‘Then I’ll fight my way.’ She tossed the words over her shoulder.

Mutti glanced at her, picked up her cigarettes and lit one, faced Bette. She reached over to the table and held up a pair of boy’s shorts and braces, and a shirt.

‘Try these on. Otto has grown out of them.’ Otto was fighting in the Hitler Youth. Frau Baumann and Mutti had sat in the kitchen the day he left, sobbing into their handkerchiefs. Only a child.

‘You can trust the Baumanns?’ Lieselotte said.

‘Who knows?’ Mutti answered. ‘You have a better idea? Come on, Bette.’ She held her cigarette between her lips, shook the shirt impatiently. Bette slipped out of her dress and pulled on the shirt.

‘The buttons do up the wrong way,’ she said.

‘Never mind that,’ Mutti said. ‘Try the shorts for size.’

They were too large, but with the braces they would do. It didn’t matter anyway. All the children wore clothes that were too big or too small, the fabric frayed and faded.

‘What’s this for?’ Bette asked.

‘Your safety,’ Lieselotte said.

‘How?’ She pulled at the braces. ‘What good will this do me?’

‘If they think you’re a young boy,’ Mutti said, ‘they might not touch you.’ She turned away, coughed into her hand, tapped the arc of cigarette ash into a saucer.

‘Everyone can see I’m a girl.’ Bette flicked her long plait. ‘And everyone round here knows who I am anyway. Besides,’ she added, ‘the Russians promised they wouldn’t hurt us, I saw the leaflets, and there’s posters everywhere.’ She hadn’t noticed the comb on the table, nor her mother’s dressmaking shears, until Mutti reached over for them.

‘No,’ Bette shouted. ‘No.’ She held her plaits and ran to the door but Lieselotte was there before her, barring her way.

‘Why don’t you dress up then?’ Bette shouted.

‘Because if they think I’m a man, I’ll be shot as a deserter,’ Lieselotte said, adding, ‘Either by the Russians, or the Gestapo.’ Her voice was calm and confident and Bette looked from her mother to her sister and knew they had discussed it, and decided. ‘Sit down.’

She pulled a chair into the centre of the room and, taking Bette by the shoulders, steered her towards it and pushed her down onto the seat. Her mother undid her apron and pinned it round Bette’s neck. The smoked curled from the saucer and Mutti stubbed the cigarette out.

‘Please,’ Bette said. ‘Please don’t.’

‘Keep still.’

Bette felt the shears mouthing her plait, then gripping and biting at the hair, crunching it again and again until the braid came away in her mother’s hands. Her head was lighter, and Bette ran her hand across the back of her neck. It felt cool but her mother was combing through and cutting, combing and cutting.

‘Move your hand.’