She tried not to smile, but the chickens’ names were too absurd. If you have read this far, I consider myself a lucky man. I plan to modernise the cottage over the summer (by which I mean plumb in the water and put in a proper, indoor lavatory and bathroom). The countryside round here is beautiful. It would be presumptuous to offer you an invitation, but you know you would be welcome. More immediately, a post has come up for a secretary at the school and I wondered whether you would be interested? It is a step up from the typing pool. Also, there is a vacancy for an English teacher. A step up from secretary.

Will you ever forgive me?

Yours ever, John.

Perhaps she had been too harsh on him. Would she have been strong in the storm of history? She could see him in the countryside, with an old tweed jacket and wellington boots, the dog at his heel. She was a city girl, needed pavements to feel secure, but she could see the attraction of the countryside. It had been a terrible year, a roller coaster of unimaginable highs and lows. She’d sunk into her bed each night exhausted.

‘You need a damn good holiday,’ Dee said to her. ‘When all this is over. Check yourself into a nice hotel in Bournemouth. You’ve got the money. Or go to Cornwall. Walk in the moors, along the coast. Swim. Work off those Cornish teas.’

She had to give a week’s notice at work. She could take a few days off before she started with the Daily Herald. Go to Wales. Put up with an outside privy and no running water. She’d survived Berlin, after all. Could new love ever glow from the embers of the old?

She folded the letter, returned it to its envelope, and placed it on the mantelpiece behind the Kienzle clock.

SOURCES

The following sources were used when researching for the novel:

Books:

Anonymous (Hillers, M.). A Woman in Berlin (Virago, 2005)

Baruma, I. Year Zero: A History of 1945 (Atlantic Books, 2013)

Beevor, A. Berlin: The Downfall: 1945 (Viking, 2002)

Berlin, M. The Partisan Coffee House 1958–1963 (Catalogue to the Four Corners Gallery exhibition on the Partisan Coffee House, 2017)

Caplan, J. Nazi Germany: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Duff, P. Left, Left, Left: A Personal Account of Six Protest Campaigns, 1945–65 (Allison and Busby, 1971)

Huber, F. Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans in 1945 (Allen Lane, 2019)

Gatrell, P. The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present (Allen Lane, 2019)

Judt, T. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Vintage Books, 2010)

Longden, S. T-Force: The Forgotten Heroes of 1945 (Constable, 2009)

Mazower, M. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (Penguin Books, 1999)

West, R. A Train of Powder (Virago, 1984)

Peace News (selected editions, February 1958 – May 1959)

Films:

March to Aldermaston (dir. Lindsay Anderson, 1959)

The Downfall of Berlin: Anonyma (dir. Max Färberböck, 2008)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS