Opposite, there were more rubble gangs at work, but the street was clear. They’d had the victory parade here, the road made passable so that the British could drive along. She hadn’t gone to see it. Lieselotte had said there was no point. A couple of jeeps drove past her, Russian, but no one walked along the deadly boulevard, no one she could stop. You look kind, can you help? She didn’t want a Russian. It couldn’t be a Russian. She ran on, her breath coming in sharp, painful gusts. The Americans, or the British. They were in the Tiergarten, that’s what Lieselotte had said, and Frau Weber had said they were in the western part of the city. Ahead of her she could see the crippled silhouette of the Brandenburger Tor. Her city. What had happened to her city?

The Führer had only ever spoken of Germany as powerful, as great and good. Reborn. Righteous. Germany would defend itself, he’d said, fend off the Russians and the others. Germany would be victorious. All she saw were ruins and death. She’d lived through the bombing, the pounding and blasting that went on for days and weeks and months, the dust and stench of cordite, the buried corpses and the scavenging homeless. She hadn’t seen how wide the bombing was, how the heart had been wrenched from the body. Germany had been killed. Why did people hate Germany so much? What had her country done? To deserve this? There had been rumours, of murders, of Jews and Gypsies and others, of feeble children, of old people. Russians. Poles. Thousands. Millions. Bette couldn’t imagine. It didn’t match what the Führer told them, what she’d learned in school. She could see this. She couldn’t see his words. She didn’t know anymore. She didn’t understand.

She was close to the gates. Soldiers were strutting up and down, cockerels in the coop checking who passed through, who passed out. Bette looked down at her shoes, the blood smears on her leg that Vasily had left. Her face was bloody, filth on her hands. She hoped they would see a dirty urchin and let her through. She walked towards the side gates close to the grand hotel where she and Oma had had tea on her tenth birthday. Through the ruined Tor she could see the Reichstag, its dome burned out, its walls charred and scarred.

A soldier was walking towards her. They had found Vasily, were searching for a boy who matched her description. This soldier would stop her, shoot her on the spot. This is the criminal who did it. String her up. Let this be a lesson to you all. She hesitated. She could run away, back the way she came, find another route through. Hide in the ruins of the buildings until the coast was clear. At night. The soldier drew level with her.

‘Papiere.’