‘I was looking for the photograph so that I could destroy it,’ Max said evenly.

His father stared at him for a moment. The darkness in his eyes was like a black hole and Max thought he might be swallowed up in it for ever if he wasn’t careful. Finally, after an age, his father nodded again, then turned his back. ‘Come,’ he said sharply. ‘And bring the photograph.’

Still holding the photo, Max jumped up from his bed and followed his father out of the room.

At the door to the lounge, Mr Fischer hesitated. ‘Wait in there,’ he said, pointing into the room. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

Max waited as he heard his father enter his office, the room next to the lounge. In the silence, he held the photo so tightly his palm had begun to sweat. He forced himself not to look at it again.

A minute or two later, his father was back in the room. He had something in his hand. A huge bundle of paper, wrapped in string.

He held it out to Max. ‘Here, take these,’ he said.

Max took the bundle and turned it over in his hands. It was a pile of envelopes. There must have been twenty or thirty of them. But why…

‘Look at them,’ his father instructed, folding his arms as he watched Max’s face.

Max pulled out a couple of the envelopes – and immediately realized what they were. He knew that handwriting. He had sat next to the boy who formed those spindly letters every day at school in Vienna.

They were letters from Leo. Letters he had never received, never seen, never knew existed.

Max’s chest tightened as he fought the urge to rip the envelopes open and consume what was inside them.

He knew what was expected of him.

Feeling his father’s eyes pinning him to the spot, Max walked to the fire. He held the envelopes out. Hesitated. Took a breath.

‘Go on,’ his father said softly.

Max felt a tear sneaking into the corner of his eye. No. He wouldn’t let it out. He hardened his will. This was the challenge that would truly make him a man. This was his birthday gift from his father.

The memory of his old friends was the final thing he had to let go of. Once he had cut that tie, once he had proved that Hitler and the Nazi regime meant more to him than anything else, there would be nothing in his way. He could give himself in his heart, body, mind and spirit to the party and his country – and once he’d done that, he knew he could conquer anything.

He threw the letters into the fire. The flames curled around the envelopes, greedy and starving, turning Leo’s words to ash.

Max still had the photograph. The final link to the boy he could never be again.