She turned to go back into the house but a small body in a brown uniform was on the steps of the building close to the tank. It hadn’t been there yesterday. Mutti always pulled her away from the corpses on the street, placed her hand over Bette’s eyes. ‘Don’t look.’

Some lay as if they were asleep, calm and unharmed, but others were twisted, or blasted, or pumped up fit to burst. You could smell them, all the time, even when they had been buried in graves scratched from the rubble. It was hard not to look, whatever her mother said. Sometimes they hung from a window, feet dangling. No one had gone near the building down the road, not after the tank, and the bodies were still in the cellar, stinking of rotten flesh and bad eggs and faeces.

This one didn’t look dead, not like the other corpses she’d seen.

Bette checked no one was peering at her. She put the chamber pot down and wrapped the towel around her nose and mouth. If someone saw her she’d say she was checking to see if he was asleep or needed help. She gulped deep, held her breath.

The street was deserted, the early morning sun low in the sky. Bette felt the hairs rise on her arms, her heart thump in her chest. She tiptoed towards the form, hand over hand on the brickwork of the building for balance, creeping towards the motionless body.

It crouched on all fours, its head twisted to one side, chin down hard on the cobblestones. She saw the face, smooth skin waxy, unmarked. Otto. Otto, from next door. She cried out, shut her eyes. Opened them again. There was a small, bloodied hole in the back of his head. Why was he here? Was the war over? Had he been on his way home and something had happened? They’d played together, she and Otto, on rainy days when they couldn’t go out. Ludo. Draughts. Chess, until she beat him and he said she’d cheated. How can you cheat at chess?

She put her hand to her mouth, yanked the towel free and placed it over his face. She ran back to the apartment, tearing at her clothes, pulling the buttons of the shirt and trousers. These were Otto’s clothes, a dead boy’s clothes. She pushed open the heavy outer doors and ran up the broken stairs, two at a time. She knew them well enough now, which ones were cracked, which wobbled, which missed a central step, hammered at the Baumanns’ door opposite them on the landing.

‘Frau Baumann. Come. Frau Baumann.’ She knew she was screaming, but it was Mutti who opened their door and pulled her inside their own flat and slapped her face hard.