A man was playing an accordion, standing in front of a dry flower bed as Lena walked past, dashing tears of frustration from her eyes. Judged by the standards of the world, Carina had not been a good mother, yet she had at least made sure Lena was fed and sent to school. The fact that she herself was now penniless and betrayed could not be blamed on her mother. It was her own fault.

Yet what a waste Carina’s life appeared now it was over – more like the life of an insect under a stone than of a woman in a free country. She had had the occasional moment of lightness, but not many. Lena wouldn’t make the same mistakes. She would lift her gaze from the ground. As she strode on down the dry walkways she told herself that she must see Carina’s death as a liberation. She was at last free from her mother’s influence. She decided to feel invigorated, and she walked swiftly, swinging her arms.

But what she really felt was alone. Carina had been all she had known: not much, but everything. It was this absence that slowed her steps and robbed her of energy, compelling her to sit down on a bench and lower her head. She stayed still, with no ability to move at all.

When some vitality eventually came back, she knew that a plan, any plan, was better than none. She would go home: she would concentrate all her energy on that one thing.

The next day she went to see her employer.

‘So, let me be quite clear,’ Frau Haas said when Lena had finished. ‘You’re not only resigning your position without notice, but also requesting a loan for a train fare home.’

‘Yes,’ said Lena. ‘I promise to repay the money as soon as I can.’

‘I’ve never known anything like it,’ said Frau Haas, her glasses catching the light as she looked up. ‘And I’ve been running this business since my husband died twenty years ago.’

Lena said nothing. She had tidied her clothes carefully and secured her hair with the purple ribbon before knocking on the door.

‘… And for that reason, I’m going to say yes.’ She opened her desk drawer and took out some money. ‘Think of it as a reward for your impertinence. It’s not so very much to risk after all. And this is for you to buy something to eat on the journey.’ She held out her hand.

Rising suddenly from her chair, Lena went to kiss Frau Haas on the cheek, but stopped herself. Kissing didn’t seem to work.

‘I will repay you,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

‘Come back to Vienna one day.’

Carina was buried in a corner of the local churchyard. Herr Thaller had organised a subscription for a headstone from among his clients, for ‘the mother of the nice girl who used to work here’. Enough of them remembered and donated; the poor wing of the hospital, in whose women’s ward Carina had died, gave one of their coffins from the sawmill, made from pulp with a paper-thin veneer of pine.