He let go of her chin. She carried on staring at the floor while the general continued to dress. At least she had tried. He had probably suspected that the place was an SD outfit, but that wasn’t going to stop him sampling its delights. Kitty’s had a reputation for being the best in Berlin.

“Right,” said the general, now dressed, “I’m leaving now.”

She looked up, a teasing grin on her face.

“Not even a kiss goodbye for your little Leni?”

He looked embarrassed. Good—she had got the upper hand again. Instead, he bent forward and clicked his heels together.

“Goodbye, Fräulein.”

Fuck his formality. He couldn’t just screw her and then pretend they had spent the last half hour making social chitchat at a reception. She didn’t lift her head up, only her hand, as if to wave him goodbye and dismiss him at the same time.

She lay like that for many minutes, just gazing at the pattern on the Persian rug, following its swirls. Mother and Father had a similar rug, although not as sumptuous as this one. Her twin brother, Heinrich, used to lie on it, using its patterns as a bizarre road system for his wooden cars. He hated it when she joined in, as she would want to make the cars have hideous crashes, sometimes damaging their fragile frames.

Poor Heinrich, gentle Heinrich, dear Heinrich. She used to love to tease him, saying that he was the girl and she was the boy. And at eighteen, when he had gone off to fight in France, she had been jealous, saying that he would be a hopeless soldier; she would be a better one—much stronger, much braver. But all that came back from France was a 2nd Class Iron Cross and a swastika flag. Gentle Heinrich had actually been very brave Heinrich, knocking out two French machine-gun emplacements until a third one had claimed him. They put the medal in a glass box, and hung it next to Father’s 2nd Class Iron Cross from the first war. At one point during the tears, Father had worked out that Heinrich must have won his medal about five miles from where he had won his.

And so, until November 1942, they were the average German family, with their share of loss and hardship. Leni had started her law course at Dresden, and was seeing Paul. Father carried on working as a civil servant, and Mother did volunteer work to help with the war effort. And then came the visit they had long feared, their guilty little secret that they had kept well hidden to allow Heinrich to join the army and Leni to become a student. Their war-hero father, who had fought so bravely for the Fatherland, was in fact nothing more than a Jew.