Dora rummaged in the drawer for the corkscrew, reached up to the shelf for two glasses. No. She’d use the best. Bohemian crystal. Uncle Otto had bought them on the black market on a trip he’d made to Prague.

‘Shall we sit outside?’ Barbara said.

‘Why not?’

They threaded their way down the steps and across the lawn, placed two fine flutes on the table, and a bowl of olives. Dora opened the wine, poured. She raised a glass, and Barbara did too, smiling at each other, like old acquaintances, Dora thought.

‘May I ask you another question?’ Barbara said.

Now Dora wished she hadn’t invited Barbara to stay. She’d be happy with chit-chat, Do you have anything planned for the weekend? Are you going on holiday this year? Of course Barbara wanted to carry on dredging up the past. Why else would she accept the invitation? Perhaps, Dora thought, she was asking for this. Deep down, was her unconscious grateful for Barbara’s questions? Imprisoned by memory, hammering to be set free. That was a shocking thought, that she welcomed Barbara’s probing. Dora felt small beads of sweat break out on her forehead. That hadn’t happened since the change, and Dora wasn’t sure why she felt so agitated.

‘You said you’d seen my mother on the island. Do you know when she left?’

Dora bit her lip, felt something stir deep inside, as if a slumbering volcano was taking a stretch, a yawn, working its way to erupt. ‘As I said, I didn’t know her. I’d see her riding her bike, in her uniform. I really didn’t notice when she went,’ she said.

‘But approximately? Was it in the spring or the summer of 1944?’

‘No one could come or go after the summer,’ Dora said. ‘The island was under siege.’

‘I forgot. Was it the spring?’

Dora had lost track of time, dates jumbled and jumped. 1944. 1945. She wasn’t even sure about the seasons, at least, not the in-between seasons, those days when winter and spring fought it out. What had the weather been like? It was cold. They’d had Christmas, because she remembered thinking what an extravagance it was, to have a tree, when they were short of firewood. Or was that the year after? Was it the Christmas before, the time List sent her to work in the Revier? When had he given her the soap?

‘I can’t think,’ Dora said.

‘Please try,’ Barbara said. ‘It is so important.’

‘Why?’

‘My mother showed up in Hamburg in August 1944,’ she said. ‘Frau List thought the baby was about six months old. That makes sense. But my mother doesn’t look pregnant in the photograph with List that I showed you.’

‘Sometimes women don’t show much,’ Dora said, especially, she thought, the fleshy ones.

‘Hmm,’ Barbara said. ‘Not in my experience.’

Dora laughed, took a sip of wine. ‘You are a midwife?’