Herr Bäcker is working hard to get passage for our baby, as well as for Josef’s three children, Lena’s boy, and several others, on one of the kindertransports leaving Berlin. We will be fostering all the cousins and Lena’s boy. It will be a strange and difficult transition for Anna and me, to go from just the two of us to suddenly being a family of seven! I have no idea how we shall manage, but with the help of Anna’s parents, we will somehow make it work. It’s quite an extraordinary programme, Hetty. English families from all walks of life are stepping forward to offer these complete strangers, these poor traumatised mites, temporary homes, until such time as they can be reunited with their families in a safe place.

I’m writing this in haste to ask if you can agree to this plan? Please think about it and reply soon.

With all my love, now and forever,

Walter.

I reach the end of the letter in a flood of tears. I wonder, if I were in Anna’s place, would I be so generous? Anna: you have my man, and soon you will have my child. I should hate you even more.

Instead, I feel only love and gratitude.

A soft knock at the door. Erna comes in with a pot of tea and apfelkuchen on a tray. She places it on the bedside table and sits on the edge of the bed, smiling.

‘Well?’ she asks softly, ‘what do you think?’

‘Oh, Erna! Yes, of course yes. A thousand times, yes.’ I try not to think of the moment I will have to part with this baby who kicks and squirms inside me. I place a hand on my belly as though to reassure it and my heart squeezes tight. I focus, instead, on the moment when we will be reunited, when somehow all this madness is resolved, when I can see Walter again, even if he is married to another. For the first time, I see things from Anna’s side.

‘You must tell Walter I’m married too. It would be better for his new wife to know that. She might find it easier with the baby if she knows there is no threat. Tell him I’m happy. Please.’

After a pause, Erna nods and squeezes my hand. ‘Good. My father is pretty certain, given there is a sponsor for the children in England, that he can get them a place on the Kindertransport. The problem is the timing, with your baby not yet born, and the other children ready to go anytime. But, with all the demand there is a backlog, so it could just work out.’

‘But, how are we going to arrange it? I’m to leave for Berlin soon and I’ll be a prisoner in a maternity home.’

‘Ah, we thought about that too and my mother and father have said you must come and stay here, with us. We know a Jewish doctor who will help with the birth. We’d keep it all quiet of, course. All you have to do is convince your mother.’