‘We’re being banned from more and more places. There’s even talk that the city’s Jews should be banished to one area in just a few buildings – like a ghetto from the middle ages.’ He snorts. ‘People wonder how we got to this place, in just a few short years. But it’s because we’ve let it happen. We’ve just sat back and taken it. Nobody has been brave enough to speak out, to stand up and fight.’

I remember what Vati said about all the Jews who still live in Gohlis. How they persist, like vermin. Anger stirs inside me. These are people, like us, not rats. We listen to the rain, thudding now, on the roof of the barn.

‘I read letters from friends in London and New York,’ Walter continues. ‘About the things they’re able to do. And I? What sort of future do I have?’ He tenses, turning towards me. ‘Oh, Hetty, if only you and I could leave tomorrow, on a steamship to New York. If only that were possible!’

‘And then?’ I whisper.

Walter paints a picture with his hand in the air. ‘We could live in a high-rise – two or three hundred metres tall. With a view over Central Park. Or Broadway. I’d work in a smart office, instead of a dirty old warehouse.’ He pauses. ‘We could go to restaurants and cinemas; theatres and libraries. Together. Nothing is banned. You can buy any book, listen to any music, watch any film. You can do any job – Jew or gentile, black-skinned or white.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘So I could be a doctor. They have women doctors?’

‘Probably. Certainly.’

‘And you could go to university too?’

‘I could. And, better still, we’d be able to be together, openly, instead of having to hide in fusty old hay barns.’

We both smile at the thought.

A place I could become a doctor.

But I gave that dream up years ago.

The barn door creaks and we both jump. It creaks again, but we are quite alone. Just us, the rain and the wind. We smile at each other.

I try to imagine what that might be like to live in a place like New York. The way Walter describes it makes it sound enticing. But I wonder if, in reality, it isn’t just a little… frightening. With all that freedom, how do they control people? How do they stop criminals from reaping havoc?

Perhaps Walter spends too much time with gloomy people. From what I gather, he creeps about all the time, on the outskirts of society. I need to show him that Germany isn’t so bad, that it is also vibrant and growing, and that Adolf Hitler, aside from not liking Jewish people, or pretty much any foreigners, has the best interests of Germany at his heart. He is doing good things too.

‘We can’t go to New York,’ I say slowly, ‘but we could catch a train to somewhere we wouldn’t be recognised. We could go shopping, stroll in the park. Nobody would suspect…’