She’s afraid I’ve set her a test. She knows who my father is and fears I will report her. These days a teacher has more to fear from a student than the other way around.

‘Yes. That is most clear. Thank you.’

Erna nudges me in the ribs.

‘What did you ask that for?’ she asks, and I shrug, because I don’t fully understand myself.

*

After school, back at home, I go to my room and retrieve my journal from its hiding place. Within its geometric covers, I can be entirely honest. It’s my only true, trusted friend and I write:

Oh, how I miss you Karl! The house is different without you. The air inside its walls is stilled, as if frozen without your life to fill it with warmth and movement. Sometimes the floorboards creak or a curtain swishes in the breeze and I think it’s you. But there is no one there. Perhaps it’s the ghosts of past inhabitants, their misery trapped, seeping out of the masonry, infecting our lives with bad luck. Please come home soon…

The telephone rings in the hallway.

‘Would you like to go to the cinema to see Operation Michael?’ Tomas’s voice is fuzzy at the end of the crackling line.

‘I’m not sure I’m in the mood.’

‘Please come, Hetty. I’ve already asked Erna and she said yes. It’s a war film,’ he adds, as though that would tempt me.

I suppose anything to take my mind off the girl-child and that revolting husband stealer; off Walter and the wretched Kafka which still lies, unread, beneath my mattress.

Erna and Tomas are waiting for me outside the cinema.

‘Hurry up, snail!’ Erna calls, waving as I run from the tram stop. ‘It starts in five minutes.’

Our seats are in the middle row. The lamps are dimmed and voices become hushed. Above our heads a shaft of white light from the projector cuts through the darkness, illuminating the big screen at the front. Clouds of cigarette smoke rise and curl through the beam.

The projector whirs into life and I settle back into my seat between Tomas and Erna to watch the newsreel. Tomas leans towards me and nestles his arm against mine on the velvet armrest between us. I glance at him but his attention is focused on the clip Festliches Nürnberg. His head is close to mine, but angled away so I can see the thousands of marching soldiers on the screen weirdly distorted through his glasses.

He turns and I feel his lingering gaze. He whispers, his mouth too close to my ear, ‘So many soldiers, it’s a wonder there are any civilians left in Germany.’ His breath is hot and clammy on my skin.

I lean away and turn my attention to the Nuremburg Rally. Scenes of vast mines of coal and ore, of sprawling factories spewing gleaming cars, clothes, electronics and appliances. The might of Germany. The inexorable advancement of the German people. Germany, the narrator proclaims, is the envy of all nations. There are shots of endless cheering crowds, and a smiling, proud Hitler announces to the world he only wants peace in Europe. Then the sound of a hundred thousand marching boots. Peace? I think of the wrecked men in the soldiers’ home. There are tanks and guns and the Luftwaffe flying in beautiful formation. My heart skips for Karl. Finally, there is roller skating, folk dancing and a fire show. The cinema audience spontaneously erupts into cheering, clapping and shouts of ‘Heil Hitler!’.