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found saucepans and heated milk and soup. He’d already fallen on the bread, tearing off great chunks and stuffing them into his mouth. Alix stared at him, remembering how his mother
had fretted over his table manners. ‘You’re a good socialist,’ Papi had once taunted Eva over a lunch table covered in fine linen and porcelain. ‘What do you care
about such bourgeois niceties?’
    ‘I care,’ she had said, turning those intense dark eyes of hers to Papi. ‘It’s not just the Junker class who like to do things properly, Peter. Consideration and
politeness are classless traits.’
    ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Papi had refilled Eva’s wineglass. Behind them, unnoticed by either, but audible to Alix, Lena had emitted a small sigh.
    Alix pushed away the memories and excused herself to wash in the cloakroom. Her reflection in the glass told her the story of the day’s events – that darkness under her eyes
wasn’t soot to wash away. Lena, the horses, the soldiers . . . She closed her eyes and clutched the basin. Don’t think about it.
    ‘I’m trying hard to save you your fair share but you’d better hurry,’ he called as she walked back through the hall. Through the windows the snow now fell with more
determination. She sat next to Gregor and ate too, with increasing appetite, slurping spoonfuls of soup, cramming bread into her mouth and wiping crumbs off her face with the back of her hand.
Breakfast had been a long time ago.
    She watched his long, slender fingers crumble bread. Musician’s hands. Gregor’s hands. Her fear seemed to have abated a little as she’d eaten. He was looking at her own hands
with their blackened nails. ‘Dirt’s ideologically sound. Cleanliness is decadent.’ He grinned and she found her own lips stretching into an answering smile.
    He finished the soup, sat back and sighed. ‘That’s the best thing I’ve eaten for at least three years.’
    ‘I made it.’ At least she sounded less scared now.
    ‘You?’ His lips curled.
    ‘Why are you grinning like that?’ He’d never believed her capable of anything practical. She remembered how he’d smirked when she attempted to pump up a bicycle tyre or
sew on a button, on one of the rare occasions when no servant was on hand to do these things.
    ‘Just never had you down as the type who’d be in the Küche. You used to prefer being outdoors, riding around on those ponies of yours.’
    ‘Lena had me in the kitchen learning how to make cheese and sausages.’
    Amusement lit his face. ‘Not what your mother had in mind for you: finishing school in Switzerland and history of art in Florence, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Something like that.’ She eyed the insignia on his tunic, which looked as though it had been made for a broader man. The uniform of the barbarian. How did he really regard her? A
beneficiary of the enemy system which had done all those terrible things Papi’d told her about? She blushed again. Gregor had half-closed his eyes, as though he were trying to blot out
something. Last time they’d sat this close it had been a July night. They’d still been children then, but there’d been a moment when they’d felt something more than mere
childish affection. At least, she had. It had only been a single kiss. Chances were he’d forgotten it.
    The shutters rattled. The snow was blowing itself into a storm. Good. It would cover her footprints and slow down the Red Army. On the other hand, it might bring others here seeking shelter. She
shouldn’t be in this warm kitchen with its blue and white Dutch tiles above the stove, and the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling and reflecting the light of the gas lamp. She’d
been a fool to come back, she should have obeyed Mami and kept on going west, no matter what. She’d promised and promises mattered. Papi had always told her that. Then, about a year ago,
he’d shaken his head and said that therein lay the officer’s dilemma. If you’d promised a monster