Bette crept to the bureau. They used to play with the secret drawer all the time. She knew the crannies where the latches were hidden, the sequence to be pressed and pulled, but her fingertips were damp and the latches slipped. She could hear Lieselotte whimpering behind her, the soldiers yelling and hammering outside. She wiped her fingers on her trousers, played through the sequence again, please, please work, and the drawer swung open. Bette pulled out the gun, turned round. Lieselotte was not there.

She looked behind her. Lieselotte stood on the window frame, filling the empty space.

‘No,’ Bette said, her voice quavering with fear. ‘Come away.’

The soldiers were kicking the door, their voices loud, coarse. Bette guessed they were drunk.

‘I’ll shoot them,’ she said. ‘I will. Don’t jump. Don’t go.’

She wanted to cry, Don’t leave me, but her heart was pounding too hard to say a word, to think at all. She crept into the kitchen, holding the pistol in front of her, two hands, finger on the trigger as Boris had mimed.

The soldiers were shouting. Fräulein. Vulgar guffaws and belches. Hure. Whore. Bette was standing in front of the door. If they broke in, she’d shoot. Point-blank. Grab Lieselotte, run.

There was a sound of laughter, of water running. A trickle of urine seeped under the door. They hammered again. Bette heard them talk, heard their tread as they went back down the steps, their banging on the service door of the apartment below them. She didn’t know who lived there now. So many people were bombed out, strangers moved in anywhere, like hermit crabs into empty shells.

The bolts had held. Bette ran back into the sitting room. Lieselotte was crouched on the floor, vomiting over Mutti’s Meissen. Bette went over to her, knelt down next to her, laid her head against her sister, fear and grief punching like a fist from the earth. And hunger. Such hollow, angry hunger.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Berlin: July 1945

Life was routine, humdrum even, and John was glad for that. It had been tough on the road but now he was collected each morning and taken to Spandau prison, delivered back in the evening. The interrogations tested his vocabulary, but he had a good dictionary and was able to correct the transcripts afterwards, writing in the margins, reproduced in triplicate. Admiralty orders. Bloody bureaucracy. He wasn’t sure how Arthur was deployed, but their paths hadn’t crossed so often in recent days and the sergeants’ mess was a ten-minute distance from his own. He missed his company.

It was early evening, the summer air hot and sticky, thick with flying ants. Sure sign of a storm. His brain buzzed with formulas and impacts. Walking helped clear his head, even if it was just around the barrack grounds.

‘Well, sir, good to see you, sir.’ Arthur stopped, saluted.

‘What are you doing out, sergeant?’