‘Pom-pom, polka,’ she said. ‘Eins, zwei, drei. Eins, zwei, drei.’ She held her arms in front as if she were embraced by a partner, dipping, whirling, her skirt mushrooming round her legs, her hair flying behind her like a peacock’s train, tripping off the path out of sight into the shrubby bushes at the edge of the park, the skeletons of the spindly trees behind silhouetted against the pinking sky. She was entrancing, mesmerising. He couldn’t see her, she had gone.

‘Lieselotte,’ he called, searching, trying to glimpse her. ‘Lieselotte.’

He turned to Arthur but he stood with his back to John, hunched as he lit a cigarette. She rounded a corner, came closer to him, breathless, her breasts rising and falling as she gasped the air.

‘Dance with me, Johann. Dance. Tanz.’ She grabbed his hands and swung his arms, her eyes shiny and wild. Her fingers were moist, electric, delicate. He wondered if she wasn’t touched in the head, if Arthur had seen this when he hadn’t, her moods swinging so fast from sombre to exuberant. She twisted away from him and he caught the odour of her perspiration, the must of her dusty hair as she pirouetted round and round, fast as a dervish, arms outstretched, eyes focused, round and round, her feet in their clumsy shoes rising and falling and turning in time to the deep rhythms in her head.

She stumbled, fell panting to the earth.

‘I’m a little giddy,’ she said. ‘But I was an angel, was I not, Johann? A hummingbird? A butterfly?’

She was sweating, beads of moisture on her forehead and nose running down her neck, her thick hair tangled and matted. He thought she might be ill. It wasn’t normal to sweat so much.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I should take you home?’

She pushed herself up on her elbows.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said. John held out his hand and she pulled herself up, brushing down her skirt, picking up her string bag with the jug and clutching it close.

‘I found it,’ she said, pointing. ‘A little chipped, but useful.’

She shuffled on her feet. ‘Shall I give you another lesson?’

‘Is it over for today?’ He looked at his watch. It had been an hour. She had her eye on the time and he was wounded.

‘Johann, are you all right?’

He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. A little bewildered. But yes, another lesson would be good.’

‘I let myself go,’ she said, wiping her hands across her cheeks. ‘For one hour, I let myself go.’

‘That’s all right.’ He shrugged.

‘When shall we meet then?’

‘Next Sunday,’ he said. ‘Same time? Same place?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Not here.’

She thought, puckering her brow.