‘So now you and I, Betty,’ her father said, ‘we speak only English from now on. German we put behind us. Germany we put behind us. The war.’

‘When it ended,’ she said, ‘I was glad.’

‘Glad?’ He thumped his fist on the table so the crockery jumped and the milk splashed from the jug. ‘You have no idea, child.’ He grabbed a napkin, dabbed at the spilt milk, curled his lip, huffed. ‘Glad.’

He has no idea, Betty thought. He doesn’t want to know.

‘But they talk about it at school,’ Betty said. ‘All the time. The trials, at Nuremberg.’

‘Rotten apples,’ he said. ‘We’re not guilty for what the hotheads did.’ He wagged his finger. ‘If it hadn’t been for them…’ His voice trailed to nothing before he added, ‘Dönitz was right. We could be the bulwark against Communism, but who listens?’

He changed her name to Betty, his own to Arnold. Dad, daddy. That was too cuddly a word for the father who was the perfect gentleman, blind, deaf and cruel to the core.

§

She stood on the edge of the playground. Some of the girls in her class were skipping, two long washing lines twisting in opposite directions. A girl was jumping over two ropes, fast, left, right, left, right while the others chanted.

‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, will you marry me?’ It was hard to make out the words, but the rhythm was clear enough. ‘Yes, love, yes, love, at half past three.’

Another girl jumped into the spiralling ropes.

‘Ice skates, spice skates, all for tea.’ Betty furrowed her brows. That made no sense. Spice skates?

‘And we’ll have a wedding at half past three.’ The voice was close to her ear. Betty jumped, turned. Deirdre O’Cleary. Brown hair, green eyes, skin stippled with dark brown freckles. Betty had never seen a complexion like it. She’d been put to sit next to her in class, sharing the double desk in the front, under the teacher’s nose. Deirdre would run off at break time, sit by herself with a book. None of the other girls spoke to her, any more than they spoke to Betty.

‘Can you skip?’ she said.

‘Yes, of course.’ Betty shrugged. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ She hoped she sounded casual, not surprised that someone was talking to her, even if it was Deirdre O’Cleary. ‘Spice skates? What are they?’

Deirdre laughed. ‘Cakes. Iced cakes. Spiced cakes.’

Betty could feel a blush creeping up her neck. It was bad enough they called her a Kraut to her face, did Hitler salutes behind her back. Now they’d think her stupid as well. She’d never make friends. The school might be one of the best around, but she hated it. She hated the nuns who ran it, the teachers who policed it, the girls who peopled it. Poisoned it.