I turn my head, take him in. I think of the pictures in Fink’s book. Walter bears no resemblance to any of them. If I saw him in the street, I wouldn’t need to cross it, not with his blond hair curling over the collar of the open-necked cream shirt, a patch of pale skin at the neck, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Nevertheless, where once I thought him almost part of our family, now he is a stranger.

He oozes Otherness.

Jew.

Repelling, yet strangely compelling.

Silence stretches between us, thorny and uncomfortable. I spot the basket brimming with produce at Walter’s feet.

‘Do you have an allotment?’ I nod at the basket. Something safe to discuss.

He shakes his head and looks a little sheepish.

‘It isn’t easy these days. If our livelihood is taken away, how are we supposed to earn money for our keep?’

‘You stole those?’

‘I only took one of each. Just a few things to keep us going – they won’t even notice.’

‘But those allotment owners work hard. They are decent, honest people. They’re not rich. Why do you think you deserve their things?’

‘We didn’t deserve to be in this situation in the first place,’ he snaps, then takes a deep breath, as though he’d like to say more, but doesn’t dare.

So this is what he’s become. A little adversity and he transforms into a thief – true to his nature. Looks are deceiving, blood and breeding can never lie.

I shouldn’t be here.

I feel the weight of his eyes. My throat is tight and the image of a hook-nosed, curly-headed lout, ravaging an innocent, pretty girl, dances in my mind.

‘It’s been nice to see you, but I must get back for breakfast.’ I stand in a rush. ‘Come on, Kuschi, we need to go home.’

‘Wait, Hetty. Please.’

Walter’s hair droops over his forehead and his eyes are the colour of a tropical sea. He is beautiful, desperate, tragic.

If something bad was going to happen, it would have already. Again, I wonder how he doesn’t look remotely like the evil depictions of the Jew in Der Stürmer. The contrast is laughable.

I sit down again, Kuschi pressing his warm, damp body against my legs.

‘I’m sorry you think badly of me. Fact is, life here has become pretty intolerable for us. I wish I could leave Germany, like so many others have done,’ Walter says, looking out over the river towards the trees on the opposite bank. ‘But my father refuses. Over his dead body, he says, will he let Hitler take what our family has worked so hard for.’

I watch him carefully. Isn’t the reverse true? It’s the Jews who have stolen from hardworking Germans.

‘I’ve written letters all over Europe trying to get an apprenticeship, or a job of some sort. But I’ve had no luck. Jews aren’t welcome anywhere, it seems,’ Walter continues.

This is making my head ache. People only ever talk of getting rid of scheming, thieving Jews. Nobody mentions where exactly they should go, other than Palestine. I stare at the basket and wonder what to say.