His heart thumped. Gessen. The blasted man was everywhere. All-seeing, all-knowing. Even now, sharpening his scalpel, itching to slice into Vidor’s cerebrum, to burrow into the limbic system and pluck out his memories, one at a time. Tell me about your father. He groaned and turned away.

‘How are you feeling?’ He pulled up a chair and sat at the foot of the bed. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

Vidor stared at the ceiling. ‘I want to go home. Haven’t you tortured me enough?’

Gessen switched on the bedside lamp. His eyes, obsidian in the dim light, shone with a keen intensity. Vidor squeezed his own eyes shut.

‘If you’re not ready to talk about it, would you mind, then, if I told you a story? We’re never too old for stories, are we? And the best ones often have the power to change our lives.’

Vidor’s leg ached, and he yearned to pull the bedsheet over his head. Never in his life had he so desperately wished to be alone.

‘A long time ago,’ Gessen began, ‘there was a young boy who lived with his loving parents in a vibrant and beautiful city. He was the longed-for son, and from the time of his birth, he knew nothing but happiness. Spoiled and coddled by his parents and much older sisters, he thrived in the protective warmth of his family’s love. Spending his days in the dappled sunlight of a courtyard garden, and his nights tucked up in bed by his mother, while listening to the classical music his father loved.

‘A few weeks before his sixth birthday, he was awakened with great urgency and pulled from his bed in the middle of the night. Hurried into a black automobile and forced to huddle under a blanket, his heart beating wildly, as the car drove at great speed along the dark and treacherous roads through the mountains. It was one of the boy’s starkest memories. Cowering under a blanket as the vehicle bumped and rattled through the blackness. The moonless night and hushed voices, the sharp, crystalline air.

‘Many years later, he would learn the details of that night. How he had been taken from his home, under cover of darkness, to travel with his mother, ostensibly for a holiday, by ship and train and bus to the other side of the world. Their final destination was a village in Switzerland, across the Rhine from Baden-Württemberg. The boy was assured his father would join them later, but he never did. No matter how long he waited or how many times he asked, “When will he come?” His father never appeared on the doorstep, laden with gifts and wreathed in smiles as was his wont, and the boy was heartbroken. How could he feel otherwise, when his father was a kind and loving man who doted on his only son?