She crawled to the edge of the bed, stretched her feet onto the floor. Her legs buckled and she fell back on the bed, her breath in short, anxious starts. A log fell in the grate and the sparks snapped too loud. She had been unprepared for this, lulled by his manner.

She heard his steps on the floor, felt his presence before her, his finger on her chin as he lifted her face.

‘Did I hurt you?’ he said, his voice quiet and calm once more.

Dora nodded. It wasn’t the physical pain, though that was bad enough. It was her own stupidity, her naivety, to think he cared.

‘I’m not a brute,’ he said. ‘But I like order. Things in their place.’

He turned, pulled on his shirt, grabbed his jacket and cap, his gloves and boots, and left.

She was summoned the next morning. Agnes pulled her out of the workshop.

‘Hoffmann wants to see you.’ She’d made a toothpick from a feather stub, was digging at her gums. ‘Now.’

Dora laid the webbing flat, walked up to the Revier, knocked on the door of Hoffmann’s office. Maximilian List was sitting at the desk, his cap on the table, his gloves, flattened and smoothed, next to it. Hoffmann stood beside him. Dora shut the door behind her, leant back for support. This was it. He was ordering her to leave, would send her to Germany.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said.

‘Tell you what?’

‘That you’re pregnant.’

Dora looked at the nurse, but Hoffmann’s face was hard and impassive. ‘I wasn’t sure if you should know,’ Dora said.

‘Of course I should know.’ He smiled. ‘This is wonderful news.’ He stood up, walked towards her, flattened his hand over her belly and the coarse linen shift that draped it.

‘I can feel the baby move. You should be proud,’ he said. ‘Are you? Are you happy?’

I am a prisoner, she wanted to say. You brutalised me. Rejected me. How can that make me happy?

‘Remove her from the brothel. Forthwith.’ He was addressing Hoffmann, a rebuke. Dora understood that tone.

Collette died two days before Christmas.

‘Du und du.’ The soldier pointed to two women, his breath unfurling, frosty and cloudy against the night sky. ‘Holen Sie das Stück.’ Get the piece. Collette wasn’t even a body, had no dignity, even in death. She was a piece, a bit. Dora’s eyes welled up and the tears overflowed down her cheeks.