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you’d serve him it was still a promise.
    Terrible things everywhere. Memories of what had happened during the day stormed inside her head. She put a hand to one temple, trying to push them away.
    ‘What is it?’ Gregor asked.
    She got up. ‘I’m going now. This isn’t safe.’
    ‘You can’t.’ He put out a hand and grabbed her wrist. ‘You’d freeze out there.’
    ‘Better to freeze than be shot. Or raped.’
    He flinched, as though she’d slapped him round the face.
    ‘I didn’t mean you.’ Not the boy who’d shared a bath with her when he stayed here in the holidays. Who’d crept out of bed to share midnight feasts. Though God alone
knew what he’d done since she’d last seen him. Impossible to imagine how he’d survived, what life had forced him to become.
    ‘Please sit down.’ He pointed at her chair and their eyes locked. She sat. ‘You’ll be safe here tonight.’
    She let herself slump back in the kitchen chair with its faded padded cushions made by Lena when she’d still had time to sew non-essentials.
    ‘What happened today, Alix?’
    She wanted to throw the question back at him and ask him what the hell had happened to him in the last six years, but found herself answering him instead. ‘Lena and I were in the
wagon heading west to a cousin’s, meeting Mami on the way.’
    ‘Where’d she been?’
    ‘Berlin. Trying to find out about Papi. They’d arrested him, you see. Because of the July Plot.’ She looked at him to gauge his reaction but his expression gave nothing away.
‘They kept moving him round and we’d lost contact with him. The parcels we sent were returned to us.’
    Gregor nodded.
    ‘We’d packed up the wagon when we heard the Reds – the Russians – were so close. The police were watching us. We couldn’t leave till the very last moment or
they’d have arrested us for defeatism.’
    ‘Especially with your father being involved with the Bomb Plot?’
    She nodded.
    ‘What exactly did he do, Alix?’
    She shrugged. ‘Mami said he’d made a few telephone calls on the day, trying to garner support. She doesn’t know the details.’
    ‘Your father probably thought he was protecting her by keeping her in the dark. It must have been dreadful for you both.’
    ‘You can have no idea, Gregor.’
    A strange expression twisted his face for a moment. She wished she hadn’t said the last bit.
    ‘Mami grew more and more desperate as the Russians came nearer. She said we owed the local people as much protection as we could give them. Refugees came here from East Prussia and they
told us . . .’ Alix paused, remembering those last weeks, Mami looking at the big map of Pomerania and East Prussia hanging in Papi’s study and biting her lip. Lena packing bag after
bag, saying nothing and hushing Alix whenever she mentioned the Russian advance. The women and children from the east who sat silent in the kitchen each night and wouldn’t say what
they’d seen on their trek.
    Gregor wasn’t hurrying the narrative. He sat waiting, without saying a word. The old Gregor liked to jump in and finish your sentences, your thoughts, for you.
    ‘A plane attacked us on the road west, we lost the wagon. Lena and I went into the forest to shelter. We hadn’t realized that the Russian advance had got so far today. They were
already in the forest. They got Lena. She . . .’ Alix put a hand over her mouth.
    His eyes hadn’t left her face. One of his hands found hers across the oilskin tablecloth. ‘It’s all right, I know . . . They’re like mistreated children. No sense of
morality.’ He sounded weary. ‘Poor Lena. Tomorrow at first light we must get you back to the road. You might be able to slip through the line. You’ve probably got a better chance
without the wagon and horses.’ He sounded like her childhood friend again, gentle, thoughtful. Mami always said that Gregor was a sweet boy. But those missing years . . .
    ‘You sound as if . . .’ She didn’t seem