We have a big rally in Leipzig tomorrow. I need to be ready for it. I must feel cleansed. Deserving of the Führer’s praise.

Vati is working at home. I press my ear to the closed door of his study. All is quiet.

‘Come in,’ his muffled voice answers my soft knock.

‘Please may I have a quick word, Vati? This won’t take long.’

He is a busy man. Two jobs and two families. No wonder he looks tired.

‘Why certainly, Miss Herta.’ He smiles as I enter the room, waving me to the chair in front of his desk. He squashes the end of his cigarette into an ashtray full of other recently smoked butts. Despite the open window, smoke hangs in the air, constricting my throat as I take a deep breath. ‘Is something bothering you?’

I stare at him for a moment. His round face and baggy skin. His so-familiar pale eyes. I want to scream at him, you and your disgusting Fräulein Müller, and that child, that’s what! Is she your Schnuffel now?

‘A little, Vati,’ I say instead. ‘Something has been playing on my mind for some time.’

There is rot in my soul. I can feel it growing deep in my bones, seeping into my veins. But this will cleanse me. Put me back on the right path. The path of duty, correctness and obligation. Hitler’s path of selflessness.

I clear my throat. ‘It’s about a friend of mine, Erna, and her father. I overheard something, and it worried me.’ The words spill from my mouth with ease.

‘Go on.’

‘It’s…’ A shadow flits. The body of Tomas’s father, falling from a high prison window. Was it an accident? Nobody will ever know.

‘I’m never too busy to hear things which worry you, Herta. It’s important you feel you can come to me,’ Vati is saying. ‘Without good girls like you, where would Herr Himmler and our beloved Führer be, eh?’ He smiles again, warm and encouraging.

A ghostly Walter begs me not to do the right thing.

Bloody Hitler. Herr Bäcker’s words echo in my mind.

‘I heard…’

‘And what did you hear exactly, Schnuffel?’

‘I heard them say…’ Erna’s sloping green eyes swim across my vision. You can trust me to the ends of the Earth, Erna. I swallow hard. Vati stares at me, waiting for me to speak.

A kaleidoscope of images flicker: Erna and I in the playground at school; lying on her bed talking endlessly; marching together in the BDM; sharing our deepest hopes and dreams as we huddle side by side in our tent on summer camping trips. Walter. Heavenly, Jewish Walter.

Vati is becoming impatient. He drops his pen onto the paper in front of him and grunts.

‘Heard what?’ he presses.

I sit up a little straighter. A promise is a promise, Erna. You might have betrayed me, but I shall never do that to you.

‘Sorry, Vati… That try as they might, they cannot get front-row tickets for the Annual Celebration of the Hitler Youth.’ I feel a sweat break out on my forehead. ‘Herr Bäcker admires the Führer so very much. It would be the biggest thrill for them if you could, perhaps, pull a few strings.’