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‘What are you doing here? Are you trying to get yourself arrested?’

Don’t let him see that you’re scared. Take the upper hand.

Noemi turned round, pretending her heart was beating at the right rhythm, furious at being so easily caught out. She’d been focused on trying to make sense of the camp, which was far bigger than she’d expected it to be, and hadn’t heard the man approaching. That wasn’t a mistake she’d make twice.

‘Why do you want to know? You’re dressed as a civilian and you’re sneaking about, so I could ask you the same question. All I have to do is start screaming and those guards will be here in a flash.’

It was bravado. Nothing would have induced Noemi to attract the attention of the soldiers patrolling back and forth outside the camp gates. But it was also a good test. The flicker of admiration in his eyes and the step he took away from her suggested she wasn’t in immediate danger.

‘No one needs to scream – I’m not here to hurt you. But I would like to know what you’re doing. Especially given you were here yesterday as well, standing in the same spot.’ He shook his head as she clenched her fists. ‘I don’t work for them, I promise. I’m watching the camp, same as you.’

That was a risky admission for one stranger to make to another, a stone’s throw from Dachau.

Noemi let her hands fall and took a moment to properly look at her interrogator.

He was closer to her age than his tired face had suggested at first glance, somewhere in his early twenties.

His dark-blue shirt and black trousers were respectable-looking, but they were also showing signs of wear and tear.

There was a small rip in his rolled-up sleeve, and one of his belt loops was missing.

He’s in hiding from the Nazis like me. He could be Jewish. Whatever he is, I can trust him.

She had nothing to base that on except watching , and a worn shirt and a hunch, but – from his next question – he’d apparently come to a similar conclusion about her.

‘Do you have people in there – is that it? Were you hoping to see them?’

She could have said no. But that would have required her to make up a story to explain why she was hiding in the trees for the second day in a row.

Noemi had become very adept at making up stories in the brief time she’d already spent in Munich, but – even though she’d proved to be good at it – the process of collecting and selecting the right details to use wasn’t an easy one.

My bag was stolen. My papers were lost. I’ve come from the countryside to take a job in a factory.

She’d told anything but the truth since she’d jumped out of the train as it eased to a stop in a vast goods yard somewhere on the edge of the city.

She’d crossed that by hopping from behind one set of parked wagons to the next, before slipping through an unlocked side gate into a street with no landmarks.

That had been a long and lonely moment. She’d arrived with no papers and no map.

She had the kind of colouring that marked her out as Jewish, not Aryan.

She’d half expected to be spotted and caught the second she left the wagon.

She certainly couldn’t ask anyone for help.

And whatever she did to stay safe, as Pascal had begged her to do, she might not survive.

It had been a long moment, but she’d had to pull herself out of it.

She’d taken one step and then another; she’d forced herself to trust that she was heading towards the city, not away.

The relief when she’d begun spotting signs to the Hauptbahnhof and Konigsplatz – the places she remembered from her one visit to Munich – was as good as successfully tackling a difficult summit.

As more early risers had joined her and the pavements started to fill, Noemi had begun to feel a little less vulnerable and more confident about trying to ferret out information.

She’d attached herself to the edges of a group of women standing on a street corner who were dressed in matching blue overalls and smoking multiple cigarettes.

They’d smiled when she took out one of her own and accepted a light, completely unaware she was listening with a bat’s ear to their chatter.

The girls were on their way to the Ritter factory in a suburb called Pasing, two pieces of local knowledge which gave Noemi a place of work she could refer to when she looked for a place to stay.

Unfortunately, that had proved to be a more difficult challenge than eavesdropping.

In the first boarding house she went into, ready to trot out her new story, the desk clerk’s response to her smiling, ‘Good morning,’ was to glance at her dark hair and dark eyes and demand her papers.

When she couldn’t instantly produce those, he’d reached for the telephone.

Noemi had fled, convinced sirens would come after her within minutes.

At the second establishment, she was quicker to explain that her papers had been lost on her way to the city.

The clerk there didn’t pick up the phone, but he wouldn’t check her in either.

Noemi had finally turned into a side street where the boarding houses were a long way from respectable and the only thing of interest was her money.

The room she’d moved into had peeling paint and sagging nets and a view onto a brick wall.

But it was a roof and a bed, and she’d told herself it would do until she could get a better sense of the city and a feel for how she might live in it.

She’d attempted that the next morning after a fitful night’s sleep punctuated by loud curses from the alley outside.

She’d walked its streets and squares for hours, feeling even further from home – and further from safety – with every step.

Munich was Nuremberg on a more intense scale: it was a city forged from uniforms and temples to National Socialism.

The pavements were choked with men bearing air force wings on their chests, or silver lightning flashes on their shoulders, or – in the case of the ones spilling out of the taverns by early afternoon – the dazed look of soldiers on leave.

The buildings were a lofty procession of columns and banners, an echo of the homage to ancient Rome Noemi had seen years ago at the Nuremberg rally.

And – as they had in 1938 when she couldn’t find a place to get her exhausted mother a cup of tea – every shop and café and bar bore the same sign: Jews Forbidden.

Don’t be Jewish.

Pascal had understood the kind of world she was running towards and its scale.

But he wouldn’t have thrown me into it unless he’d thought I could manage.

That wasn’t much comfort, but it forced her to do what he’d told her to do and be someone else.

She’d cast off the previous day’s nerves, squared her shoulders and put her head up, staring down anyone who looked twice at her.

She’d sat in the corner of a busy nondescript café as if she belonged there and eaten a plate of spaetzle and sausages without anybody challenging her, although every mouthful tasted of sawdust. The next morning, she’d successfully bought a train ticket from a distracted clerk without being asked for her papers and set out to find the camp at Dachau, determined to make contact with her parents.

They were little victories, but they were victories.

And they’d lulled her into a false sense of security.

Were you hoping to see them?

All at once she couldn’t speak. The obvious answer to the man’s question was yes, except Noemi now knew how hopeless that was.

Nothing had prepared her for what she’d found once she’d stepped into the woods.

Certainly not the pretty town she’d walked through from Dachau station, with its comfortable cream houses and wide tree-lined streets.

Or the challenging that Pascal had used to describe the place.

She didn’t know this man well enough to admit that she’d thought a camp might involve tents, not high walls and watchtowers and barbed wire.

Or machine guns and dogs. She didn’t want him to think she was a fool or know how terrified she was for her parents.

So she settled instead for a shrug and a qualified, ‘Yes, but I underestimated how hard it would be.’ She wasn’t prepared for his compassion.

‘I’m so sorry. You must have arrived here with hope – everyone does until they see what they’re dealing with. I assume you came back today because at least standing here keeps you close to them.’

She’d been right about him. He understood.

He looked away and didn’t judge her despair while she got herself back under control.

When Matthias offered her his name, Noemi – who’d been viewing everyone new she’d encountered for years as a threat – instinctively knew she’d found a friend.

It wasn’t easy to surrender to that impulse – without Hauke’s voice ringing in her ears and reminding her that her instincts were exactly what she should trust, she might not have managed it.

The moment she did so, the tight band that had settled round her chest slipped away, and her tongue loosened.

‘I’m Jewish. I come from a small town, not from here.’

She waited for the moment of betrayal. She waited for Matthias to tell her his kindness had been a trick, for him to call the guards to arrest her. She waited to be wrong. And could have cried with relief when he nodded at her to go on and she wasn’t.