‘You will find out.’ The man smirked and sauntered away, looking over his shoulder once. John let go of the handlebars and the front wheel bounced down on the macadam. He caught the frame before it toppled between his legs, his hands sticky and the sweat clinging to his shirt, those last hideous months of 1945 galloping past, like a drowning man whose life flashes before him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Berlin: late April 1945

Bette could cope with the bombs, with the firestorms and explosions, but this was different. This terror smelled of dread, of stale onions and dried urine, of menstrual blood and unwashed bodies. The Müllers on the floor below had died of dirt, so young Frau Baumann said, but Mutti said it was hunger. Or infection. Suicide, old Herr Baumann said. Suicide.

‘Is Vati safe?’ Bette said.

‘Oh yes,’ Mutti said. ‘He’s safe.’ She made it sound as if it was his fault.

Their cellar was dark and damp and musty. Earthy mounds of rubble and broken glass and empty mortar shells swept into a corner with the buckets of faeces and vomit. Careful where you tread. Even the thin air of the U-Bahn or the bunker in Oranienburg was better than here but with the Russians now there was no warning, no sirens. Just the roar and clatter of the tanks, the thunder of the artillery and the race to the cellar. The nights were the worst. And the stink.

Greta Weber sat next to her. The Webers lived in the back building with their grandmother. Before the war, Mutti had said they were common and Bette was forbidden to talk to them even though Greta and she were classmates. But now. Now was now. Women sweated under blankets in the cellar, front and back building together, hugger-mugger.

Opposite them Tante Winkler, who wasn’t a real aunt, just old, sat with her white napkin spread over her lap, cutting half a crust into cubes on a china plate and sprinkling them with pretend salt. She always said grace, again and again, Bless me, Father, for what I am about to receive… There was no food, only routines.

Bette was squeezing her hands until the nails left half-moons in her palms. The ground shook as a tank rolled down the street, and she could hear the percussion of soldiers banging their guns against the turret. The tension curdled inside her, slabs of bile and gall that choked in her throat and soured her taste. She wanted to hammer her head against the wall, to fling herself at the ground and roll in the rubble, to feel pain in her legs and arms where it belonged, in bruises and cuts and not in her belly, where it gnawed and churned. She wanted all this to go away, to end. Her lips curled downwards, a whimper building up. She heard a mewling and knew it was her.