He was talking to her, one to one. He did that now. She’d lost count of the number of times he’d come to her. It was autumn already, and she had been here for months. Sometimes she wondered whether he came to Jersey just to visit her, and he came often. He was an intelligent man, engaging. She had to admit his idea was novel.

‘It would be wavy,’ she said, adding, ‘I thought architects liked straight, classical lines.’

He lay back, and shut his eyes for a moment. ‘You’re right. A sound wave oscillates. Perhaps it’s the energy I’m thinking of. To capture that in a building. Oh, Dora,’ he rolled over, placed his head on her stomach. ‘I have such dreams, such plans.’

One evening, she ran her fingers through his hair without thinking. Fine and straight, different from her own coarse, curly hair, or Geoffrey’s thick black crop. She had known men like him in Berlin, urbane, sophisticated, professional men. She saw them at the opera or the theatre when she went with her father, in those halcyon days before Hitler came to power. What Vati would have called suitable men, eligible men. She could have fallen for a man like this, if they’d met under different circumstances. Maximilian was an oasis in a rough, stone-strewn desert, compared to the other men she had to endure in this prison. She tried to think of Geoffrey, but their last conversation, about the way he had behaved towards Vanessa, had made her doubt him, his integrity, his loyalty. The memory of him was fading. Time and place, she thought, shrink. List would call it perspective, the way trees in the distance looked smaller than those close up, the way life’s experiences became dots on the horizons of memory. Geoffrey was there, gone, and List was here, now, in this room, in this bed. Could they have even met in Berlin? In the foyer of the opera, perhaps?

‘We can mould wood or steel, curve and bend it, for our ships, submarines,’ List was saying. ‘Our aeroplanes. We have the science, and the skills. So why not build concert halls like that? Great opera houses? Wrap ourselves in a womb of sound? Or let it dance like a living organism? Do you see, Dora?’

He pushed himself onto his elbow and reached across for his jacket, pulling out a pencil and a small notepad.

‘Look.’ He sat up, crossed his legs. ‘I have this with me always.’ He tapped the notepad and balanced it on his knee. ‘I jot down ideas, inspirations. Let me show you.’ He slapped the space next to him. ‘Sit here.’

Dora leaned into him as he turned the pages. There were sketches of trees and plants, clouds and waves. There were designs that followed the shape of a branch or leaf, mimicked the fluidity of form and movement.