Elsa wasn’t usually very good at the game. She wasn’t like Max and Leo. She was a girl, after all. They were made of sugar and spice and all things nice. They didn’t have it in them to play tricks.

Whenever she tried to trick them she ended up giggling almost straight away.

She wasn’t giggling today, though.

Even so, she wasn’t going to win any points off Max. What she’d just said was too ridiculous to believe even for one second.

He plonked himself down on the bench and leaned back. ‘You nearly had me there for a minute,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Elsa asked. Her voice was all quiet and tinny. Oh, she was playing a blinder today.

‘Saying you were leaving Vienna. I nearly believed you.’

‘It’s true,’ Elsa insisted. Her voice was getting smaller and smaller every time she spoke. ‘We’re going on Saturday.’

‘But – but—’ Max’s thoughts were moving too fast for his words to keep pace. Something horrible was coming towards him from the back of his mind. A voice he didn’t want to hear – a voice that sounded like his father’s – was saying: You know this, Max. You know it is true.

He refused to listen. ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ he insisted. ‘Your religion isn’t a reason to leave Vienna!’

Elsa shrugged. ‘My parents say maybe it is.’

Max clutched at the only straw he had left. ‘But you’re not even properly Jewish! You don’t even go to church!’ he said.

‘Synagogue,’ Leo mumbled.

‘Synagogue, then,’ Max went on. ‘Your mother doesn’t wear a wig, your father doesn’t wear one of those little hats. You don’t pray differently. Even if your parents are right, how would anyone even know you are Jewish?’

‘What about my family?’ Leo asked Elsa. ‘We go to synagogue. We say Shabbat prayers every Friday night. My parents haven’t said it’s dangerous.’

Elsa spread her arms out in a helpless shrug. ‘Look, I don’t know. I don’t think it matters how much we pray or if we go to synagogue. We are Jewish and my parents say that means we have to leave.’

Max stared at his friend. For the first time, he noticed her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Was it really true? She was leaving? ‘And you’re really going this Saturday?’ he asked.

Elsa nodded. As she did, her eyes went all glassy.

‘But your parents are mad!’ Max looked at his other friend, desperate for one of them to stop that voice in the back of his mind from coming any closer. ‘Leo, tell her. What’s being Jewish got to do with anything? How can being Jewish be dangerous?’