Tilsner and the other man started to release the stay ropes. The balloon pitched left and right, as though it was going to topple. As the last rope was released, and the balloon slowly started to climb, Jäger lifted himself back out, and jumped to the ground. Müller’s final view of the Stasi Oberstleutnant was of him clutching his son, sobbing. She dreaded to think what was going to happen to him. He’d decided to stay at the last moment, couldn’t leave without his son, but how would he keep this all under wraps? Tilsner, Müller and the twins were not in a much better position – this attempt had to work. Otherwise they would either die making it, or be jailed for a very long time – and Müller would certainly have the twins taken away from her, and probably sent back to the sports school where they were filling older children like Jens with drugs.

She only hoped that Jens would recognise that, if his father was willing to drag him away from not just his sporting dreams but from his home and everything he knew, then he must have very good reason. That he was trying to save them both from a future not worth living. Could she have convinced the twins of as much, if they were Jens’s age? It didn’t bear thinking about.

The balloon was climbing steadily now. She wasn’t sure how Tilsner was steering it – perhaps he was just trusting to the winds. They were lucky they’d picked a night when northerlies were forecast, because – although they were heading for ‘the West’ – the state border here with the BRD, by a quirk of geography, meant they had to travel to the south to cross it.

She felt a mixture of terror, elation, trepidation and regret. Terror that they might not survive at all, or that they might miscalculate, and land back in the Republic. Elation because – finally – she would be a free woman, and hopefully her children would grow up in a free country, able to travel where they wanted with few, if any, restrictions. Trepidation because she didn’t know what they would do in the BRD, how they would survive, and whether she and Tilsner would still be a partnership, however part-time. Regret because, well, she’d shared the dream for most of her life. A dream she still believed in. A dream of a fairer, more just society, where the best health care, the best education, the best living conditions weren’t just a result of how much money you earned. And now she was abandoning it, and there were no guarantees that where she was heading, life would be better.

As she thought all this, she realised the balloon had settled. Tilsner was only occasionally opening the burners to top it up with heated air to maintain their height. Finally, her heartbeat started to calm.