‘I’m not far away.’

‘I guess.’ He’s breathing heavily as we walk, pausing to cross Kirchplatz. ‘What’s your new place like, then?’

‘Just wait till you see it,’ I laugh. ‘After the flat, you won’t believe it! Come on!’ And I break into a run, a bubble of excitement rising inside.

Our vast new house on Fritzschestrasse has a pointy roof and two chimneys sticking up like thick fingers towards heaven. There are four layers of windows. We could have a whole floor each.

‘It’s the biggest house in the street,’ breathes Tomas, staring up in awe at the handsome building, all sandy brick and trimmed with black. His tawny hair is dishevelled and his eyes insect-big through the grubby lenses of his tortoiseshell glasses. He screws up his nose as he surveys its vastness.

I stand taller.

‘Does it have a garden out back?’

‘Of course it does! That’s my room.’ I point up at the window with the balcony overlooking the road on the first floor. There’s a beautiful old cherry tree growing beneath it. Its branches extend over the iron railings and the pavement on one side and under the balcony on the other. From my special seat in the window, I can see the junction with Berggartenstrasse and nearly the whole of Fritzschestrasse until it bends around to the right, near Walter’s flat. I watch him come and go.

‘It must be very grand inside.’ Tomas presses his face right up against the iron railings. ‘Bet it’s got two staircases. And a cellar. Maybe it’s even got a dungeon with prisoners’ bones in it!’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Can I come in?’ asks Tomas.

I steal a sideways look at him. Even though it’s only been a few weeks, it feels like a different lifetime that he and I played in the street behind the flat we used to live in. It was the old me who kicked a ball around and slid down the muddy embankment to watch the trains puffing in and out of the station.

‘Not today,’ I hear myself say. ‘Sorry. Maybe another time.’ And I push my way through the sturdy iron gate. It opens with a creak and when I let go, it shuts Tomas out with a loud and satisfying clunk.

In the echoey, wooden-floored hall, I put down my satchel and remember the day we moved here in June.

‘I’ll need a cook and full-time maid,’ Mutti had said, standing in this very spot, looking around in wonder. I can almost still smell her flowery wafts of Vol de Nuit. ‘I can’t possibly manage this house without help,’ she’d said, her hand on her chest.

Vati, cool and relaxed, dressed casually in slacks and an open-necked shirt, had tousled my hair and said, ‘The most desirable residence in the whole of Leipzig. Or at least one of them.’

‘I love it,’ I remember saying, smiling into his baggy face.

‘Who would have thought it, eh, Schnuffel? Who would ever have dreamed it?’ he’d said, as he picked up a box, kicking open a door off the hallway with his foot. ‘My study,’ he’d said in a satisfied voice, and disappeared inside.