Time crawled through the final weeks of that war, listless and aimless, made a nonsense of the days and hours. March limped along. April. Trees turned green and daffodils nodded on the front lawn of the hotel gardens. The officers hung around the mess while the soldiers kicked stones across the yard. They talked openly now. Mussolini dead. Hitler dead. And still it dragged on. The women carried out their duties, sluggish and ramshackle in their movements. The reprimands lost their sting, even though the beatings were harsher than ever. They have to take it out on someone, Dora thought. Women in the line of fire. The orders still came from the Feldkommandantur, but no one rushed anymore.

Only Aufsess kept his appetite for war, his loyalties to the dead Führer. He had no support, not if the talk among the officers was right. It was as if the beast was devouring itself. They waited for the British, but the British did not come.

She wanted to go home, to be in the apartment in Charlottenburg, to eat cake, drink coffee. Real coffee. The Saturday ritual with her aunts in Berlin, their words bouncing off the cornices in the tall white ceilings of their apartment as they nibbled chocolate and sipped at bone-china cups while Dora handed round the fluted silver sugar dish, with tiny tongs. She loved to listen to their German, yearned to talk it again. She wanted to be snuggled up in bed beneath the fluffy Federbett, while her father read her stories. She was homesick. A pining as powerful as a lightning surge.

It was May, the leaves on the trees in the gardens freshly minted, the peonies in the hotel gardens about to bloom, voluminous and gaudy. Vulgar plants, Dora thought, but she was glad to see them, for it meant the winter was finally over now and it couldn’t be long. Germany was in chaos, if what the officers said was right, no one was in charge. Berlin was in ruins, the Russians were at the gates.

And then the bells began to ring and ring and ring. They carried on through the day, into the evening. Dora couldn’t think, wasn’t sure she’d remember this day. The news had come through, relief among the German squaddies thick and tangible, drunk on happiness and home-made schnapps. Dora heard someone say that Aufsess and some of the senior officers were refusing to surrender. She wondered if he’d kill them all first. And List. Had he surrendered? She looked out of the window, saw British soldiers surrounding the hotel, knew the German game was up, as the bells pealed and the changes rang.