‘Come on, Hetty! I risked… I lied to the rabbi – told him it was for an ailing relative. I thought you’d be pleased… I’m sure you can find somewhere to hide it in your room. I remember how you loved to read, and these types of books, it’s impossible to get them any more.’

‘Illegal, Walter, not impossible.’

‘Well, true. But so many have been destroyed.’

‘I know, and it’s kind and thoughtful…’ I stare at his face, full of disappointment and hope and my insides soften.

I hug the book to my chest, then slip it into my pocket.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be ungrateful.’ I reach for his hand and we walk away from the synagogue. ‘I will treasure it, I promise. You’re so good to me.’

‘I’d give you the world if I could,’ he says tenderly.

Haltingly, he moves me back against the wall of the adjacent building. And then his arms are tight around my waist, drawing me in, and he kisses me properly for the first time. Slowly, gently, until everything fades away and I no longer care about anything else but him.

*

Sitting in my window seat, I stare at the Kafka resting in my hands. Betrachtung – Contemplation. But will I be able to bring myself to read it? Perhaps I can skim it and then get rid of it. Walter really doesn’t understand. He can’t, or he wouldn’t have burdened me with it.

I hear a knock at the door and quickly shove it behind my back as Ingrid’s face appears. Her eyes dart about more than usual. There is a slight flush to her pale cheeks.

‘I’ve come to lay the fire,’ she says. ‘Before you need to change for dinner…’

She kneels in front of the fireplace and sweeps yesterday’s ash into a bucket.

‘Your mother tells me I won’t have to do this for much longer,’ she says cheerfully.

‘Oh?’

‘Herr Heinrich has ordered a special boiler which will heat the whole house,’ she tells me. ‘It’s the new thing. For those who can afford it, anyway.’

She puts the bucket to one side and begins to screw up pieces of newspaper, arranging the balls in the grate.

‘Imagine that! Automatic heating in every room in the house. Except ours, I suppose,’ she adds.

‘It’s much colder in this house than it ever was in our flat,’ I tell her, glancing out through the almost-bare branches of the cherry tree, into the night.

She begins to pile kindling wood on top of the newspaper.

‘Ah, but your heart must be warm, even if your body is not.’

‘Sorry?’ I stare at her as she bends over, the nodules of her spine forming a bony ridge beneath her black dress. She places the kindling carefully around the edges of the grate.

‘Love warms the heart like nothing else can.’

Panic seizes me in an icy grip.

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘I mean,’ she says, straightening her back and turning towards me, her lips turning down into a reverse smile, ‘wasn’t it you I saw with a handsome young chap in Salamander’s this afternoon?’