He stopped on the broad landing. There were two doors to two apartments and a further staircase rising to higher floors. Reason told him that Miriam’s flat was the one on his right because he knew from her letters that her front window looked out over the street. The door was intact and closed. This felt like the place she would have lived; he had never been here, but she had written to him often, and he felt that he knew her home intimately, for her prose was vivid and detailed. And yet the name on the door was Ganzen, not Rabinowitz. Had they changed their name out of fear, perhaps pretending that they were not Jews?

He stood outside the door for a full minute, his resolve deserting him. In battle, he had never experienced fear, only an overpowering hunger to avenge his family. He had never cared whether he lived or died. Now he was afraid of what he would find, or wouldn’t. His hand went to the inside pocket of his jacket and touched the slim wallet holding her photograph and her last letter to him. This was crazy. Surely she couldn’t be here? He combed his fingers through his hair, pulled back his shoulders and knocked.

*

He had met Miriam in the summer of 1937, when both families were on walking holidays in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. They hadn’t known each other but, by chance, the families were in the same beautiful hotel in the shadow of the white-capped Jungfrau, and they were both Jewish. Importantly, both their fathers were medical men, so when the restaurant manager called out at supper on the first night ‘Please, is there a doctor in the house?’ two hands went up, and the fathers looked at each other and smiled.

The need for a doctor was not life threatening – a sous-chef had scalded his arm – but the incident enabled the two families, the Hecks and the Rabinowitzes, to meet. They all hit it off straightaway, particularly Miriam and Mozes, who were both fourteen.

From that day on, Mozes Heck and Miriam Rabinowitz spent every waking hour together for two glorious, sun-filled weeks. They had much in common; he was strong and clever; she was pretty and clever. They made each other laugh.