‘Can I pick a bedroom?’ Karl had asked, eyes gleaming at the thought of a room all to himself.

‘Why not?’ Mutti replied, and I’d followed her as she’d carried out an inventory of the furniture and artwork the previous people had left in the house.

It would be hard to forget the first time I saw the red-gold dining room; the bright afternoon sitting room with big patches of sunlight on the carpet and the grand piano; the pale-blue morning room with a gramophone in one corner, and the glass-domed garden room filled with wicker furniture and jungle plants. Our old flat would have fitted neatly into the hallway alone, with room to spare around the edges.

Now a surge of happiness fills my chest like a swelling balloon and I run across the hall, my footsteps reverberating through the stone-floored passageway, past the big kitchen and washroom and out into the glorious sunshine of our triangular-shaped garden with grass in the middle, flowers around the edge and huge oak tree at the bottom. There’s no railway line here as there was behind the flat. I won’t miss the trains that shook my bed as they rattled and screeched their way to who-knows-where in the middle of the night.

I walk to the end of the garden and stare up through the dappled leaves and branches of the giant old oak tree. Even though we no longer go to church – Vati says it detracts from our greater cause, and besides, Herr Himmler wouldn’t like it, I know that God has smiled on me. He has given me this, because I’m special: a treehouse. Real. Solid. With a proper roof and walls. A narrow rope ladder dangles down from a hole in the middle of the wooden floor.

Just wait until Tomas sees this. He’ll be mad with envy. I picture his face and laugh out loud.

17 September 1933

From my window seat, amongst a nest of comfortable cushions, I keep watch on Fritzschestrasse. With luck, Walter might appear, hands shoved in his short-trouser pockets, scuffing his shoes, looking for Karl. But the road stays resolutely empty. Through the branches of the cherry tree I see an old couple emerge from one of the elegant white town houses across the street. They have a shaggy-haired black dog with them. His tongue lolls from his mouth, giving the impression he’s smiling. In the flat, we had no room for a dog, but Mutti can’t say that anymore. I go in search of her.

Bertha is in the kitchen, wiping floury hands on her apron. ‘Your mother has a headache,’ she explains. ‘She went to lie down.’

‘How can anyone want to go to bed in the middle of the day?’

‘I certainly wouldn’t mind,’ Bertha sniffs, kneading a mound of dough. ‘Anything I can help you with?’

‘We should get a dog. A big house like this needs one.’

‘I see. Well, that can wait until your mother gets up. Besides, she might not want a dog.’