She said to the window, not to me, I wonder what life would have been like if I’d got pregnant with him.

I thought, People break their secrets inside you, whether you can bear to hold the pieces or not.

I said to Mam, When I go to France I will go to see where Jack Eastmund is buried.

You’re going to France?

Yes, Paris.

She considered this, decided something and said, No need to see where Jack Eastmund is buried. You know where your father is buried.

She stood, dumped our full teacups in the sink, said, I have weeding to do.

She could rest. Jack Eastmund was now buried in me.

When she came back from the garden she went to the kitchen sink and washed her large hands, her cuticles dirt-stained and torn. She had picked three large ripe tomatoes and they shone red on the counter in the afternoon light. She rinsed off the dirt but left the green stems. I love the smell of tomatoes on the vine, earth and sun and taut skins. She looked into my eyes and she said, You should go. I will miss you but you should go.

I only wanted to get away from her, from her ice pit of sadness, from absence no one but the dead could fill. I could not bring myself to be tender with her and I could not even say, I will miss you too.

And in this chaotic grief, a startling idea stood naked and waiting: why not be free.

—

Jack Eastmund had been transferred to Squadron 420, the Snowy Owls, who were part of Operation Gomorrah and the firestorm on Hamburg. He flew the planes that dropped thousands of aluminum foil strips designed to interfere with radar signals and to blind the enemy defences. More planes followed and attacked with a wave of incendiaries and explosives that turned the streets into tunnels of fire. Asphalt melted and trapped the feet of people trying to run away. People wrapped in blankets in buildings turned to ash, like tissues dropped into a campfire. Karla Vogel’s family’s apartment was in Heussweg, above her father’s shop. The fires exploded windows and in minutes gutted whole streets of her neighbourhood. The firestorm sounded like a pipe organ with all the keys pressed at once. Ten thousand tons of bombs dropped in seven hellish summer days. Karla’s mother woke her up in their borrowed farmhouse in the countryside far from the city and said, We got out in time.

Inside his plane Jack Eastmund felt the heat of a city aflame. He had never felt such a thing in the cool sky. He wanted to think about a girl. He wanted to think about love and the quiet prairie where he grew up. But all he could see was fire.

—

I found a job in an antiques shop in the Marais cutting prints from old books and hand-colouring and framing them to sell. It was pleasant work that required a steady hand but no thought at all, and when we took breaks the owner brought us fresh baguettes and chocolate. I loved to walk among the synagogues and Asian shops in that quartier, breathing in the earthy tea smell of the plane trees and looking at French books in Les Mots à la Bouche. The antiques shop owner paid me under the table, and as soon as I had enough money I moved out of Shakespeare’s to a chambre de bonne on the sixth floor of an old apartment building on the rue des Écoles. My new room measured a handful of square metres, was unheated, had a single bed, a cold-water sink, a small table and chair. From my tiny balcony I could see the Seine and Notre-Dame and I was happy. Down the unlit hall was a squat toilet shared with the other maids’ rooms on our floor. If I ran up the six floors I could make it to the top before the timed lights went out.