‘I want to watch you.’ He dragged her down and wrapped her tightly in his arms.

‘I don’t want to go away,’ she said after a moment.

‘I don’t want you to go either. What about this Dieter? I seem to have moved him out.’

‘Oh, Dieter. Oh well, I don’t know. It was not like you with him, I just was like a friend, is it? Cooking … I make the flat pretty, so on. Fantastic. He was good to me, but you know he smokes too much, and “stuff”. He is not always quite all right.’

‘Was that what he was in Hamburg for. Ciggies?’

She suddenly thrust her head hard against his chest. He felt her shoulders shrug.

‘Was it, Leni? Ciggies and “stuff”?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was blurred. ‘Perhaps more than that.’

‘That’s bad.’

‘I know. I have seen. In Berlin I had two friends; they died. Amin was sixteen. He just went to lie down on a seat in the zoo, and piff! Just like that, he was dead. Also my friend Hannah, she is dead …’

‘Leni. You don’t handle “stuff”, do you? Swear?’

‘I swear.’ She pushed the bend of her arm close to his face.

‘You can see. No marks. None anywhere. Never, never, never.’

‘Because it is the worst thing,’ he said, ‘the very worst.’

‘I know.’

‘Is that what Dieter did? Bring it over to the Mayerling place, smuggle it in?’

She struggled out of his arms suddenly, put her own round him. ‘Don’t ask me these things. I don’t know. Please let me stay with you. I will be no trouble, you will see, I am very neat…’

‘All right.’

‘I can?’

‘If you like.’

‘But do you like?’

‘I do.’

‘I could only stay if you said so.’

‘I have said so. Just now. Saying it.’

‘Not the important thing. You haven’t said that.’

‘Oh Christ! What’s the code word? What do I have to say?’

‘I could only stay if I was … loved.’

‘How can I tell? I’ve only known you for twelve hours, for God’s sake.’

‘You do not have to swear at me all the time. I just asked. It is so simple.’

‘Saying a thing like that isn’t simple.’

‘It is very simple if you feel it.’

‘How do I know what I feel? It’s never happened to me before.’

Her eyes grew wide with astonished delight; she pressed the stubby fingers hard to her lips, whistled softly.

‘I am the first lady? Not possible.’

‘No. Not the first lady. But the first, well, it hasn’t happened like this before.’

‘Then you must love me! That is the sign. If it is the first time for you this way, then of course you do not know, but I can tell, women always can, and I can tell you that you love me. Now. Fantastic!’