‘It will only be for a short while,’ Mutti says. ‘Just till all of this passes over. You’ll be back in no time.’

‘Can I tell Greta?’ I ask.

‘No!’ Vati is firm. ‘We can’t let anyone know that you are going. We all carry on as normal until I get word of the date you will leave. When that comes, we will all travel to the train station after nightfall. We have papers for you already. It is all organized. You will go to Holland and then get a boat to England. You will be looked after every step of the way. There are good people out there who will make sure you are safe.’

Mutti tries to smile at us both. ‘And then, when everyone is sick and tired of Hitler and it is safe to come back home, we will collect you,’ she says. I know she is trying her hardest to convince us that everything will be fine. And because I can’t bear to see her trying so hard to hide her sadness, I give in.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’ll do it.’

Otto half-shrugs, half-nods. ‘We understand,’ he says.

But I know he’s lying just like I am. We all are. How could any of us understand that our lives are really in so much danger that Otto and I have to travel to another country, one where our parents aren’t even allowed to follow?

I’ll do it. I’ll go. But I refuse to understand – because that would mean accepting the reality of what our lives have become. And I’m not prepared to do that.

LEO

I couldn’t stop staring at the document in my hand. ‘Is it real?’ I asked Mama. ‘We can truly leave Austria?’ I didn’t want to let myself hope. Just that day, we’d been spat at twice while we waited in the street to be seen. And on the way home I’d been tripped up by a boy walking the other way, just to make his friends laugh. And they did.

People laughed at us every day now. They called us names whenever they saw us. They delighted in letting us know our place in Nazi-run society.

Not that we needed reminding.

Our place was at the bottom of the heap. Nothing came below the Jews.

‘It’s real,’ Mama insisted as she took a chair into her bedroom. ‘Here, help me reach the cases.’

I followed her into her room and held the chair while she climbed up to reach the shelf at the top of her wardrobe. She pulled down two cases. We were allowed one each. One case each to fit our whole lives into. That was it.