The day after the Ball the cafeteria was a battlefield of limbs and skyscrapers. There was an awful drilling noise, made worse by its intermittence, as the theatre department dismantled the slides that had brought everyone inside so fast. Inside the mood was apocalyptic, and disintegrating.

Walter wasn’t here; neither was Jenö. Charlotte was in dungarees and a shirt. Though she looked exhausted, I also knew she wasn’t high. No more the rampant sparkle in her eyes. No more the tranquillity to meet any situation. In fact, she looked anguished.

We hadn’t spoken yet. Not about what had happened at the bridge. Not about what had happened in Weimar. Not about Walter’s betrayal. I didn’t know how to broach it with her; nor whether she wanted consoling, or to be left alone.

No one had had much more than a few hours’ sleep. Everyone looked exhausted and a little sheepish at the night’s excesses. I guess we were all wondering how much trouble we were in, and it was safest to be seen industriously cleaning; it was rumoured the Director was on the warpath. I hoped both Walter and Jenö were hidden away in their bedrooms.

As I packed away skyscrapers and cars, every time I thought of what Walter had done I was newly shocked. He had betrayed not just his friends, but the whole school. Whether or not it had been Ernst’s poison dripped into his ear, Walter had still seen fit to do it: gather the numbers, gather the names, then pass them on to the Republik.

I wondered whether Ernst Steiner knew that that notebook was included in the shipped crate. Maybe he’d hoped one of Walter’s friends would find it. Probably, it had just been a mistake. Everything tipped into a box, and the courier had turned up in the middle of the night, and the padlock had been slipped to the old numbers.

Now I wondered whether Walter’s future at the Bauhaus was viable. How would he exist in this school with our knowledge of him plain? All summer he had written me those polite letters while his own morality had been crude and slippery. Love had set him so sour. Though I had thought of it – how I should like to push my knife against Jenö’s face – I knew I would never execute my revenge. And if it did get around the school, via Charlotte, Jenö or me, then surely it would leave Walter ostracised for ever. Not to mention if the Director himself heard of it, or any other member of staff.