Much later, I creep up to the top floor. A slice of light shines beneath Bertha’s door. I knock quietly. There’s a pause, then the door opens a fraction and her face appears in the crack.

‘I’m so dreadfully sorry,’ I whisper.

‘Yes,’ she replies crisply.

‘They’ve taken him to a concentration camp.’

‘Then I’m sorry too.’

We stare at each other through the crack.

‘Go to bed, Fräulein Herta.’

*

I’m not sure I shall ever be able to sleep again. I’m haunted by what I saw tonight. How can men do such things to other human beings? Nature is harsh, but such brutality – this is the domain of humankind alone. Whatever our religion, race, where we are from; whatever our hair or eye colour, our nose shape or the size of our feet, we’re all just people. People who feel pain, joy, love, anguish. Who have hopes and dreams, families, friends and loved ones. How can one lot of people be so utterly blind to this and treat another lot of people as if they are no more than inert objects beneath their feet? And what of you, Walter? Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is you, being beaten to death and left, broken and rotting, on the hard, cold earth. Please, please, be alive.

10 November 1938

I drift fitfully in and out of sleep. Every little sound jolts me awake, sending my heart thumping in case it’s Vati coming home. But as dawn emerges, it hits me. He isn’t coming home. I think back to that hateful letter on his desk. Operations against the Jews… Preparations for arrest… Concentration Camps. Of course, he’s been out on the streets all night, ensuring his orders are carried out – that Jewish males are locked up in jails, or those who resist arrest are shot. Or worse, kicked and battered to death and left in mangled heaps on the street.

I shudder and turn over, screwing my eyes shut, putting my hands over my ears to block out the world. But my brain keeps whirring.

If he isn’t home, where might he be?

I sit up properly, wide awake, my brain suddenly clear, despite the lack of sleep.

*

During breakfast, a flustered Ingrid hurries into the room, tying her apron behind her back.

‘So sorry I’m late this morning, Frau Heinrich,’ she begins breathily. ‘The bus was delayed and there were all sorts of hold ups trying to get across town. Didn’t even have time for breakfast,’ she smiles, her cheeks flushed and her hair wispily dishevelled. ‘Glad I don’t have to make that journey every day. So much easier to live in.’

Mutti invites her to have breakfast with us, as she sometimes does when Vati is away.

‘Oh, thank you very much, don’t mind if I do!’ She piles a plate with the food Bertha has laid out on the sideboard and sits down. Bertha herself is nowhere to be seen. Ingrid’s cheeks still have a high colour and her eyes dart about. She is practically panting with excitement.