Bette watched as she turned and climbed into the jeep, waved as the sergeant put it into gear and drove away. Fräulein Schneider shut the door. The hallway was dark but silent except for a rhythmic bom, echoes like a kettledrum. Bette peered into the shadows. A small boy was rocking himself on the floor, his arms wrapped round bony knees which he clutched tight to his chest, banging his head against the large, hollow radiator, bom, bom. The Fräulein walked past him. Stop, Bette wanted to say, what’s wrong with him? The boy stared ahead with ancient, empty eyes, an old man in a child’s body. He didn’t flinch.

‘Follow me,’ the Fräulein said, leading the way into her office. She sat at her desk and opened the folder.

‘You are German?’ She looked at Bette with critical eyes. ‘Why are you dressed as a boy?’

Otto’s trousers were filthy and itchy and the buttons had come off one of the braces. Bette knew how shameful she must look. She swallowed. ‘My mother and sister thought it would protect me,’ she said, adding, ‘from the Ivans.’

The Fräulein looked up. ‘And did it?’

It hadn’t fooled Vasily. He’d come back for her. But she couldn’t tell the Fräulein that, nor that she’d shot him.

‘Yes,’ she said. The Fräulein smiled.

‘Well done. Some mothers said their daughters had typhus. That worked too. There is no end to the ingenuity of mothers, don’t you agree?’

Bette nodded. She’d heard that said so many times in the Jungmädelbund, the cleverness of mothers, their resourcefulness.

‘But it says here you are an orphan.’ Her voice was sharp, as if she’d caught Bette in a lie.

‘Mutti died.’

The Fräulein nodded, turning back to the notes. ‘And your father?’

‘He never came back. But my sister is here,’ Bette said. ‘Somewhere.’

Fräulein Schneider leaned forward. ‘We’ll put a notice up,’ she said, her tone softening. ‘With your name. Ask if anyone knows you.’

Bette had seen them, pinned to boards, everywhere. Has anyone seen my wife, Frau Gerda Wagner? Some had photographs. Do you recognise this person? Fräulein Hildegard Krüger, last seen on 26 April…?

‘Could I put one up about Lieselotte?’ she said. She didn’t have a photograph of her. She didn’t have photographs of anyone, she realised. How long would she remember Lieselotte’s face? Or Mutti’s? She was losing them now in a vortex of forgetting, as if her past were dissolving. Smells brought Mutti back, dried perfume on her clothes, sweet lipstick wax on a stranger.

Fräulein Schneider was shaking her head, lost in her own thoughts. Bette had seen that often of late, the shaking of the head, the bewildered, angry faces.