I’d never been near Magdalena’s cabin in my whole life. I had no idea where to head for. I’d been into the woods many times to pick blackberries and elderflower and to take our old dachshund, Lili, for walks, but in my whole life I’d never gone beyond the point where the cinder path stopped and the dense middle part of the woods began. I don’t know how long I walked through the thick wood. It was dark and drizzling and even through the trees the drizzle came down onto my face and hands.

When I came to it there was no clearing and no garden, only a low wall that ran round the cabin; no gate in the wall, just an opening you had to walk through to get to the door. I knocked but there was no reply.

It was years since I’d thought about Magdalena Hirsch, let alone seen her, and I’d never heard of anyone ever coming out here to visit her.

I walked into a small sitting room with bare timbered walls, a plain wooden table and a single chair next to it. On the floorboards lay striped woven rugs, the kind people like my Oma used to make during the war out of torn-up rags. In the corner there was a fireplace with a neat pile of logs next to it, a scattering of ash and cinders in the grate. There was a bed, cupboards and pans that hung from hooks in the ceiling; an oblong sink on cast iron legs. In the sink there was a plate sprinkled with crumbs, a knife smeared with butter. A little water had been run on top of the plate and some of the crumbs were floating in it. The bed was neatly made and covered from head to foot with a rough wool blanket. Beneath the blanket, when I lifted it, I found her pillow in a white cotton slip, small and flat and square; a flowery eiderdown, silky and cold. On the wall there was a bamboo mirror with a narrow dresser beneath it and on top of the dresser there was a white cloth and on top of the cloth there was a black lacquered box with a lid, oval in shape and roughly the size of my fist.

I have taken out my heart and put it in a box where no more harm can ever come to it.

Magdalena’s words had terrified us all when we were children. The thought of her warm wet heart in its chilly little box, fluttering and beating beneath the lid like some small, frightened animal – it was like something out of Grimm.