As I sat in the darkness, my thoughts flashed to Elsa. Where was she now? Our contact had been less and less frequent, and I hadn’t heard from her at all since Hitler had moved into Czechoslovakia. Every day, I woke with worries in my mind, carried them around with me all day and took them to bed with me at night – and Elsa was always high on my list, beside Papa. I just hoped things weren’t as bad in Prague as they were in Vienna.

Max still came into my thoughts too, but I didn’t worry so much about him. I hadn’t heard from him at all since he’d left for Munich even though I had written to him many times. He’d managed to slip me his new address before they left. I guessed he was too busy to reply. I hoped that was the reason. I refused to torture myself by imagining other possibilities. Besides, he wasn’t Jewish, so I hoped that meant he was safe, although who knew any more.

I tried to make myself comfortable on the floor. I was next to the cage with the dog in it. I named him Benji. Through the holes in his basket, I stroked his golden hair. He stopped crying and snuffled his nose into my hand, wagging his tail softly against the side of the cage.

Finally, the train came to a standstill and we could hear doors being opened. Our carriage didn’t have a window so we couldn’t be sure what was going on. But the train had been still for a while and we could hear voices on the platform.

We got up and dusted ourselves down. ‘Thank you for sharing the journey,’ Mama said to our new friends. She and Kizzy hugged while Mairik reached out to shake my hand.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

Next thing we knew, the door was flung open. The daylight was blinding and I covered my eyes.

A guard reached in and grabbed my arm. ‘Come,’ he said.

Mama and I followed him out of the carriage, along the platform to a building where others were lining up. We joined them in the queue. It happened too quickly for me to see what the guards had done with Kizzy and Mairik and their baby.

‘Excuse me,’ Mama said to a couple in front of us. ‘Where are we, please?’

The couple turned around. I recognized them from the carriage we’d been dragged out of at the start of the journey. The woman sniffed and made a face at us before very deliberately reaching into her pocket for a tissue which she then used to cover her nose.

The man said, ‘Customs,’ before putting an arm around his wife as they both turned away.

‘We’re just Jewish,’ I mumbled under my breath. ‘Don’t worry, you can’t catch it.’