According to my phone it’s only a ten-minute walk from the station to the address on Julia’s letter. I dither for a minute and then walk under the railway bridge. Soon I’m in what appears to be the town centre. A river of milky turquoise water rushes between two streets, the railings sporting flowerboxes spilling yellow and pink and orange. I lean over the rail, watching the torrent below. Glacial meltwater probably, travelling who knows where on its long journey from the mountains I see in the distance far above. I wonder what it would be like to jump in and be carried along, unable to go anywhere but where the water takes me. No decisions, no responsibility, entirely in the hands of the current transporting me on its inevitable path.

My eyes start to blur from the movement of the water and I pull back from the railing. I know I don’t have that luxury. I have to actually make a decision and I suppose I know what that decision is going to be. I’ve come this far, after all.

Hopfenweg is a quiet residential street flanked by large detached houses with red tiles on the roofs and coloured wooden shutters. There’s no traffic and I walk in the middle of the road, scouring the letterboxes for house numbers. I find thirty-one easily. It’s a large cream house with red shutters and a wooden front door below a porch with a little pointed roof. I switch off my brain before it can start an argument in my head, step up to the door and ring the bell.

The woman who opens it looks to be in her fifties. She’s wearing jeans and a green T-shirt, with clearly dyed dark brown hair and red-framed glasses. She says a word in German that I couldn’t possibly replicate and smiles, her face open, curious.

I suddenly haven’t a clue what to say. ‘Hello,’ I start, and she cocks her head, waits. ‘Do you speak English?’

The woman hesitates. ‘A little.’

‘I, um…’ I feel heat creeping into my cheeks. ‘Are you Frau Meier?’

She shakes her head. ‘No, perhaps you have the wrong house.’ She starts to shut the door.

‘Oh, er, wait, please,’ I say. ‘Do you know if someone called Anna Meier used to live here?’

She looks at me blankly and shrugs. ‘We have lived here for ten years. I do not remember who lived here before us.’

‘Right.’ All the anticipation of potentially finding something out falls away and I feel the tension in my chest dissolve into disappointment.

The woman looks at me. ‘Are you okay?’