The verses swirled in her head. She knew the words off by heart, even now, after all those years. She walked along the landing, up and into the attics. Her fingers were shaky as she turned the door handle. She was all alone. What if the door slammed behind her and she couldn’t get out? No one knew she was here and her cries would not be heard. But something was drawing her in, churning flashbacks into compulsions. Come closer. The windows in here were unboarded and the sunlight filtered in, as it had always done. The cries of the soldiers evaporated into the past, but the smell of their wounds seeped into this dead air. The beds had long since gone, but the nurses’ office was still there, with its glass partitions. She could see her profile through the glass. Hoffmann. Nurse Hoffmann. Trude Hoffmann. The office was empty, the scales and instruments removed, the examination bed and medicine cabinet consigned away. The room was full of cardboard boxes.

Dora took out her cigarettes. This was where she had begun to smoke properly, whole cigarettes, real cigarettes. Senior Service. She could remember the day. And the time. It was in the evening, about six o’clock. 10 May 1945. The bells of St Nicholas in Greve d’Azette had been ringing all day, but they had stopped then. Gone to tea, the Tommy had said. He was a Geordie and Dora couldn’t understand him, not at first. He’d given her that first cigarette. He’d called it ‘a fag’. D’you fancy a fag then, pet? She’d had a twenty-a-day habit ever since. She took one out of its packet, placed it on her lips and fished around inside her bag for a match. Swan Vesta. She struck it against the coarse edge, lit her cigarette, tossed the match away as she walked towards the cardboard boxes with ‘Campbell’s Tomato Juice’ stamped on the side.

The boxes were unsealed. Dora pulled out long strands of tinsel and twisted paper chains, rolls of crêpe and folded tissue bells. Christmas decorations. Box after box. It was a big hotel. Every room would need to be decked out. The English did that at Christmas, made dull rooms gaudy, tasteful spaces cheap. Tawdry. They even ruined the majesty of a fir tree, hanging it with pink baubles and stringing coloured lights through the branches.

She sniffed. The match had set fire to a scrap of paper. Its edges were blackening and curling and small orange flames flickered towards the unburned centre. Dora watched it flare and die.

This room was so very different now, but its ghosts were tumbling in. Collette’s emaciated frame, Agnes’s jowls hanging like dewlaps on a cow. The faces of the young women and girls who had come and gone.

Hotel Maison Victor Hugo, Jersey: February 1944