She sat hunched in the corner, holding her knees close to her chest, rocking. This soldier was her friend, but the other soldiers had eyed her up and down, spat it out, Common whore. Go with anyone for a bob. They didn’t believe what she told them, that she’d been forced to sleep with the Germans. It wasn’t part of war. War was to do with soldiers. Women went with soldiers, the loose ones, that was. The ones without any self-respect, any shame. We know your type, hanging round Arthur’s Hill or the quays in Gateshead. She was alone. She alone had survived. She’d been found wanting, had betrayed all around her. What was the peace for, if not a reckoning? She wanted to wail, to scream, so the laments drilled deep and seeped from her body, keening as she breathed. The war was over. But there was nothing to live for, no one left in her world.

‘Now, off you go,’ the soldier was saying. ‘Get some sea air. Do you the world of good.’

He spoke to her like a child, and Dora was as shaky as one, but he held her hand and led her to the door, pushed her forward and shut the door behind her with a smile.

‘You’ll be fine, like, pet.’

She was wearing a cotton frock that came from the Red Cross. It was too large and flowed over her body. She had new sandals too, that made blisters on her little toes. No matter. She stepped out of the building, walking free. Nervous. Excited. Strange. Take it easy. One step at a time. She hoped she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew. What could she tell them? She wouldn’t go far. Just to the slipway, and back.

She crossed the road, the sea on her left. The beaches were off limits, even though the Germans were clearing the mines. Three or four men, still in their Wehrmacht uniforms, were sweeping the sands with what the sergeant said were called mine detectors. Others were dismantling the barbed-wire barricades. Dora flinched as she saw them. Remembered. They were the prisoners now. They couldn’t hurt her. Dora wondered how long it would be before everything had gone. She walked slowly, breathing deep. She’d be leaving in a few days, once the paperwork and the visa came through from Uncle Otto – oh, the relief that he was alive – and the Home Office. The beach was unlikely to be cleared before then. She longed to swim in the sea, to dive through the waves, taste the salt, feel the waters purge her, inside and out. Geoffrey had been with her the last time she’d sauntered like this. A different world.