I was too shocked, and too hungover, to feel much grief that my friend had been a traitor. I hadn’t yet worked out the consequences for me as well as Charlotte: that this, too, would be the end for us. I thought of Walter last night in the snowy park and his ridiculous feet, bright as boiled ham. There was something disgusting and revelatory about those pink naked feet.

As I heaped metal scrap into sacks I began to feel the bitterness that had so gripped Charlotte last night. What a foul thing this school was! How absurd was everything we did here, how hotel-like our existence! Irmi was right; we had overstayed ourselves. Walter’s treachery was only part of how rank it had all become: the groping after one another, the shallow performances, these costumes of useless junk. It all had to go.

On a ladder Josef began to pull down the metal moons. He looked better than the rest of us, his hair scraped back, his white shirt clean against his slacks. Anni didn’t look like she was suffering too badly either; they’d probably had twice as much sleep as the rest of us.

‘What happened last night?’ she said, a miniature skyscraper in her hands. ‘Josef met Charlotte near the showers. He said she was raving about Walter betraying her.’

‘It’s some old Weimar business,’ I said blandly. ‘When things went wrong.’

Anni was pulling the skyscraper apart. ‘He said she was freezing cold, like ice. He took her to Jenö’s room.’ Anni looked at Charlotte, who had the illusionless expression of someone newly sober. ‘But Jenö wouldn’t have her. In so many words, he told her to go away.’

We watched as Charlotte put on her coat and left by the main steps, just as she had done early this morning. Anni wasn’t a gossip, but she also knew that her friend’s reserve would make it impossible to talk to her directly. ‘Are they still together?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’

Anni had finished flaking the building down to nothing. Michiko pulled the foil ribbons, and Otti stood waiting to collect them. As I followed Charlotte for the second time that day, Otti touched my arm. ‘Is Charlotte all right?’

How carefree our dancing last night had been, when for a second I had believed I was in love with Otti Berger. I wished I still was. ‘Not really.’

‘You’ll tell me if she wants to talk?’

I told Otti I would, and went outside, pulling the sack with me. There had been a fresh snowfall this morning: the trees were bright with it, and the brightness made my eyes sting.

A scrap man was loading his horse-drawn cart. ‘What were you doing in there?’ he said. ‘Building an aeroplane?’

‘Right,’ I said, sickness rising in me, ‘exactly.’

A raised voice came from around the side of the building.