‘Shame?’

‘I wanted to be like everyone else. Like Karl, I wanted to join the Hitlerjugend and do my bit for Germany. I didn’t see why I should be excluded.’

I look at him and our eyes meet. I want to believe him.

I look away.

But I don’t want to believe him. With all my heart, I don’t.

Something twists in my chest and I want him to stop. ‘You’re giving me a warped version of the truth. Vati got to where he is by sheer hard work. He’s not some kind of – of lazy criminal. You have to be wrong, Walter. You’ve been fed lies.’

‘Why would I tell you something so serious if it were wrong, Hetty? I have nothing to gain and everything to fear by telling you this. Think about it.’

I watch the river flowing between the grassy banks.

‘You must know, better than most,’ Walter adds, ‘where they send people who speak up against the authorities. Concentration camps. Without a proper, fair trial. Hard labour; terrible conditions. For indefinite periods of time. Rumour has it they even carry out executions there. There’s no doubt people are shot if they try to escape. The SS have recently opened another camp not so far away – near Weimar. Why would I risk telling you a pack of lies? You only need to say one word to your vati and—’

‘Oh Walter, I’d never do that,’ I breathe. ‘Besides, I don’t know much about these camps. Vati rarely talks of such things. To me, anyway.’

Kuschi appears from the edge of the wheat field and nudges his nose into my palm. I scratch his ears as he walks beside me, then he dashes off again, disappearing beneath the waving heads of wheat.

‘If you knew all this at the time, why didn’t you say something?’ I ask. ‘Why did you stay friends with Karl and continue to visit?’

Walter sighs. ‘Because I was an idiot. I never told my parents I was around your house all the time. They’d have gone mad at me if they knew. But I was so ashamed to be Jewish I didn’t tell anybody, and I don’t think Karl realised, not for a while anyway. I don’t look like the stereotype, so I suppose he had no reason to suspect and I desperately wanted to be like any other normal, patriotic German boy. It was only after he joined the Hitlerjugend and I didn’t that he figured it out. One day, he just cut me off. He never explained.’ He presses his lips together and kicks at the ground. ‘He didn’t need to.’

We walk on in silence. I think of our big house, of which I have always been so proud. And Vati. Vati, who calls me Schnuffel and loves me. Vati, who tells us all the time how far he has come in this life. How honest, hard labour reaps great rewards and how Germany can be great once the selfish, dishonest Jewish race is banished and the terrible morals of inferior foreigners are wiped out.