It was still light. Bette looked out of the window in the sitting room. Perhaps Lieselotte was coming round the corner. Now. She counted. In ten, she would come. In forty, watch, she’ll arrive. Once more. In fifty. She shut her eyes, counting, achtundvierzig, neunundvierzig, fünfzig. The game didn’t work. She sauntered over to the gramophone, took a record from its sleeve and placed it on the turntable. Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake. She pranced around the sitting room. It wasn’t fair that Lieselotte was the only one they said could dance. She could, if she wanted. She flapped her arms, pirouetted to the window. No sign of her sister.

The music finished. She pulled out The Nutcracker. Mutti had danced them all, though she’d never become the principal ballerina.

‘I married your father,’ she’d said once. ‘And that was that. You couldn’t dance if you were married.’

‘Did you miss it?’

Mutti had tilted her head to one side, fixed her eyes in the distance.

‘Oh yes, Bette,’ she said. ‘I missed it all the time.’

Bette took the photograph albums from the bookcase and pored over them, turning each leaf and the delicate tissue paper that protected the pictures, staring at her mother as a young woman, so like Lieselotte it could have been her. Her beautiful, glamorous mother. Was Lieselotte as glamorous? Bette could only see her sister. How could she see her as others did?

She looked out of the window again. The light was fading, the long, slow sleep of the sun. It would be curfew soon. Lieselotte would be back by then. Perhaps she should go to Frau Weber before night fell. Tell her Lieselotte hadn’t come home and could she please stay. Greta’s father wouldn’t mind, surely?

Frau Weber had been unfriendly this morning, and it was already gloomy in the stairwell, with no natural light coming in. What if she turned her away again? She couldn’t be sure, but she thought Frau Weber had been drinking alcohol. People did funny things then.

It was hard to make out anything in the dark. Movements were silent shadows, no clacking heels, no rattling bicycles, no talking. She stood by the open window. Ivans were singing in the far distance, their voices waxing and waning in the summer breeze. Were those footsteps too? She leaned out, watched as a blurred figure turned the corner and walked towards their building. The candlelight from the Müllers’ old apartment flickered on his face as he walked past.

Lieselotte would be home by morning. She’d promised. Bette changed into her nightgown, crawled into bed, picked up Emil and the Detectives. She’d read the story so many times, but its certainty was a comfort now. She snuggled down on her stomach, pulled the eiderdown over her, lit the candle, and began.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Berlin: July 1945