‘A noble calling.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I know your number. Two hundred and seventy-one.’ She felt his fingers walk towards hers across the sheet and he brushed the back of her hand with his thumb. ‘But not your name. What are you called?’

Dora swallowed. He sounded soft, conciliatory, stroking her hand as if they were romancing, as if no threat had just passed between them.

‘Dora.’

‘That’s pretty,’ he said. ‘Like you.’

He turned to lie on his side as the mattress bounced up, down. She could feel his breath close to her face.

‘I hear you’re Swedish.’

She was waiting for this moment, for someone to question her, find her out. Lies have short legs. Well, let them do with her what they will. Anywhere would be better than this.

‘Born in Stockholm, I’m told,’ he went on. ‘It’s a beautiful city, is it not?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said.

‘Oh? Why not?’

She could own up, admit who she was. Get it over and done with, packed off to Germany. But the thought terrified her. She remembered her geography classes from school, Swedish cities close to the Arctic Circle, Luleå, Kiruna. Would he know those? Take the risk. She braced herself. One more lie.

‘I wasn’t raised there.’

‘But you weren’t raised in Jersey, either. So where were you brought up?’

‘Luleå.’ She hoped she sounded Swedish. She had no idea how it was pronounced.

‘Luleå? Where’s that?’

‘In the very north,’ she said. ‘In Lapland.’

‘In the Arctic Circle? Land of the midnight sun?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Almost.’

He rolled onto his back, reached for a cigarette from the bedside table and lit it. ‘I always think that climate and landscape build character, don’t you?’

‘Perhaps,’ Dora said.

‘So how would you consider the land of the midnight sun influences the Swedish character?’

Dora couldn’t imagine, said the first thing that came into her head. ‘It makes us pessimistic in summer,’ she said. ‘When it’s light all day and night.’

‘How come? I would have thought you would be happy for that.’

‘We know it will come to an end.’ Dora thought fast. ‘And in the winter, we are optimistic, because we know it cannot last.’

He laughed, from the belly, so the bed shook, his mouth wide open. He had a gold tooth, lower premolar, left side.

‘I like you, Dora,’ he said. ‘I will look out for you.’

I never forget a face.

He stubbed out his cigarette, stood up and dressed. She lay still, stared at the window, couldn’t bear to watch as he pulled on his trousers and tucked in his shirt, ordinary things that suggested he, too, was a man. He stood by the door, his cap under one arm. He raised his other, ‘Heil Hitler.’

Heil Shitler. Schmittler. Dora picked up the cigarette butt. A useful currency.