‘Now,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Stand so, feet together, then on your toes. I’ll tell you what to do.’

‘How can you dance?’ Bette stood stiff and lumpen as a stone. ‘How can you be happy?’

Lieselotte lifted the needle off the turntable and waited until it stopped spinning. She swallowed hard.

‘I’m not happy, Bette,’ she said. ‘I’m not dancing because I’m happy. You don’t understand.’

‘Then what’s this all about? Are you going to sell it?’

‘Sell it?’

‘It’s Mutti’s,’ Bette said. ‘We can’t sell it.’ Her voice choked. She almost said, She’ll want it when she comes back.

‘No,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Dancing classes.’

‘Dancing? Classes? You?’

‘Mutti taught us how to dance.’ Lieselotte tried to sound superior. ‘Waltz, foxtrot, quickstep. Tango.’ She lifted herself onto her toes and turned a pointed foot to the right. ‘Polka.’

‘And who wants to learn to dance?’

‘Actually,’ Lieselotte said, ‘this was Mutti’s idea. She said to get people’s minds off the war, the bombing. She said it was up to the women to make a new life.’

‘Who will pay you?’

‘We won’t charge much,’ Lieselotte said. ‘We’ll take food and cigarettes, marks, even those Russian marks. Anything.’

She started the record again, moved forward. ‘Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.’ She grabbed Bette’s arm, kicked her knee so she moved backwards. ‘Slow, quick, quick.’

‘Ouch,’ Bette said. ‘Do it on your own.’ She walked out of the door, stomped into the kitchen.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ Lieselotte was standing in the doorway.

‘People will know we have a gramophone,’ Bette said. ‘And then what? They’ll find a way in, steal it. Besides, my tummy aches.’ Hunger hurt, gripped her guts in sharp talons, twisted them into tight skeins.

‘Mine too,’ Lieselotte said.

Boris had kept them alive these last weeks, bringing them food, supplementing their rations. I’ll fight my way. Bette understood now what Lieselotte had done.

‘I’ve another idea,’ Bette said.

§

They struggled down the steep stairs from the attic, back to the apartment, laid the suitcases in the sitting room, opened them.

‘Be careful,’ Lieselotte said. ‘It’s Mutti’s Meissen.’

Bette unwrapped a figurine, a small bird. ‘I always loved this one,’ she said. ‘Mutti wouldn’t let me touch it. She said it was too valuable.’

‘It costs a fortune,’ Lieselotte said, revealing a cake dish with a porcelain lace surround, purple and yellow pansies and butterflies painted in the centre. ‘I know Mutti loved this. She always used it, do you remember? When Oma came to visit. She’d make an apple cake. Somewhere here…’ She felt the packages in the suitcase. ‘Somewhere there are the silver pastry forks.’

‘Where shall we put it all?’ Bette said. ‘In the cabinets again?’

Lieselotte stared into the suitcase as if her look could reveal the contents, but Bette saw her sniff.

‘We can sell it.’