The feeling Papa’s letter had planted inside me kept me warm all day. It made me kick the ball harder, pass it better. It meant I ran around the pitch with my hands in the air, whooping at the top of my voice when I scored a goal.

It even meant that afterwards, when we finished with football and were playing soldiers instead, I didn’t mind being the German this time – even when I got shot in the middle of a ‘Heil Hitler!’ salute.

It was only a game, after all. We were just having fun. I was with my friends. It was a good day.

ELSA

It’s a Saturday morning in late November when they come for us.

We know them quite well by now. The Judenrat. The Jewish Council. They visit us at least every month, checking we are all okay, we have enough food to survive and so on. The Nazis chose them to do their dirty work – and, like us, they were powerless to say no. In their way, they are no luckier than we are. Especially on days like today when they have come to give us bad news.

They know as well as we do that they could so easily be the next ones to receive such news. They know as well as we do how dispensable they are to the Nazis. They know as well as we do that sending them to do this work on a Saturday – a religious day for Jewish people – is the Nazis’ way of making them the butt of their fun as much as it’s about reminding us how few rights over our lives we have now.

Greta is in our apartment and we are sitting together, brushing each other’s hair with a tiny brush that her mother brought with them when they moved here.

‘Your hair is so beautiful,’ Greta says as she carefully brushes through the matted, knotted mess: the result of never having any shampoo to wash it.

I laugh. ‘Beautiful? This knotty mop?’

She tugs at a knot. ‘Your beautiful red hair is the only thing in this whole tenement block that isn’t grey!’ she insists.

‘That and the dreaded stars,’ I say. Since September, all Jews have had to wear a yellow star on their clothes. I wear it, but I hate it.

Greta shudders. ‘Let’s not think about them,’ she says quickly. ‘Let’s think about your hair instead. It’s my favourite thing.’

‘My hair is your favourite thing?’ I laugh.

Greta stops brushing and comes round to stand in front of me. ‘Actually, no. You are my favourite thing, Elsa,’ she says. Her eyes burn darkly into me. ‘Alongside my parents, you are the best thing in my life. You know that, don’t you?’