‘Get him some food,’ she instructs Lena. ‘Can’t you see he needs food?’

‘No,’ he croaks, ‘no food,’ and his hand trembles as he raises the tumbler to his mouth and drinks the whole lot down. ‘More of this. Please.’

‘Fetch the cooking brandy, Lena. Felix, come with me, the café needs our attention.’ She shoos them from the room and we are alone.

‘Walter, what’s happened to you?’ I whisper. I long to touch him again but he looks as if he might just break if I do.

He shakes his head. His eyes are wet but he doesn’t seem to notice.

‘It isn’t fair,’ he says finally. ‘It isn’t fair that I’m out here, and they are still in – in that hell.’

‘Tell me.’ Gingerly I place my fingers on his arm.

He glances at me, wipes a heavily shaking hand across his mouth. ‘I can’t. I-I don’t have the words.’

‘I’m so sorry I ever doubted what you told me was the truth. Walter, I’m so sorry.’ I reach for his unbandaged hand and give it a gentle squeeze. How could I once have been so blind? I look at him, struggling to process what I’m seeing. He’s a shadow of what he was thirteen days before. My throat closes as a wash of emotion takes hold. How could they do this?

‘I tried,’ I begin. ‘I tried to get them out, your father and uncle.’ It sounds so lame. So useless.

‘I know. I know it was you who saved me. Friends in high places, they said, before they let me go. Thank you. It didn’t stop them giving me a final beating, though.’ He lifts his shirt and shows me his bruised and battered body. ‘Twenty-five lashes for the road.’

‘Dear Jesus.’ I bite my fist.

Lena returns with the bottle of cooking brandy. She fills his tumbler three-quarters full and quickly leaves again, her cheeks pinched, eyes full of horror.

‘What happened to your hand?’

He doesn’t answer. He just swigs great gulps of brandy. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead. Slowly, slowly the brandy seems to calm him. His breathing eases and the trembling subsides.

Tears brim in my eyes and Walter’s image swims. They wash down my cheeks, a flood of shame and pity.

‘The camp…’ He shakes his head.

‘Tell me. Please.’

He looks down at the fat bandage covering his left hand. He takes another mouthful of brandy, then he begins to speak in a flat, low voice I barely recognise.

‘The day I arrived, the eleventh of November, we were brought to the front of the camp on trucks. We were made to jump out and run through two lines of SS thugs to get to the gates. They were armed with clubs and iron bars to beat us with as we passed. There was a hold up at the gate, so many were trying to get through, to get away from the SS. I momentarily rested my hand on the wall to keep steady as people were shoving to get past. A brute hit my hand, full strength, with an iron bar. He broke three of my fingers. Crushed them. The tip of the smallest was pulverised to not much more than pulp. The pain was… excruciating. I passed out, was on the ground, but they beat me until I got up again.’ His voice is that of an old man.