Just as it was safer to lock his memories, his thoughts and his feelings in a dark place deep down inside him, and throw away the key.

ELSA

We’ve arrived. After what feels like days inside this cattle truck, at last the train stops. The engines have been turned off and our door is opened.

My eyes are assaulted by the daylight and I cover them with my arm as we are ordered to get out of the truck and line up.

Vati and Otto are sent to a queue on the other side of the platform, dragged away so rapidly we don’t even have time to say goodbye.

Guards are everywhere. ‘Stand here. You, over there. Move quickly.’ They pull us by our arms, dragging us into lines.

‘Leave your cases here,’ one of the guards orders, pointing to the edge of the platform. ‘They will be brought to you later.’

We leave our cases where they tell us. A group of men are already coming down the platform to collect them.

A flicker of something comforting arises in my belly. They have people to collect our cases for us? Wherever we are, this place can’t be too bad.

The men push through the crowds to collect our bags. As they come towards us, one of them suddenly stops walking – just briefly. He starts again. He’s looking straight at me. Why is this man staring at me?

There is something familiar about him. I can’t place him. He is bald, his face is like a grey mask with dark hollow cheeks, a striped suit hanging limply off his frame. I have never seen this man before. And yet, I know him. I am sure of it.

He’s walking towards me. Before I have time to be scared or try to run away, his mouth is next to my ear. ‘Elsa, it’s me,’ he says, his voice gruff and urgent. ‘Leo’s father.’

I gasp out loud. I can’t help myself.

‘Shush!’ he instructs me sharply. Then he talks quickly. ‘Listen. This is important. You are seventeen,’ he says.

‘I’m not,’ I reply. Has he forgotten I am the same age as Leo? He can’t have forgotten how old his own son is, can he?

Leo. Is he here? Is the whole family here? Despite everything, a sliver of hope worms its way inside me.

Mr Grunberg shakes his head. ‘You are seventeen!’ he repeats. ‘When they ask. You are seventeen.’

Before I have time to ask who he means by ‘they’ or why he is telling me to lie, or if Leo is here, he has turned and gone, and taken my sliver of hope with him. The hope was a lie, anyway. I don’t want Leo to be here. I don’t want any of us to be here.