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She reached for his hands, needing some way to ground herself, to make his feelings for her real.

She let him pull her into his arms. She let him kiss her and felt her body stir when she kissed him back.

And she told herself his embrace was exactly what she’d been craving, at the same time as she prayed it would wipe away her ghosts.

‘You made it. Oh God, Noemi, you made it. I told myself you would, but these last few days waiting for you to arrive have been endless.’

Matthias’s eyes turned red as he stumbled into the partisan camp in the centre of the Kampinos Forest and saw her sitting by the fire.

It was a relief to see him too. Her life had been so full of goodbyes that seemed destined to be final, she only realised how much she’d been afraid to miss him when he reappeared.

Noemi tried to stand up and tell him that, but the adrenaline which had powered her out of the ghetto had completely drained away, and all she could do was pat the space on the log beside her and smile.

‘How was it? Did you all make it through?’

How was it.

Noemi stared into the campfire’s dancing flames and willed her body not to start shaking again.

Fire would feature in her nightmares for a long time to come.

She didn’t want to relive the details of her escape – her dreams were so vivid, she’d woken up twice convinced that she was wading through water.

But she didn’t want to hold back from him.

‘It was… difficult. I don’t know which tunnel you took and how damaged it was, but the one we had to use – from Muranowska 7 – was partially blocked with collapsed masonry and bricks, and trying to clear it quietly was a struggle.

Not that we had much time to prepare it – we were barely in place in the cellar before the tanks started coming up Nalewki Street.

The noise they made was terrifying.’ She swallowed hard and tried to shake the grinding tracks from her ears.

‘But it was worse when they stopped. Then we could hear the grenades rumbling through the bunkers to the left of us and the crash as those bunkers caved in. We had to stop trying to clear the tunnel then. We had to run.’

Run made the crossing sound simple. It had been anything but.

The tunnel wasn’t only half filled with broken bricks that could easily snap an ankle; it was also pitch-black and waterlogged and coated with mud.

They’d stumbled through it, running their hands along the slime-coated walls, trying to hold on to their balance and their sense of direction.

Without any way of knowing if the exit hole in the cellar on the other side of the perimeter wall would be clear, or fringed with guns, or if they’d even find it.

The minutes they’d spent underground were imprinted like burns through Noemi’s body.

But, yes, they’d made it; all twelve of them. She and her troop had survived.

‘Luckily Mordechai’s message that we were coming and would need help also made it through.

We came out inside the right basement; there was a guide waiting with water and food.

And there were two hearses ready for us outside in the street.

We lay on those under piles of empty coffins with no idea where we were going, and then…

’ She paused, although her pulse was racing as she tried to condense the fear that had flooded her when she realised what the coffins were for into a handful of words she could speak.

‘Then we were buried in them, in the ground. Under branches in a corner of what I now know was the Jewish cemetery.’

Matthias’s body, which was leaning against hers, turned as rigid as Noemi’s had done when she’d been lowered into her roughly dug grave.

‘It was all right. Actually, no, it wasn’t. It was horrible. I’ve been frightened before, but that – waiting for the partisans to come and dig us up and knowing how easily they could be caught before they got to us, and what that would mean – was an experience I never want to repeat.’

She let her limbs tremble this time – she wasn’t sure she could have stopped them – and let her breath go as Matthias swore.

‘I’m alive, that’s the main thing. And at least it made my first night in one of those things a little less strange, since I’d had a chance to get used to the smell of wet soil.’

She nodded to a group of zemlyankas – underground bunkers built almost entirely out of and under the earth – whose entrances sat a short distance from the campfire.

Noemi had been allocated to one of the women’s dugouts when she’d first arrived.

The structure had been bigger below the surface than she’d expected, almost six metres long and two metres high, and there’d been more light than they’d managed to create in the ghetto’s cellars.

But the smell of damp soil and rotting leaf mould had seeped through them so strongly, it wouldn’t leave her nose.

Matthias shifted on the log until they were facing each other. ‘I’m using one of the smaller two-person spaces. I wasn’t sure if you knew.’

Noemi knew. She also knew why he was telling her and why he’d elected to take one of the more cramped dugouts in the hope that she would eventually arrive.

The system of women taking forest husbands had already been explained to her before Matthias returned from dealing with a food problem in the separate civilian camp.

‘Most of the men treat us like fellow fighters and equals. A few think we’re fair game. If there’s someone you like, it doesn’t hurt to throw in your lot with them and get yourself some extra protection.’

She’d known then that Matthias would offer himself to her. It wasn’t a surprise when he took hold of her hand.

‘I love you. You know that, don’t you?’

Noemi did. She’d felt it in his kiss during their brief moment of peace in the ghetto before they’d been called into battle again.

She could see it wiping the strain from his face when she nodded.

And again, when he asked if she’d live in the forest with him as his wife and she’d nodded a second time.

It had only dimmed a little when she didn’t say the words back.

But I will. I care for him deeply; I know I do. So one day, I’ll say them to him too.

She let her head drop onto his shoulder and hoped that, for now, the bond they’d forged since they’d first slotted their paths together would be enough to build a life.

Because she wanted to do that; she wanted to snatch a chance of happiness in the midst of so much loss.

And she wanted to love him the way he loved her, she really did.

As much as she needed to finally bury the memories of her past love for good.