Lotti’s family weren’t very happy about us going early and said we’d have to pay anyway, which started a right old ding dong. In the end, we just left very early without telling them, disappearing into the night. I think Dad just left the money for the days we’d stayed and not a pfennig more, and then we caught a very early train to Dresden, where Father managed to change all the return tickets for an earlier date. Every time a policeman or official came near us, Mum was frightened they were going to arrest us for bunking off from the hotel early. That just created more arguments, so the atmosphere was like ice all the way back to England.

I’d been hoping we might have the chance to spend a night in London to see the Tower and the other sights, but no – it was straight onto a train back to Hull once we reached London from Harwich.

All the time, all I could think of was Lotti. It was real love, I was sure.

As soon as I was back in my bedroom in Hull, I wrote a letter to her, but it took me a few weeks to work up the courage to actually send it. I didn’t really know how much the postage cost, so I just stole three of Father’s tuppenny stamps from his writing desk, stuck them all on, and then wrote ‘Par Avion’ on the envelope before grabbing my bike and cycling off to the letter box.

I knew from school that air mail was a fairly new thing. Maybe even a tanner wasn’t enough, even though it was more than my weekly pocket money, but I just hoped a friendly postman might help it on its way.

*

I’m astonished when, less than ten days later, I receive a letter postmarked Bad Schandau, covered in greeny-grey ‘Mit Luftpost’ stickers, and stamps in a similar colour showing Adolf Hitler’s head.

Mother hands it to me slightly furtively in the hall of our house in Pearson Park, just before I cycle off to school. ‘Don’t show your father. He doesn’t want to know anything more about Germany – wishes we never went there. Still less will he want to know you’re carrying on a correspondence with that girl.’ Then she winks. It’s our secret.

I wait till the mid-morning break at school, then hide away in one of the toilet cubicles and rip the flimsy envelope open. It’s so thin, it’s like tissue paper.