Before he realised it, Prince found himself in the midst of a group of Germans. He’d been too distracted by what was going on around him and hadn’t been watching where he was going. An officer stopped him by placing his palm against his shoulder.

‘Pass!’

Prince produced it; the officer barely looked at it.

‘Search him!’

A young soldier frisked him, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of a jacket pocket.

Always carry a packet of cigarettes: decent ones, mind – ideally two packets, in fact. They’re a great way of relieving tension in difficult moments.

Prince could feel his throat tightening. The officer had the cigarettes now and clearly didn’t want to let go of them.

‘Take them, please.’ As soon as he said it, he wondered if he’d gone too far, like he was obviously trying to curry favour. He was unsure whether to carry on, so he paused.

‘What the hell are you waiting for, your king to turn up on horseback?’

The other soldiers laughed obediently and Prince thought it best to smile.

‘Go on, fuck off!’

He hurried out of the station, everything around him giving the sense of being wreathed in gloom and fear.

The thought of what he’d do if no one turned up in Odense had occupied him throughout the ferry crossing and the subsequent bus journey. He needn’t have worried: the man who eventually approached him near the station in Odense was smartly dressed and well-spoken and gave the impression of actually being pleased to see him. He told Prince to call him Marius and took him to a restaurant in the lee of the cathedral, where most of the diners were German officers. As they walked through the restaurant, he greeted some of them in German in a familiar, even friendly manner, stopping to share a noisy joke with one of them and slapping another on the shoulder. To Prince’s relief, they were taken to a small area upstairs where the only other diners were a table of elderly ladies, whispering as they picked at their food like nervous birds.

‘You’ll stay with me tonight,’ said Marius, pouring them each a glass of beer from a large bottle that had been waiting for them on the table. ‘You’ll find out where you’re going next just prior to your journey tomorrow. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Have a cigarette.’

He lit one and handed it to him. It was a Danish habit and it gave the impression it would be discourteous to refuse. Prince had smoked more cigarettes since he’d been in Denmark than in the whole of the previous year. Marius gestured to the floor.