The days were getting longer now so it didn’t matter too much that they couldn’t turn on the lights in the evenings, but she’d have liked a light in the cellar for when they had to go down there. It was spooky enough as it was.

The soldiers were drunk at night, bottles of schnapps from busted distilleries or methyl alcohol from God knows where. The rifle shots were the first warning, then the shouting and the singing.

‘It drives them a little mad,’ Old Herr Baumann said, tapping his head.

Bette needed the lavatory, right now. She began to shuffle herself up. The bucket was in the far corner but Mutti was pulling her down. The soldiers were in the street outside, cheering, whistling. She could see their boots. One of them started to piss, aiming the urine through the shot-out cellar window. She heard them laugh, then thudding boots on the steps down to where they cowered in the underground gloom. The soldiers knew they were there, knew how to round them up in their shelter, line them up like skittles to be knocked down, one by one. The door smacked against the wall as the Russians flung it aside, the beam of their torches searching, dazzling. Three of them, guns and torches, left, right, left, right. Different soldiers from last night. Bette held her breath. Tante Winkler sat with her linen napkin and knife and fork. One of the soldiers pulled the napkin, waved it like a flag.

‘You surrender? Why don’t you Germans surrender?’

Tante Winkler was old and doolally but she sprang like a young woman and snatched back the napkin. She fell as Bette heard the shot. Lay on the ground with a hole in her head, blood across the floor and on the stiff white napkin. Bette’s trousers grew wet and warm, she couldn’t stop herself.

Lieselotte crouched in the shadows, at the back.

‘You.’ The torchlight went above Bette’s head. Bette dared not turn to track its arc.

‘You.’ A soldier pushed his boot against Bette, shoved past her, his gun jabbing at the air, at anyone. At someone behind her. ‘You.’

She could hear Mutti stifle a cry, saw her eyes screw tight, her lips pucker. She sat in silence, trying not to cough, and Bette stared at her as Lieselotte was pulled forward. Was Mutti going to let her go, just like that? Without a cry or a struggle? No. This was her sister. Bette wriggled but her mother’s hand was on her shoulder keeping her still. She was shaking her head, her finger on her lips. They had planned this, Mutti and Lieselotte, what they would do if…