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inside. My father’s shape stayed bent, so that from my position above him, he stopped being a man with arms and legs and a head and became a crow with a beak and wings. He made a noise like a crow too. I watched him with my hands on the window sill and my eyes just above them, while the sound of Oliver moved through the house—to the kitchen and upstairs to the guest bedroom. I heard drawers being opened and closed, the long rasp of a suitcase zip. Then Oliver burst into my bedroom and I saw myself as he must have seen me, crouching by the window in the dark.
    “Seen enough, have you, little girl?” he spat. “Get a kick out of spying on adults, do you? Well, don’t worry, I’ve seen enough too. Of you and your dear papa.” He laughed bitterly. “And let’s not forget the remarkable Ute. It seems I’ve given them both a present they won’t forget in a hurry.” He left and went downstairs.
    For a second I was frozen; then, thinking he was going back to the shattered glasshouse, I spun around and looked out of the window again. But the front door slammed, shaking the house, and below me, my father’s crow-body jerked as though it had been caught in one of our traps, and then it slumped. I crept back to bed and lay with my eyes bulging into the darkness and my ears straining to hear the next sound, which never came.
    In the morning, I was woken by three short blasts of the whistle. My father stood at the bottom of the stairs, legs apart, head up. The backs of his hands had plasters stuck on them in several places, and there was another over the bridge of his nose.
    “Pack your rucksack, Peggy,” he said, using his military voice. “We’re going on holiday.”
    “Where are we going?” I asked, worrying what Ute would say about the broken roof and the glass all over the floor when she returned.
    “We’re going to die Hütte,” said my father.

5
    London, November 1985
    At breakfast, I agreed to sit at the kitchen table to eat, instead of in my bedroom or on the floor of the glasshouse, where I could escape the stuffy warmth of the other rooms. Ute and I negotiated, and she said if I sat down with her and took time with spooning my porridge she would stop asking questions. I told her I would, because my father’s face was tucked away in a secret place. I knew she would continue to ask questions. She couldn’t stop herself.
    The kitchen table had shrunk since I had been away, but everything else had multiplied and I found the kitchen was the most unsettling room of all. The quantity of things, the overwhelming choice of what to look at,pressed me to my chair and made me shut my eyes. The row of pots with always available tea, coffee, and sugar; larger containers marked SELF-RAISING and PLAIN; a blender gathering greasy dust; a roll of soft paper on a wooden stick; a shiny toaster that I avoided eye contact with; hooks with assorted mugs; a white fridge made multicoloured by magnets. I couldn’t understand why a family of three needed seven saucepans when there were only four rings on the cooker; why the utensil pot held nine wooden spoons if there were only seven pans; and how we could ever eat the amount of food available in the cupboards and the fridge.
    Oskar was at Saturday morning Cub Scouts, helping to tidy the grounds of an old people’s home. I knew Ute had chosen this particular morning, with Oskar away, to ask me to sit at the table, because she thought that sitting down to eat with my eight-year-old brother might be one step too far. Oskar, Oskar, Oskar: I had to keep repeating his name to remind myself that he existed, that a boy was born and grew for eight years and eight months without me knowing. He was almost as tall as me, but so young. I was still shocked, every time I looked at him, to think I was exactly his age when my father and I left this house. While Ute was ladling porridge, made with water—the way I likedit—I wondered whether the Scouts had taught Oskar how to light a fire