Bette rushed out, towards her.

‘You haven’t taken poison, have you?’ she said.

‘Don’t be so silly,’ her mother said. ‘Go and wake Lieselotte. She has to take care of you today.’

‘Why?’ Bette said.

‘I don’t feel well.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Mutti was never ill. ‘Is it the Führer?’

‘I have a nasty cold,’ her mother said. ‘That’s all. A summer cold. They’re the worst.’ She gave a small, lopsided smile and coughed again, pulling out a rag, spitting into it. ‘Go on. Wake your sister.’

Bette stood for a moment, then knocked on Lieselotte’s door. She’d never had to do that in the old days, before the Ivans came. It had been her room too, and she could come and go as she pleased.

§

There were chores to do, the apartment to clean, even though there seemed little point, but Mutti insisted it was done every day and Lieselotte said they had to do it as Mutti was ill and otherwise she’d be cross. They used the last of the water to wash through their threadbare towels, then went out to refill the buckets.

A notice had been posted onto the wall.

‘What does it say?’

‘Just bla,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Looted goods to be returned. Weapons to be handed in, bla bla. Execution for anyone harming a Russian soldier, bla, bla, bla.’ She looked round to make sure no one could hear. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

‘Boris?’ Bette said. ‘I thought you liked him.’

‘I don’t like him. But I pretend I do, and that protects us.’ She smiled, turned to her sister. ‘He keeps the others at bay.’

‘But what if he goes away?’ She didn’t want Lieselotte to end up like Waltraud, because Greta said that it happened again and again, not just that first night, and there was nothing Frau Weber could do. ‘What will happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, shrugging, but the pull of her mouth showed worry.

‘No, I mean what will happen now? Now we have no Führer and Berlin has surrendered. Is the war over?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lieselotte said. They’d reached the standpipe and Lieselotte filled one bucket, reached for the second. The spring breeze feathered her skin, soft as a bird. Bette turned her face towards the sun to catch its warmth.

‘Here,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Let’s go back.’ She lifted up her pail, hooked it over her arm. ‘Boris said that we Germans did some dreadful things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Destroyed villages,’ she said. ‘Murdered thousands. Rounded them up and starved them and killed them in cold blood. Jews and Gypsies and all sorts. Thousands and thousands and thousands.’

‘Do you believe him?’

Lieselotte looked ahead, taking in the carcass of the street, as if the devastation were new.