Carla said: ‘Can you tell Frau Hempel how long it might be before Kurt returns from Akelberg to Berlin?’

‘Quite soon,’ said Willrich.

It was no answer at all, but Carla felt that if she pressed him he would become angry again.

Ada was looking helpless. Carla sympathized: she herself found it difficult to know what to say. They had not been given enough information. Doctors were often like this, Carla had noticed: they seemed to want to hug their knowledge to themselves. They preferred to fob patients off with platitudes, and became defensive when questioned.

Ada had tears in her eyes. ‘Well, if there’s a chance he could get better . . .’

‘That’s the attitude,’ Willrich said.

But Ada had not finished. ‘What do you think, Carla?’

Willrich looked outraged at this appeal to the opinion of a mere nurse.

Carla said: ‘I agree with you, Ada. This opportunity must be seized, for Kurt’s sake, even though it will be hard for you.’

‘Very sensible,’ said Willrich, and he got to his feet. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’ He went to the door and opened it. Carla felt he could not get rid of them quickly enough.

They left the home and walked back to the station. As their nearly empty train pulled away, Carla picked up a leaflet that had been left on the seat. It was headed How to Oppose the Nazis, and it listed ten things people could do to hasten the end of the regime, starting with slowing down their rate of work.

Carla had seen such flyers before, though not often. They were placed by some underground resistance movement.

Ada snatched it from her, crumpled it, and threw it out of the window. ‘You can be arrested for reading such things!’ she said. She had been Carla’s nanny, and sometimes she behaved as though Carla had not grown up. Carla did not mind her occasional bossiness, for she knew it came from love.

However, in this case Ada was not overreacting. People could be imprisoned not just for reading such things but even for failing to report that they had found one. Ada could be in trouble merely for throwing it out of the window. Fortunately, there was no one else in the carriage to see what she had done.

Ada was still troubled by what she had been told at the home. ‘Do you think we did the right thing?’ she said to Carla.

‘I don’t really know,’ Carla said candidly. ‘I think so.’

‘You’re a nurse, you understand these things better than I do.’

Carla was enjoying nursing, though she still felt frustrated that she had not been allowed to train as a doctor. Now, with so many young men in the army, the attitude to female medical students had changed, and more women were going to medical school. Carla could have applied again for a scholarship – except that her family was so desperately poor that they depended on her meagre wages. Her father had no work at all, her mother gave piano lessons, and Erik sent home as much as he could afford out of his army pay. The family had not paid Ada for years.