Erna flops onto her bed and holds herself up on one elbow, her chestnut hair falling like a curtain behind her. She beams at me.

‘I’m in love, Hett!’ she announces, her cheeks flushed. ‘Madly. I’ve not told anyone else, but I had to tell you!’

‘So, who’s the lucky man?’ My heart beats a little faster as a vision of Walter’s keen blue eyes flash unwanted into my mind.

‘His name is Kurt. He lives on the other side of Leipzig. He’s a total dish. Impeccable manners – and he’s rich!’

‘Heavens, he sounds perfect. Does he have any friends?’

Erna laughs. ‘Maybe. But, Hetty, don’t tell anyone. Please. No one can know.’

‘Why not? What’s the problem?’

‘My parents would have a fit. They’re very old-fashioned, and I’m only fifteen. They wouldn’t approve of me cavorting around on my own with a boy. And he’s older – eighteen.’ She sighs. ‘But, oh, I’m bursting with happiness, Hetty. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

Really. And such things always happen to you, Erna.

When she’s run out of things to say about the perfect Kurt, we go to inform her father, a round pebble of a man in the sitting room, that we are going to meet friends in town. He’s drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper – not the Leipziger but the Völkischer Beobachter, a national morning newspaper. Erna chooses not to mention that the friends are boys from the Hitlerjugend, even though they are just that. Friends. The front page of his newspaper is devoted to the seven-hundred-year anniversary celebrations of the city of Berlin. Pictures of the parades and displays of the mighty German army take up half of the broadsheet page. He doesn’t look up.

‘Listen to this, Erna,’ he chuckles, smoothing a hand over the shiny skin of his bald head. He reads out a section about a group of men from a place called Worcestershire in England who have travelled to Berlin to play a game called cricket. ‘The English team claim the Germans have been unsportsmanlike. They complain about German gamesmanship,’ he says, wrinkling his forehead, ‘and yet, they enjoy all the delights of the famous Berlin nightlife.’

‘Vati,’ Erna hisses, ‘you shouldn’t say such things!’

He ignores her and continues talking as he scans the print with the paper held out above his ample belly. He doesn’t seem to have noticed me. ‘What did we expect? To make friends with the British over a game of cricket, a beer and a Berlin prostitute? Ha! The insanity of our leaders beggars all belief.’

His words are so shocking I freeze in the doorway.

‘Vati!’ Erna tries again.

But Herr Bäcker rants on. ‘Still, I suppose if you put a bunch of stupid, crazy, drunken madmen, who have failed at all else in life, in charge of running our country, what else can one expect? Ruination and disaster, that’s what.’

Erna’s eyes are wide with alarm. ‘Vati, you mustn’t! Please stop.’