In her memory, the space had been bigger. Time did that, played tricks. Now it had shrunk, was small and shoddy. Seedy, even. The stucco walls were stained with blotches of mould which crept up from the ground, the paintwork on the windows flaking, a dull, dead green. Some of the panes were broken, and the courtyard was filled with shards of glass, broken wood and old cardboard boxes. Plastic bags had drifted into the corners and sweet wrappings littered the ground. Dora guessed the rubbish had been thrown over the wall. A buddleia straggled close to a drainpipe and weeds had sprung up through the spaces between the cobbles. It used to be spotless, swept twice a day, the mould scrubbed clean and whitewashed away. It was hard to remember it now with the women lined up and the soldiers shouting out the numbers. Hard to remember how the square itself had taken on a life, had domineered and threatened.

Dora walked forward. A block of plywood had been nailed across the windows of the kitchen doors. It was rotting round the edges. Dora prised it free with the car keys. The glass panes beneath had been shattered. Dora put her hands through the gap, felt for the bolt, released it. The door swung open and Dora stepped down inside. The smell of must and damp, the fungal emptiness of the building, made her cough.

The kitchens were dark. They always had been, half below ground and overshadowed by the buildings in the courtyard. The little natural light they owned was now covered up and the day came through in the cracks and chinks. Dora waited for her eyes to adjust. The equipment had gone, the pots and pans, the cookers and cupboards. The quarry tiles on the floor were stained and littered, like the yard, with broken glass and scraps of paper. There were a couple of old wooden tea chests in the corner. To her left would be the dormitory with its stacks of bunks and the stench of drains. To her right, the boiler room. Opposite, the steep steps up to the interior of the building. Dora climbed them and pushed open the green baize door, into the hall.

The chequered marble floor needed a scrub. Her heels clicked as she crossed it, echoed in the hollow house. The vast oak staircase was still there, though the balustrades were dull and dusty, the ruby carpet threadbare on the tread, the stair rods covered in verdigris. To her left was the officers’ bar, where she’d first heard the words of ‘Lili Marleen’ being played on the gramophone.