Bette could feel the cold of the blades against her skull, the sharp edge of the comb as it parted her hair at the side, the snip of the scissors as they trimmed closer and closer. Bette put her hand to her temple. She breathed in sharply.

‘Let me look.’ She pushed herself up and ran into the bathroom. A shaft of sun was illuminating the cracked mirror, reflecting on the floor. She climbed on the bathroom stool. Someone else was in that mirror, with shaved temples and a flopping fringe. She saw her mother’s face emerge next to hers, her long hair pulled back into a bun. She’d always thought her mother’s hair was thick, but in the bright sunlight of the mirror she saw a bald spot above her ear where Mutti twisted the hair and pulled it every evening. Worry lines had etched deep valleys into her forehead.

‘Come,’ her mother said, placing her arms round Bette’s tummy and swinging her free from the stool. ‘I have to finish.’

Bette sat, her lips quivering until the snapping stopped.

‘Let’s look at you.’

The sides of her head, and the back, were shorn.

‘Will it grow again?’

‘Once the war is over, of course.’

‘Must I always be a boy?’

‘Except when we sleep,’ Lieselotte said. ‘You can wear a nightdress. We don’t have boys’ pyjamas.’

She shared a bed with Lieselotte. They did exercises every morning, lying on their backs, cycling in the air, counting the rotations. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Mutti did exercises too, one hand on the door jamb for balance as she lifted her leg and touched the lintel. She’d been a dancer before she married, in the corps de ballet at the Lindenoper. They all took it in turns to empty the chamber pots, carrying the slops downstairs and throwing them into the gutter. It had to be done first thing. The soldiers caroused at night, lay senseless in the dawn. Mutti always lit a cigarette. Takes away the smell.

The Russians had put up a standpipe in the street and turned on the water for two hours in the morning and afternoon. Mutti took the deep pan that she used for making jam and Lieselotte two buckets, one for Frau Weber. Bette took the big kettle.

‘What’s my name?’ Bette said, as she emptied the last of the water from the kettle into a jug. ‘I mean, my boy’s name?’

‘Bert,’ Lieselotte said, without missing a beat. ‘It sounds like Bette, so your ear is half tuned to it.’

‘It’s a horrid name,’ Bette said. ‘And it doesn’t sound anything like Bette.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Why can’t I be something heroic and heimatlich, like Heinz?’

‘Shut up, will you?’ Lieselotte said. ‘You’re really getting on my nerves.’