Bette shrugged, pretended not to understand, pointed to the Tiergarten. Bluff.

‘Meine Schwester,’ she said. My sister. He raised an eyebrow, tilted his gun so it pointed up, nodded his head. Go on. Skedaddle.

She guessed from the sun that it must be about ten o’clock. She crossed the road and walked into the Tiergarten. There were more women, bending, weeding, picking. That wasn’t work that Lieselotte had done, so there was no point asking them if they’d seen her. She wasn’t sure where the Kurfürstendamm was from here, whether it was far. Her legs were tired, her muscles quaking, as if she’d just run a race. She was faint, hungry, thirsty. She couldn’t go back home. She had no home. What if Lieselotte had gone back, found Vasily there? Was he dead? He’d been alive when she left him. Would he shoot her?

‘Ja?’ A man had come up behind her. ‘Can I help?’

Bette blinked. ‘Where is the Kurfürstendamm?’

He pointed. ‘That way. It’s a bit of a stretch, mind.’

She nodded. She’d come so far. Just a little further. To the Kurfürstendamm. Then she could stop, ask around. Beg for water. Ask the way to Dahlem. To Oma. Lieselotte could find her there. Oma would understand. She half walked, half ran. The Tiergarten was huge, unfamiliar now in its nakedness. At last the zoo was on her right, but it looked abandoned, empty. There were two soldiers walking. British, she thought. She asked again. They pointed. That direction. It all looked so different, as if she were walking in a moonscape, something she’d seen in the far crevices of her memory but which close up was no longer what she knew.

The single spire of the old Kaiser Wilhelm Church rose from the dead, hollowed out like a bad tooth, the nave flattened. Wind whistled through its empty windows, a ghostly melody.

Bette crossed the square and entered the Kurfürstendamm. She had expected it to be thronging with soldiers, but the street was empty save for a few women loitering by the cellars of the bombed-out shops and apartments. She saw a sign outside one. Der Blaue Engel. The door was open and she stepped down inside. An elderly man in an apron was wiping a table. He looked up.

‘Out,’ he said. ‘Get out. We don’t want the likes of you in here.’

‘Please,’ Bette said. ‘I’m looking for my sister, Liese—’

‘Clear out.’ He didn’t let her finish. ‘Ask the women outside.’

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Could I have some—’

‘Out.’ He shouted. She wanted water. That was all.

‘Bitte, Wasser.’

He threw his cloth on the table, stomped to the bar, came back with a glass.

‘Then clear off.’