Perhaps she could write to this Barbara Hummel and ask her why she wanted to trace Dora Simon. Could she do that without admitting who she was? I am in contact with Dora Simon (please note the correct spelling) who has requested me to ask you why it is you wish to trace her.

Enough. She was fine. Breathing normal, hands calm, crisis passed. There was nothing to this letter. She twisted it up again and put it in the bin. She pulled her shopping trolley out from the cupboard under the stairs, checked she had her purse and keys and looked into the hall mirror to make sure she looked presentable before she set off.

Since when had her hair become so white? It was still thick and wavy, but its rich summer colours had long turned to winter. Like an Arctic fox or a mountain hare. Perhaps she should colour it. Nothing too brash, too brassy. A rinse, perhaps, a soft shade that would tone in. Her crowning glory. She kept it in a bun now, away from her face, curls pulled flat and taut. It made her look strict, stand-offish.

‘People think you’re hard to get to know,’ Charles told her once. ‘Detached. Forbidding.’

‘Easy on the budget,’ she’d said. How could she afford a regular hairdresser on her pension from the university? She could have applied for promotion, but she’d never had the confidence. Been happy to stick at the top of her grade for her entire working life.

Her heart had died in the war, she knew that. Her body had lingered on, but the years had caught up with her now. She looked old. Would it suit her short? Release the curls? A good cut could last months. She sucked in her cheeks, turned to one side, looked at herself from the corner of her eye. It would take years off her.

She was rigid in her ways, she knew. Charles told her that all the time.

‘Plain stubborn.’

‘I have routines,’ Dora said. ‘They’re different.’

But she’d never had to adjust to anyone else, to accommodate their needs, not after Uncle Otto died.

She pulled on her rain hat, turned down the brim. Dora paused, eyeing the bin where the scrunched-up paper was. That letter was tugging her back into a place she thought she’d never have to visit again. It made her uneasy. She didn’t like to be discombobulated. Now that was a word. Worthy of German, in its way, with all those syllables. Tipped off balance. She’d kept a tight rein on her life since the war, but restraint was a flimsy prison, its bars soft as a spider’s web. No wonder she wanted to change her hair. Why not get a fake tan while she was about it? Or a facelift? Escape into somebody else. Was she really so forbidding?