The carriage is crammed with sweaty workmen in overalls travelling home after their shift, through the city centre towards the main train station. They’ve come from the factories and warehouses in Plagwitz and Lindenau. I squeeze into a space near the door and hold my breath as my nose slots under the armpit of a fat, hairy man hanging on to one of the leather straps dangling from the roof.

‘Hey, miss!’ calls a voice from further inside the carriage. ‘There’s a seat just here, next to me by the window, if you fancy it?’

‘It’s okay, I’m only going a couple of stops,’ I reply, politely. The man is youngish. Dirty looking, with hungry eyes.

‘Fine. Suit yourself.’ His voice, tinged with anger, carries the clipped tones of a Berlin accent. There are more and more harsh Prussian voices around Leipzig these days. Compared with the lighter, softer Saxon, their accent grates on the ear. As Vati wrote recently in the Leipziger, the burgeoning industry and wealth of Leipzig is enticing all sorts of people from far and wide to come, sniffing the possibility of a sound job and prosperity. But they bring with them bad morals, crime and disease.

I wish I’d walked after all.

‘Girls aren’t what they used to be,’ the man moans in a loud voice to another, standing in the aisle. ‘All full of their own self-importance, now they’re wearing uniforms. Girls in uniform? Pah! How ridiculous.’

The other man glances over at me. I stare at my feet, feeling my face grow beetroot. My blue BDM skirt swings as the tram lurches around a bend. The men laugh and another says, ‘BDM – it doesn’t stand for Bund Deutscher Mädel. It stands for Bubi Drück Mich!’

Squeeze Me Laddie. How dare they?

‘Let me give you a squeeze, girl, eh?’ The first man, with the Berlin accent, laughs.

The other joins in. ‘I heard it was Bund Deutscher Milchkühe!’ League of German Milk Cows. Half the carriage is laughing. I’m sweating now, burning with indignation, but I’m locked in a metal box with these dreadful, rough men. I peer out of the window, trying to work out how far to the next stop, glad I’m still close enough to the door to make a quick getaway. Are these the sort of men Tomas works with? Please don’t let him turn into one of them.

‘Girls these days. Take last night. Group of girls in the bar, alone, no men with them. I politely offered to buy a young lady a drink. She laughed in my face! Just because she’s in a uniform. They all laughed at me. Pff! Who the hell do they think they are? Young ladies? Nah, sows, the lot of them.’ The man with the Berlin accent again.

‘Hey,’ he shouts to me, ‘you should be looking for a husband, girl, not strutting about in that stupid Nazi uniform!’

I long to yell something back at him. Something to put him in his place, like ‘I wouldn’t choose you as my husband if you were the last man on earth’, but I don’t dare. I just stare at my feet, willing the tram to go faster so I can get off it sooner.