Finally, drained and bone-weary, I dry my tears and slowly make my way back home.

*

‘Where on earth have you been?’ Mutti is crying, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.

‘I ran into a friend,’ I mumble. ‘We went back to her place. Sorry, I lost track of time.’

‘What were you thinking, Hetty?’ She is shouting now, wringing her hands in despair. ‘Disappearing off like that in times like these?’

What should I say to her? How can I possibly put into words what I witnessed?

Vati’s face is blotchy red, piggy-eyed with soft, wobbly flesh. ‘We’ve been content for you to roam around this town with your friends. But, if they are a bad influence or it leads you down the wrong path, we’ll put a stop to it. Immediately. There’ll be no more hanging around town with your friends. This is a warning, Fräulein.’

I hate you. I hope he sees it in my eyes.

A vision of the pretty, blonde, curly-haired girl is etched in my memory. My sister! The word is alien on my tongue. Schwester.

‘Sorry, Vati.’

‘You deserve a beating for causing your mother such alarm,’ he continues. ‘Go to your room. I don’t want to set eyes on you until morning.’

Gladly. I don’t want to set eyes on you either. You make me sick. If I deserve a beating for causing Mutti alarm, what do you deserve for being unfaithful?

I turn and silently climb the stairs. I reach for my diary under the mattress:

I cannot tell Mutti what I saw. It will destroy her. It will destroy everything. It’s clear, she can never, ever know. How I wish Karl were here. I can just picture him, his eyes kind, his head close. ‘Don’t worry, Little Mouse,’ he would say. ‘I’ll deal with Vati’. But Karl is hundreds of miles away and I’m all alone.

*

Walter takes me into his arms and whispers in my ear that he will make everything all right. Leave your parents, he urges. Come and live in America with me. I’m leaving the house for the last time, inexplicably wearing a Luftwaffe uniform. Mutti refuses to say goodbye and Vati is happy to see me gone. I turn back for one last look and see Vati, seated on the sofa, bouncing the cherubic, golden child on his knee. Only the child acknowledges my leaving, with a look of victory in her glacial blue eyes.

I snap awake, extinguishing the vision of Vati and the girl-child. I’m stiff and cold sitting on the bed, the diary open on the floor. My head swirls with exhaustion and a dull ache pulses in my temples. I pick up the journal, close it, and hide it away, climbing into bed without bothering to change.

But now I’m wide awake and the night crawls by; the darkness expanding and contracting. A stone lies in the pit of my stomach. A rock of pity for Mutti, a great slab of loathing for Vati. And all the while the walls of the house pulse and throb in time with my beating heart.