But it didn’t slow down. Instead, it whistled several more times, and raced through the station. It was a goods train, carrying wagon upon wagon of—what? Lockhart looked at the small slits at the top of each truck. They were covered with barbed wire. It was only when the seventh or eighth wagon had gone past that he realized that the white shapes in the slits were faces.

“Jews!” someone shouted.

“Bye-bye, Jews!”

“Have a nice trip!”

This caused a lot of laughter.

Lockhart and Leni watched in silence. He had heard about this, seen it in reports back in London, but nothing could have prepared him for the actuality. They were treating them like cattle on their way to slaughter. The train must have been thirty wagons long—enough for about two thousand of them, two thousand people, two thousand lives that were about to be worked to death, two thousand lives about to be extinguished. He hated everyone on that platform, despised those who had laughed. He wanted to round them all up and make them endure days on end in wagons whose insides were coated with the effluence of their fellow passengers, many of whom would perish before the journey’s end. He knew that to reciprocate hatred wasn’t the answer, but how could he feel anything else? These were the people, this jeering mob of savages, who had taken away his wife, killed her, and with it had killed a part of him.

Since she had arrived, 10678 had been tempted every day to go into the woods. It would be so easy, and once there, she could stay forever. There would be no more camp, no more work, no more pain. She imagined that he was there too, hiding somewhere among the trees, calling out for her, looking for her. And he would find her in a small clearing, find her and Amy building a pile of cones.

“These cones are meant to be you, Daddy,” Amy would say to him, and he would run forward and take them in his arms, lift them both off the ground, letting their feet kick the air in excitement. And they would stay like that for hours, just hugging and kissing and crying, being together, being a little family, a little family safe in the woods, safe from the world outside.

She hated herself, hated herself for leaving them. She had been impetuous, but she had to save her mother—it wouldn’t have been right just to have left her to the invaders. It had to be worth the risk, and even though he didn’t understand that, she knew she had to do it. It would only take a week, just one short week. After all, she said to him, they had been apart for far longer.