Bette stared at Lieselotte, shaking her head. She didn’t like this talk, and there was Greta in the ceiling space. What if she moved? Coughed? Frau Weber said that they didn’t know about ceiling spaces, as they didn’t have them in Russia. The apartments in the back buildings didn’t have them, which was why Greta was here. Bette looked at the food, at the young Russian slathering butter on his chunk of bread, reaching out for the bacon. She was desperate to eat but dared not grab. She could sense the tension in the kitchen, for all of Lieselotte’s smiles and the major’s toothless grins. Then the young soldier handed her the bread and butter, and the bacon he had sliced with his army knife. He waved it, take it, smiling. Bette remembered the young soldier at the water pump. Kindness and cruelty, but her stomach cramped and she could stand the hunger no longer. She grabbed the bread and shoved the crust in her mouth. In normal times, she’d have been sent from the table for such rudeness.

Boris was passing round the schnapps. Bette took the bottle.

‘May I try?’

‘Nein,’ Mutti said, grabbing the bottle and passing it back to Boris.

‘A little,’ Boris said. ‘Like a man.’

‘Nein,’ Mutti said again. Bette could hear the rage in her voice, could see the set of her jaw as she controlled herself. She coughed again, turned away for a moment, calming herself. Boris smiled and passed the bottle to Lieselotte, who held it to her lips and gulped. Bette heard her mother gasp, saw her leap up and grab the bottle, saw Boris’s face cloud to anger as he snatched the bottle back. Mutti walked away, into the sitting room. She returned a few minutes later, wiping some dusty schnapps glasses clean on her apron. She placed them on the table. Four glasses. For Boris and his soldier. For Lieselotte, for herself.

‘Bedtime,’ she said to Bette, adding, ‘Take the bucket.’

Bette wanted to stay. The heat from their bodies warmed the kitchen. Even though Mutti had covered the broken windows with old newspaper, the apartment was still cold, and the heating hadn’t worked for months. For the first time in weeks, Bette’s hands were not frozen and she was enjoying Boris, and his soldier friend who said nothing but cut bread and buttered it and pressed the sawn-off pieces of bacon into its centre before he passed it round, a piece for her, for Lieselotte, for Mutti. It was good to eat, to feel her stomach full. These were not like the Russians they had learned about, the monstrous Slavs with their savage instincts or the ones who’d taken Waltraud, or Lieselotte, that first night.

‘He stay,’ Boris said, winking at her, then held up his hand. ‘Five minute.’