*

The room in the Hotel Sachsenhof, on Johannisplatz, is decorated with violets and sprigs of white gypsophila making it look jolly and bright. Several rows of wooden chairs with cream seats are set out so the few guests can watch our civil ceremony take place. A long table is laid at the back of the room for refreshments later in the proceedings.

Tomas, smarter than I’ve ever seen him, wears a new, light brown suit and patterned tie. His hair is neat and, like the boy who won first prize, he wears a swagger alongside his broad smile.

‘You look…’ He pauses and takes my hands as his eyes flicker over my face, down to my chest and back to my face. ‘Radiant,’ he says. He raises my hand to his lips and winks at me. My guts curdle.

‘Now, you remember my mother, Hetty?’ he says, guiding me towards her. She is a tall woman, strongly built, with cropped greying hair. A dark blue dress hangs awkwardly over her frame, as though neither the dress, nor she, are truly comfortable with the arrangement. In her face is the hard grit which has helped her and her seven fatherless children survive.

‘So lovely to see you again.’ I try to smile, but her expression is like a blast of icy air. I glance up at Tomas. He has never once invited me to meet with her. Clearly, this was a mistake. Perhaps I should have insisted, but I’d been so wrapped up in myself it hadn’t occurred to me.

‘Well, here we are.’ She looks me up and down. ‘It’s a serious thing, marriage, you know,’ she says. ‘Children. A responsibility.’

‘Yes, and we’re prepared for that, aren’t we, Tomas?’ I grip his hand tightly.

‘Of course,’ he agrees smoothly. ‘I’ve told you, Mutti, Hetty is going to make me a perfect wife and mother to my children. She’s a natural.’

She makes a noise. Something between a snort and a cough. ‘It’ll be a different life to what you’ve been used to,’ she says to me, narrowing her eyes. ‘When you’ve not got maids and cooks and nursemaids to do the daily grind. When you’re up all hours of the night with a crying baby and an ailing child and you still have to get breakfast on the table in the morning, scrub all the floors, make the beds, launder the clothes, buy the food… Without much money if you’ve a husband with a taste for beer.’ She stops to take a breath. ‘Well, then. The romance tends to go out of it.’

I shrink from the bitterness of her words and Tomas puts a protective arm around my shoulders.

‘I shan’t let Hetty have a life like that. She knows I’ve got ambition. She knows that life is a thing of the past in our new German Reich.’

‘Huh, that’s what you all think, you fools. The young always believe they’re going to change the world.’ She gives a bitter laugh. ‘But they never do. And you lot won’t be any different. False promises, and you’ve bought them all.’