Such a simple task, but I have never once seen Vati pour tea for Mutti. I watch his hands move, strong yet gentle.

I take a sip of tea and meet his eyes over the rim of my teacup.

He looks away and I see the muscles twitching in his jaw. ‘You know,’ he says, his voice cracking, ‘we’ve had so much taken away from us. So much. I thought I’d found some happiness with you. I’d decided, damn them, the Nazis. I’ll fall in love with whoever I choose. How dare they, with their disgusting laws, consider me inferior. How dare they declare me not good enough for you, if you consider me to be.’ He sits back in his chair. ‘And now it looks like they’ve won, after all.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.

He slumps in his chair, deflated. As though all the fight has gone out of him. I search for something to say, to break the silence.

‘I’ve found out Vati has a mistress,’ I blurt out. ‘They have a child together. A little girl.’

Walter puts down his cup.

‘Oh God. That’s awful.’

‘I saw them together.’

He reaches out and strokes my hand, just once, with his fingertips, then leaves his hand on the table, close to mine. ‘Those Nazi Party bastards! They all have mistresses.’

His words are like a punch in the belly and something scrunches up inside.

‘Why do you think this has anything to do with him being a Nazi? Don’t you forget, Walter Keller, I am one too!’

A foreign creature is in control of my mind, forcing the words from my mouth.

Walter rocks back on his chair. His eyes bore into me and I shrivel.

‘I don’t understand, whose side are you on?’

‘Whose side? This isn’t a question of sides. I’m on our side. Yours. No – I mean, I don’t know.’

I look around the café. The man has left, his newspaper folded on the table. No one else has come in.

‘I went to Vati today. I thought that, if Ingrid finds out who you are and should let it slip, well it would be her word against mine, wouldn’t it? There must be no doubt in my father’s mind where my loyalties lie, so I decided to tell him that I’d once overheard Erna’s father make an anti-Hitler rant, only—’

‘Hetty! How could you! Don’t you make me an excuse for doing something so despicable!’

‘Shh!’

He looks around. Lena is still behind the counter and there is nobody else in the café.

‘I’m not,’ I whisper, leaning towards him. ‘But I wanted to tell you the truth.’

I begin to sweat. I was meant to be finishing things with Walter, not baring my soul and then falling out with him. Who exactly am I? A Nazi and a Jew sympathiser? Is that even possible? Is it just Walter, or all of them? Pain thuds again in my temples.

‘I don’t understand.’ His face contorts. ‘You call yourself a Nazi, yet you seem happy to meet with me, to listen to what I think of the Nazis. To kiss me. Then you defend them. Have I totally misunderstood you, Hetty?’ A fire is lit behind his eyes. ‘Are you going to tell your father of my opinions too?’