‘I’m so very sorry,’ he says. ‘Let me help you. Please.’

He swiftly gathers blooms from various buckets. Tiny gypsophila, cream roses, white willow sprays, pale lilies lightly brushed with pink. He bundles them together with brown paper and presents them to Mutti.

‘Yes,’ she comments, ‘just right.’

We walk arm in arm again to the graveyard and place them on Karl’s grave.

‘There,’ she says, looking down at the perfect pale flowers against the fresh, dark earth.

Such a waste that they should lie here to wither and die.

We sit on the bench beneath the spreading branches of a big fir tree and look out over the graveyard towards the church. Faint strains of organ music reach us, but mostly it’s just the wind sighing in the trees.

‘I miss Karl, too,’ I say.

She grips my hand tightly and sobs, her whole body trembling with the loss she has suffered.

‘Mutti,’ I say at last, when her tears are all spent, ‘I’m due at a fundraising meeting at the BDM this afternoon.’

She looks at me vaguely. ‘Yes, yes, you must go. I’ll stay just a little longer.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’ll be fine. Go. I’ll see you at supper.’ She gives me a thin smile, then turns back to watch over Karl’s grave.

I walk softly away.

Once I leave the graveyard, I quicken my pace and make for the woods near the river. I can hardly breathe. Is he safe? Will he be there, like he promised? My legs feel jelly-like as I push them to go faster. Or could there be a trap when I get there? A vision of the woods crawling with Gestapo, ready to arrest me for my sullied, filthy blood, flashes in my mind. I grasp the iron railing beside the pavement which swoops and rolls, then rights itself.

A woman passes and gives me a strange look. I release the railing and continue on my way, slower now, less steady on my feet. Can she know that I’ve been with a Jew? Not just once, but three nights in a row. I glance over my shoulder, but the woman is walking swiftly away, head bowed against the wind.

In my pocket is the note he left for me with Lena at the café after his stay in the treehouse a week ago. I clasp it as though my life depends on it.

My darling,

How I have missed you! Not a second passes without a thought of you, and our three nights together. I feel tremendous guilt that, in amongst all the anguish, I should have shared such bliss with you. I’m desperate to tell you what has happened. It isn’t safe for us to meet in the open. The woods are best. I’ll wait for you at 3.30 tomorrow, just off the path by our favourite picnic spot. I hope you remember.

W xxx

*

He’s already sheltering beneath the trees, hat pulled low, when I reach the curve in the river where we once sat beneath the hot summer sun. It might have been in another lifetime.