‘We can get a bus,’ she said. ‘But it’s quicker to walk. It’s not far.’ She set off with large strides, her hair limp and sticky from the wet. John walked beside her, hands in his pockets, silent. Her thoughts spun round, ribbons on the maypole, always the same. Why had he lied to her, over and over? Had he lied to himself, too? To Mutti? Lieselotte? It was such a slippery line between delusion and lies.

A police car drove past, seconds later, an ambulance, their bells bouncing off her roiling emotions like radar. What if he wasn’t there, after all this? Mrs H would know where he was. She knew everything. Did she know who he was? Did she care?

‘Not too far now,’ she said, more to herself than to John. At least he had the gumption to keep his mouth shut on the journey here. It was bad enough coping with thoughts about her father. She couldn’t begin to think about John and his two-faced treachery. She felt as if she was at the centre of a world that was crushing her in the weight of its ambitions, like a walnut between nutcrackers, a disposable shell.

They turned the corner into her street, the rain silver sequins in the light of the street lamp. She slowed her pace, fearful of the confrontation with her father, her anger burning and erupting. What would she say to him? You lied. Lie was too small a word for the betrayal she felt. Why didn’t you love me? That was as much a crime as anything. Why didn’t you take me in your arms at the end of the war, nuzzle me with your moustache, Bettechen, meine Bette. Tell her she was safe, that everything would be all right, that he knew about Mutti, and Lieselotte, understood how lost she was, how frightened, how very young? He’d pressed his thumb on her lips, skidding it hard across them so the lipstick came off. She’d wanted to look so pretty. Her eyes began to blur and she stopped, wiped them with a gloved finger. She didn’t want him to see her crying, to see how frail she was, how vulnerable. She would be strong. She was strong. He was nothing but a pigeon of a man strutting with a puffed neck, Look at me. Look what I can do.

Deliver a nuclear warhead. He made instruments to kill.