‘I don’t see why not,’ she says in a thin voice. ‘Vati didn’t say you shouldn’t.’ She leans towards me, narrowing her eyes and lowering her voice. ‘This is the beginning. The conspiracy. The Jews.’ Her eyes are wild, the pupils huge black pits. There’s a madness in them. Her hands tremble as she pulls a cigarette from the pack on the table and places it carefully between her lips. ‘They’ve been scheming and planning this for years.’ She pauses to light the cigarette, shaking out the flame on the match and tossing it into an ashtray.

‘Planning what?’

‘The revolution! This is the start of their push for world domination.’

‘You cannot seriously believe – Mutti, come on! This isn’t true.’

‘Oh, I’m deadly serious.’ Her voice is shaky with emotion. She takes a long drag on her cigarette and it seems to calm her. She stares a little past my left ear into the middle distance.

‘Mutti?’

Her eyes refocus. She takes another drag and blows a plume of smoke from the corner of her pursed lips. Her cheekbones protrude too high now; her skin is sinking in, giving her a gaunt, haggard look.

‘If I’m to go to school, I had better go. I’m already late,’ I say, picking up my bag from where I’d dropped it on the floor. I need to get away from her hateful words.

She nods and refills her coffee cup, slopping some into the saucer as she pours.

‘Yes, yes. But come straight home. Vati will know more after his meetings. I can tell you this much: the Jews have it coming to them. They will be sorry they were ever born.’

*

Frau Schmidt talks of literature, usually my favourite subject. But I cannot focus. I can only think of Mutti and our strange conversation this morning. My brain jumps from one vision to the next. An innocent German man shot, blood spurting from his chest as he stands, stunned and defenceless on the steps of a building in Paris. Countless Jews descending like vermin over our city, smothering, foul and evil; Walter looking on, smiling because I fell for his charms. Me, duped and ruined forever. Or, all of these vile lies, and Walter, the boy I love, innocent of everything, dragged from his home by the Gestapo, thrown into jail and left there to rot.

My palms sweat. My heart beats. I watch the teacher’s face; her mouth moves but I hear nothing. She writes on the blackboard, but I can’t make sense of the words.

At the end of the lesson, Frau Schmidt asks for our homework to be handed in. Less than half the class have completed it.

‘Sorry, Frau Schmidt, I’ve been too busy with my BDM activities, I’ve not done any homework,’ I tell her when she holds her hand out for mine.

She starts with surprise.

‘That isn’t like you, Herta,’ she says, with a disapproving tone.

‘It can’t be helped.’ I look her straight in the eye. ‘BDM is more important than schoolwork.’