She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her since I was eight years old. And the people who took me never came to see me, to tell me how she was. I couldn’t even send a letter. I once asked Franziska for a stamp, but she told me it was best if I didn’t write. I don’t know why. But I never gave up hope that I would see her again, some day. I just needed to get out of there – and now I have. As soon as I’m married, I’ll go back and find her.’

‘Did you think about running away before?’

‘Every day,’ Anna replied. ‘But I couldn’t go back home, the authorities would just take me again. I had no money, I was underage. I thought if they caught me then I might be sent somewhere worse. I’d heard stuff at school about places where they sent disobedient kids – horrible places. I couldn’t risk it.’

‘And then you got pregnant.’

Anna nodded, smiling. ‘The baby saved me. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

Sylvia exchanged a glance with Evelyne. She knew her friend didn’t share that view, that she felt Daniel’s life had been curbed by this pregnant girlfriend, that Anna’s would also be curbed, when she had a baby to care for. This is why there should be easier access to contraception, Evelyne had railed before they arrived at the flat.

‘Daniel hardly even spoke to me until I was fifteen,’ Anna said. ‘Then one day he defended me when Herr Buchs was telling me off about something – I forget what, he told me off so often I stopped listening. But this time Daniel stood up for me, and he took a beating for it. That’s when we became friends, and everything was so much better after that. I wanted us to run away together, but he wouldn’t, even though he hated his father. He couldn’t bear to leave his mother there alone, he said. But when I discovered I was pregnant we both knew he had no choice. We’d have to leave.’ Anna put her hand on her stomach. ‘So the baby saved me, you see. It saved both of us.’

Sylvia took a deep breath. It pained her, what the girl had been through. How little love she’d had in her life, how little help. And she knew, after hearing her story, how much Anna wanted the new being growing inside of her. She thought of her own baby and hoped she would somehow manage to feel the same.

‘Danke,’ Sylvia said, when the questions came to an end, and they both smiled at her attempt at German. She would send Anna a copy of the article when it was published.

‘Brigitte,’ Anna said suddenly, as though the thought had only just occurred to her.

‘What?’ Evelyne said.