Yet her guard was down so often with List now. He took his time, had become easy with her, and Dora wondered whether he’d grown to like her, even to love her a little, despite himself. He talked with her, took to staying the night, curled by her side, hand on her belly. Dora was comforted in those times, when she could lie in a soft bed with clean sheets, listening as his breath grew slow and deep, feeling his limbs grow heavy and relaxed. He made life bearable.

Then he kissed her once again. A soft pucker on her sleeping eyelids, the tip of her nose, his lips resting on hers, as if to say, May I enter? A kiss was intimate. A kiss touched her inner fibre, joined her body to its spirit. She had little left of herself to give or withhold. A kiss was private, was freely offered. Don’t let them kiss you, Collette once said. They think they own you then.

He didn’t force her, no bulbous muscle rummaging in her mouth, just a tender touch, lip to lip, and despite herself, Dora opened her mouth and there was the tip of his tongue and that was all.

He had vision, schemes. What young man didn’t? Perhaps, after the war, if the Germans won, he’d realise them. What would she be doing? Would he come for her, make a case to free her, let this one go? Did he wonder if they would be together when this was all over? In the house he designed for her? Dora’s house.

He was a professional, a perfectionist, and she admired that in him. Everyone was caught up in this war. He was only doing his job. You couldn’t blame him for that. He didn’t send her to the brothel. He was, after all, a man. Not a monster, not like Knackfuss or Zepernick. She began to think about his visits, almost to look forward to them. He wasn’t a bad man, she knew. Something had turned him. Ambition. Signed up with the Nazis to get the better commissions. Who could blame him? She couldn’t believe he shared their attitudes to the Jews, turned a blind eye to the Nazis’ worst excesses. If he discovered she was a Jew, he’d protect her. Plenty of Germans disagreed with the Nazis, after all. Why would an SS officer be different?

She began to like his smile, the fine lines round his pale grey eyes, along the contours of his mouth.

She ran her finger along his cheeks, traced the form of his nose and lips.

He took her hand and rubbed it against his chin. ‘Perhaps you could shave me?’

‘I don’t know how. I’d be scared I’d cut you.’

He leaned over, his mouth close to hers. ‘Shave me. My razor is in the bathroom.’