Walter opened the window and leant out. There was a florist on the ground floor of his building, and the new air brought in a smell of lilies. When he turned his face was twisted. ‘Oh, Paul! My heart is breaking.’

‘Well,’ I said, shocked that I was being so cold, but I didn’t know why it was Walter who got to feel everything, ‘that’s the one thing you shouldn’t be surprised about.’

My tone led him back to anger. ‘Has she even apologised? For leading you one way and offering nothing the next?’

‘She didn’t lead me one way: I did it all on my own.’

‘Come on! Decency might permit her an apology. She took what she wanted without regard for anyone else. People have been hurt.’

‘Look, I don’t know what happened. They’ve fallen in love, and that may have been a mistake. I don’t think it’s as simple as just blaming Charlotte.’

‘She worked on him!’

‘Nonsense. She was helping.’

‘Think, Paul. It was her idea to pay Sommer off. There was nothing to help with; the trial was sorted from the Sunday when she first gave Sommer the money. It was just an opportunity to spend all that time with Jenö.’

‘Look, I don’t know about all this.’

‘You do! I’m telling you. Ask Irmi. She feels very bad for you. And she knows Charlotte hasn’t treated you right either. Ernst says the same thing.’

‘You told Ernst about all of this?’

‘Ernst knows a thing or two about heartbreak. Let me tell you that.’

‘Walter, don’t listen to Ernst.’

‘Why shouldn’t I? He has experience. He has lived.’

‘Ernst is not to be trusted. He hates the Bauhaus. Always has.’

‘Jenö’s a child,’ he said, and I wondered if these were Ernst’s words. ‘His attitudes haven’t quite left the nursery.’

Tears threatened. Poor Walter; an emperor of all things and nothing. Jenö had no need for him; Jenö was done. I remembered, then, Jenö’s expression as he had stepped over the threshold of the Swan: when he had looked to all the world like a free man with no past.

‘I can get anything; anything. But I can’t get what I want.’ Walter wiped a tear away but another came just as quickly.

‘There’s nothing we can do.’

‘Don’t you get bored,’ he spat, ‘with your own inertia?’

It was too late to get into all of this and so I said nothing.

‘Sometimes you’re so passive I think you might just implode.’

I stood and Walter leapt up too and held me by the shoulders. ‘How can you go around as if nothing has happened?’

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What would you have me do?’

‘Fight for something!’

‘There’s nothing left! We’re done. They have fallen in love!’