‘I tried going to the Gestapo headquarters, but I was turned away. They’ve not even done anything wrong,’ she cries, raising her hands to her anguished face. ‘And my Walter! He’s supposed to go to England to start a new life, to marry and have a chance to be happy. What now? How am I to get them out of that place?’ she demands.

I sink down and sit on the bottom stair. ‘I don’t know.’ I have no more strength. I should have come earlier. Found a way as soon as I read that dreadful order. I let my head sink into my hands. Behind my eyelids: Walter’s face, his smile, his eyes. I can almost catch his smell, feel his hands; gentle and warm.

‘The children are terrified,’ Frau Keller is saying. I look up at her. ‘We’ve nowhere to go, except to the Jewish house in the morning. We have nothing left but the clothes we stand up in. Even if he were free, we now have no way to pay Walter’s exit tax, so he cannot leave. Everything we ever had is gone.’ Her voice quivers and the children begin to cry.

They stand there, staring at me with desperate, wild eyes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I mumble. I’ve never felt so powerless.

I look at my watch. It takes a moment for the clock hands to make sense. I’ve been gone well over two hours. It’ll be nearer three by the time I get home.

‘I have to go.’

Nobody says anything as I pass Herr Schloss. He opens the front door for me.

‘I’m not like my father,’ I tell them as I step outside. ‘Not one little bit.’

*

I push open the back door as quietly as I can. The passageway is in darkness and for a moment I think that, with luck, they’ve gone to bed. But a silhouette appears at the head of the passage and Mutti’s voice, shrill and loud, cuts through the silence.

‘Where the HELL have you been?’

She runs and grabs my shoulders with long, thin fingers, shaking me with surprising strength and yelling into my face.

‘You stupid, stupid girl! You were forbidden to go out. I telephoned everyone I could think of, but no one knew where you were,’ she rages, barely taking a breath. ‘I left a phone message with Vati, and I was just about to call the police!’

We move into the hall and that’s when I see Bertha, her face tear-stained and stricken, her hands trembling. Shame washes over me.

‘I’m sorry…’ I croak.

My mouth is like sandpaper. I collapse onto the bench. Walter is gone and I’ve ruined everything for Bertha. A stab of fear for her, and for me, when Vati finds out.

‘Look at the state of you! You’re covered in soot, and muck. And is that blood? Hetty, you stink of – of smoke! Where on earth were you?’

She slaps me. A sudden, stinging blow across my cheek. I hold my face where she struck it.