.

How can I ever come to terms with that?

*

Something is wrong.

A sense in the air which makes the hairs on my arms stand up as I step through the front door. Ingrid appears, her face pinched, a tense look in her eyes.

‘Oh, Miss Herta. At last! You must go straight to the afternoon sitting room. Your parents are waiting for you.’ She hovers while I take off my outside shoes. Her words, her tone, aren’t unkind, her usual sneer is absent.

I hurry in to find Vati standing near the window, silhouetted against the light. Mutti is on the sofa. She looks up at me, her face tear-stained. Her eyes red and swollen.

‘Oh, Hetty!’ She slaps a hand over her mouth as she begins to sob, deep, heart-wrenching sobs.

‘I’m sorry I’m so late. I didn’t mean to frighten you—’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’ Vati shakes his head and comes over to me, his face the colour of ash.

Mutti lets out another sob. Could she have found out about Hilda Müller and the girl-child? Did Oma die? Have they found out about Walter?

‘It’s Karl…’ He can’t finish the sentence and stares at me with stricken eyes.

‘Karl?’

‘There’s been an accident.’ He holds a telegram limply at his side. ‘He – he’s dead.’

Through the thin, brown paper of the telegram, I can make out the outline of the mighty Luftwaffe eagle, uneven letters stamped into words beneath. News. Plain, simple news.

The telegram blurs and a buzz as loud as a swarm of bees fills my ears.

‘It can’t be true.’ I exhale. ‘Mutti?’

People don’t die when they are nineteen years old. They don’t die when they are brimming with life and energy. They can’t die when they are beautiful and strong and Karl and my brother.

The words are wrong. They must be.

But Mutti continues sobbing, her hand over her mouth, her whole body heaving and shaking. Vati goes to her and wraps his arm tightly around her shoulders. I can’t bear to look at his slack face and hollow eyes.