She knelt on the pine boards between his thick legs, one hand on his knee. ‘You have so much courage, Horst. I pray for you and Isobel, and I don’t pray very much; do you think I will be listened to?’

‘If you mean it very strongly.’

‘Oh, I shall! I do. Everything I do, I do with strength, you know? Even this new life I am living, I do it with all my heart.’

‘Mamma said something about being an au pair girl. Is it true?’

‘No. For her it is true. I do all kinds of things. I manage.’

‘Even to sing! But you can’t?’

‘No! Awful. But I speak them mostly. My voice is so strained that I think I have nodules on the chords or something, you know? Very German, very nostalgic. When I left here that was the only part of my “heritage” that I took with me, you see? Those terrible “concerts”, all those songs. I knew them by heart. So some good has come out of them, I suppose.’

He cupped her face in his broad hand. ‘You are mad, you know: completely mad.’

‘Oh, I know! And it is so marvellous!’

‘You chide us for being dull and unoriginal, of conforming, of living in the past, and yet there you go, trotting down the path of predictability as happy as an untethered goat!’

‘But that is the whole point, don’t you see? I am happy, and I am untethered!’

‘You are also a goat; a dear goat, but nevertheless a goat. What is so unusual and original about your life! What is so extraordinary? Working in cheap bars and managing, as you call it. I can make a pretty shrewd guess what that means, can’t I?’

She shrugged, rubbed a foot. ‘If you like.’

‘All people of your age today are the same. All chasing after some ill-defined form of freedom. You don’t even know what it is! You think that we are the dull conformers, but you are exactly the same. You conform all the time. The pattern is the same, although our standards are different, but it all comes down to the same thing in the end, conforming. You break the rules, we hold to them for sense and stability; you hate the past, we cling to it for strength; you dress in the same manner as the rest of your tribe, so that you will be easily recognized, so do we; you have a private language, as we do also. Your generation has made its rules, just as we have, but our rules are founded on experience, whereas yours are founded on hearsay. We have one thing equally in common, an uncertain future; we know it is uncertain, but you don’t even know if it is there at all, neither do you care. That is the only thing which sets you apart. We believe. You do not.’

‘I care! I do care! I care for my future. Mine!’