We took the streetcar to the Spree and watched the steamboats on the river. The water was a set of moving tiles, all slates and greens and boat oil rainbowing its surface. I held her close as we walked in the bright day. We looked out to the coffee houses and theatres on the other side of the riverbank, then we walked to Friedrichstrasse Station. At the War Academy there were still glass cases nailed to the walls so that the names of the dead wouldn’t blur in the rain. We’d had the same building in Dresden: I remember watching women gather every Friday when there was a list of new men dead. In Dresden, there’d been no escape: the schools, the library, the hospital, the assembly halls: all of the city had been turned into barracks. At night you could hear the gun drills and in the mornings you could hear the men marching, and I was convinced as a boy that I was on my way to join them, that very soon I’d be minced into French fields, and that I’d return as a name to be pinned in the glass case, then found by my mother, her eyes already dampened in the long walk over.

I had saved up twenty marks to buy Charlotte a gift for Christmas, and Rosenberg’s windows were done ex travagantly. Mannequins were dressed in silks; the men in evening suits of black velvet. In another display there were several bits of Biedermeier furniture, and a string of cut mirrors reflecting the better off, saved from the wind by mufflers and fur. All that was needed was one of Steiner’s oil paintings to finish off the scene.

But it was easy to see that Rosenberg’s situated its most expensive things up front. Inside, the stock was discounted, and labels were cut two or three times the original price. We went up a floor to men’s outfitting. Charlotte at the best of times could pass as a boy; especially today, in her ulster and wool trousers. It was her slim neck and hands that most often gave her away.

There were several smart businessmen in the men’s section, some being measured up for a new suit, others buying items off the peg. Seeing them there, looking as old-fashioned as the Kaiser, gave me a bounce in my step to know we were so different. I had that feeling, as one gets near a precipice, of baseless joy; that the world – or at least Rosenberg’s department store – was ours for the taking. A hangover sometimes lent me a bigger sense of bounty than the situation gave.

We walked over to the scarves; there was a silk one I’d had my eye on. Charlotte wasn’t interested, though, and decided on a shirt with an Oriental collar instead. ‘Are you sure you can afford it?’