‘You know it as well as I do. We’re Jewish,’ she whispers urgently. ‘It’s not the same for us. Not any more.’

And finally, I have to face the truth that has been lurking inside me all along. The cold words hang heavy in the air around us. The words that are so similar to those I said to Leo and Max two years ago.

I want to argue, I want to laugh, I want to tell her she is being silly.

But in the end I don’t do any of those things because the truth is, I know that Greta is right. It’s not the same for us. Nothing is the same for us now.

LEO

I ran to the door to greet Mama. She’d been out all morning. She greeted me with a simple shake of her head and my heart deflated.

It was the same every day now. She would go from embassy to embassy, from one administrative task to the next, from one crushing disappointment to yet another.

I went with her sometimes. We would stand in long lines, edging slowly forward for hours on end, unable to leave the queue to get something to eat or drink or even visit the toilet for fear that we would lose our place. Finally, after many hours, we would get to the front. Mama would hold out the papers we had been told we needed in order to leave Austria and every single time our hopes would be dashed. There was always some reason they wouldn’t sign the papers, something we had done wrong, some tiny detail that made them send us away empty-handed.

One time, the official behind the desk didn’t even look up at us. We had queued from eight in the morning and it was now a minute before five.

‘We are closed,’ he said. ‘Come back tomorrow.’

‘Please sir, I have waited all day,’ Mama replied. ‘There is still one minute. I just need your signature. Surely you have time to do that for me? I am begging you.’

The man slowly lifted his head. He looked Mama in the eyes. For a second, I let myself believe he would do what she asked. Why wouldn’t he? It was the simplest of requests.

‘I am a slow writer,’ he replied with a cruel laugh. ‘Now get out and do not make me repeat myself again or you will regret it.’

He went back to his paperwork and we shuffled out of the office and walked home in silence.