‘Do?’ Collette winked. ‘A brothel is a good place to hide a man. Listen,’ she lowered her voice and added, ‘Agnes Moreau. Thick with the Nazis. Kapos do their dirty business for them. Be careful.’

Dora nodded.

‘But she likes her smokes,’ Collette went on. ‘Give her all the dog-ends you find. That’ll keep her sweet.’ They began to file out, shuffling in ill-fitting shoes. ‘We’re called asocial. But we’re necessary for their war effort, to keep their men virile.’ She laughed again. ‘Work that out.’

‘Were you all prostitutes?’ Dora said.

‘We are now,’ Collette said. ‘Right in the belly of the beast.’

Dora had been assigned to the officers’ mess, Agnes told her. ‘Hand-picked. For the top brass. Being pure Aryan, and that. Don’t want the hoi polloi fucking you up.’

Dora moved her head, but the smell of Agnes’s teeth curled up her nose anyway.

The same SS officer reserved Dora for himself. He was, she learned from Agnes, on leave for two weeks. Dora braced herself. Shut her eyes, clenched her teeth. What had Collette said? Be someone else, be somewhere else. He forced her legs wide and she lay stiff and passive, hating him. On the third night, he rolled back, naked, one arm behind his head.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List, Kommandant von Baubrigade I,’ he said, ‘Neuengamme. Im Alderney.’

He said it to impress, but Dora pretended not to understand and showed no recognition. There was something absurd, she thought, about this man boasting his importance with his member lying small and limp on his groin.

‘I was an architect before the war,’ he said. ‘In Berlin. Beautiful buildings.’

Then why are you building hell now? Dora thought. ‘Great plans,’ he went on. ‘When this war is finished, we will rebuild the city. Have you been there?’

He leaned on one elbow, looked at her. Dora couldn’t work out why he was talking to her. This was not what she expected, not what he’d done on the other nights. His eyes were pale and grey, flecked with gold, his features even. He was a youngish man, a few years older than herself. A captain already. Kommandant, no less. He must have made an impression on the bigwigs in Berlin.

‘No,’ he said, not waiting for her to answer. ‘Of course not. How could you have been there?’ He smiled, reached over her for a cigarette, and lit it. ‘An avenue of splendours. A people’s hall. The Führer’s palace. Such magnificence to come.’

The smoke blew towards her. Dora crinkled her nose.

‘You are a beautiful woman,’ he said. ‘Don’t pull a face. There, look.’ He stubbed it out hard so it snapped in two, and the tobacco spilled out across the ashtray. ‘I have finished it. It won’t bother you anymore.’