He reserved her for his exclusive use when he was there, and demanded that she was, as Agnes put it, ‘clean’ for three days beforehand.

‘List’s special whore,’ Agnes Moreau said. ‘The SS get all the privileges.’

Dora was glad. He was not like the others with their cut and thrust and cold indifference.

Some were lonely men who wanted companionship. Family men, from the GFP or the Wehrmacht, who missed their wives, SS on leave from France, or the Low Countries. They’d try to kiss Dora, touch her breasts, hit her when she stiffened and curled her toes, pushing their hands and faces away. Put a bit of life into it. Why should she? She cared nothing for these men, their needs, their isolation, their infidelities. They could do with her what they wanted, but she would not give them the intimacy of a kiss, the satisfaction of a caress. There were others, perverts who despised her, debased her, brutalising her with foul language and unnatural needs and who left her bruised and sore, and in despair.

Once or twice they introduced an Oberstgruppenführer or some other big shot from Germany or France, offering Dora like a delicacy.

‘Don’t resist,’ Collette said. ‘Just gets them madder. It’s not worth it.’

In the belly of the beast. She and Collette and the other women, even Agnes, they were the true face of war, they paid the real costs. The Trojan War, Dora thought, would have had a very different hue if Briseis or Chryseis had told the story, revealed the impotency of Agamemnon, his need for women to satisfy his manhood.

Agnes made sure Dora had no rough trade before List’s arrival. She knew which men to divert elsewhere, so Dora read the clues, knew when he was due a visit. List was not like the others. He behaved well, mannerly. He must be from a good family, Dora thought. He was familiar now, his body known. He called her Dora. Doralein.

He didn’t dismiss her as soon as he had ejaculated. Didn’t shout, get out, as if she was the unclean sinner. He talked about his wife and young sons, laid his head next to hers on the pillow. He was a long way from home, lonely. She could smell his shaven skin. He was a fastidious man, clean, careful. She supposed that came from his training. Architects had to be precise, saw beauty and form in three dimensions.

‘Do you like music, Dora?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I would like to be able to render music in my buildings,’ he said. ‘To make a sound wave into a structure. Don’t you think that would be sublime?’