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All the hope of a better tomorrow that she’d been clinging to since the first time a blond girl in a black skirt had thrown insults at her drained away.

She slid onto the rubble-strewn ground, curled up against the shell of a house and cried until she was as empty as it was.

Then she got up, because there was nothing else to do but get up, shouldered her rifle and walked on.

‘Every time I find you, it feels like a miracle.’

Noemi had no idea how Matthias had laid his hands on candles or a clean pile of bedding in the broken city, but she was very grateful that he had.

He’d turned a small corner of an abandoned brickworks into an oasis.

For an hour or two anyway. He’d barely rolled out of her arms before his body tightened up.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

Noemi pulled herself up and reached for her shirt. She’d seen him look bleak and despairing before as the battle for the city dragged on, but this was something far darker. She could see death standing at his shoulder. She could see its shadow in his eyes.

‘Whatever the news is, you have to tell me.’

The candles had tricked her into thinking the room was warm.

Now she could feel the ice cutting through the wind snaking between the bricks that loosely made up the walls, and the damp that heralded rain settling onto her skin.

Matthias was already on his feet and in his clothes, but he came back to her when she reached for him.

‘The Germans have found our dugouts. They swept through the Kampinos two days ago with tanks, burning the villages that edge it, shooting the villagers who didn’t run fast enough.

And they hunted our fighters down until…

’ He paused, sobs clogging up his throat.

‘They’re all dead, Noemi. The group’s been completely wiped out.

They used dogs to make sure they found everyone. ’

Noemi had thought she was finished with crying; she’d thought she’d spent all her tears in the street.

She hadn’t. The Kampinos had been her home and her shelter.

The men and women who’d risked their lives to travel back to the camp from the city in order to collect the last of their supplies were her friends and her family. She couldn’t speak as Matthias went on.

‘I thought we’d go back there once this was done. I thought there’d be enough of us left to build a proper community in one of the villages once the Nazis were defeated. That we could heal there together and plan our next steps.’

Noemi dressed in silence while Matthias stared out through the hollow that stood for a window, watching the crimson-and-ruby flames licking up through a carpet of smoke.

The brickworks looked out across the Old Town.

They should have been able to see St John’s Archcathedral and the Prudential House on Napoleon Square, the highest building in the city.

Instead, the skyline was empty. The cathedral had been shelled until it collapsed.

There was nothing left of the Prudential except a twisted steel frame.

‘But there won’t be any healing now. There won’t be enough of anything to rebuild.

The Russians aren’t coming, at least not yet and not this far.

That’s the other piece of news. There’s going to be a ceasefire, or a surrender, call it what you like, but it’ll be announced in the next couple of days.

Whichever way you slice it, the Germans will have won and we’ll be officially classed as prisoners of war. ’

Noemi moved over to the window beside him and slipped her hand inside his.

‘Which means nothing to the Nazis, and they’ll shoot us as soon as the ink on the agreement is dry.

’ She stared down at the city they’d fought so hard to free as his hand tightened round hers.

‘That can’t be our ending. To be murdered and thrown away like rubbish into a pit.

I refuse to believe that was always where our path led.

And – after everything we’ve been through and fought for – I’m not going to make it that easy for them. ’

‘I never thought for a moment that you would.’

Matthias’s laugh came out of nowhere, and the ice and the damp disappeared.

Noemi turned her back on the darkness and the pain that would leach through the city for years, whoever laid claim to it, and pressed herself into his arms. She could feel his heart beating; she could feel the energy flowing back into his body.

She closed her eyes and let the same strength flow through hers.

They were fighters; they’d won victories.

The Nazis had thrown all their weapons at them, but they hadn’t been beaten yet.

Matthias leaned back a little so he could see her face. ‘We’re not going to die here then, you and me?’

Only a fool would answer no to that given the situation they were in.

But Noemi had learned sometimes the only thing that mattered was being a fool.

She let Matthias’s smile wrap its warmth around her; she let the light in his eyes remind her they were young.

She reached up and stroked his cheek; she pulled his face down to meet hers and tasted love in the touch of his lips.

And she made him a promise filled with all the strength she’d brought out of the forest as they prepared to go back into the city, not to fight this time but to find their way out.

‘We’re not going to die at all.’

She lost him somewhere between Podchor??ych Street and the river as the rain tipped thick curtains over the streets.

They’d been so careful; they’d come so close.

Returning to the Kampinos was out of the question, which meant there was only one route they could take: across the Vistula River to Praga on the east bank.

The Germans had finally been beaten out of that neighbourhood by the combined efforts of the Soviets and the Home Army, who were now fully in control there.

If they could reach it, they could regroup – they could find a way out of the city if that was what they chose to do.

The plan had seemed like a possibility when they built it, especially if the fighting really was almost at its end.

They’d left the brickworks with a new sense of purpose.

But there was no sense once they stepped outside into a newly brewing thunderstorm that a ceasefire was coming.

Bullets raced like maddened mosquitos round the two bombsites they needed to cross to find the river.

They’d navigated their way safely through those, freezing their bodies flat on the ground until the worst of the gunfire was done.

They’d found safety behind broken walls and deserted warehouses; they’d timed their dash from corner to corner without incident.

But the third burst came from nowhere and caught them unprepared and out in the open.

They’d had no choice except to fling themselves through it at full speed.

Noemi reached shelter. Matthias didn’t. She could see that he was hit, that he was down. She could also see he was alive. But when she tried to run back towards him, he broke the silence that had followed the onslaught with a furious, ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘I can’t leave you.’

She didn’t care how loud her voice was. She didn’t care how many patrols came. But Matthias did and he wouldn’t listen.

‘I’m hurt. I can’t follow you yet, but I will, and I’ll find you. But I won’t let you stay with me, so don’t try.’

She could hear the pain in his voice – and the fear. But he was a fighter and so was she, and she also heard the order.

‘I love you.’

She didn’t know if he’d heard her over the sound of the machine gun which opened fire as she shouted.

She chose to believe that he had and that the shadows would hide him until he could crawl to safety.

She clung on to that belief as she weaved through the maze of streets that crowded the waterfront and searched in vain for an unbroken boat.

There was nothing left on the shore beyond rotted splinters.

There were no bridges intact or deserted enough to risk crossing.

There was no other option if she wanted to reach Praga except to swim there.

I can’t do it.

Her body ached; her heart was covered in bruises.

There was no Matthias to spur her on. There was no certainty where she was going; there was no certainty she would reach it.

There was nobody coming to the rescue. All she had was the river, and that felt like nothing worth having at all.

If Matthias hadn’t sworn to come and find her, she wouldn’t have risked it.

But he had, and ignoring that promise was impossible.

It felt as if she was condemning him to death.

The water was so bitterly cold when Noemi slid into it, she almost went under with the shock.

She struck out, her boots bobbing against her neck where she’d tied them, wondering if slipping away might not be the best thing.

If the only freedom she could truly find was there beneath the black water.

In the end, her body took over, pushing her on to carve out the next stroke, carrying her to the brief respite of a sandbank.

She hauled herself onto that and stared back at the city.

The view was almost beautiful. As long as she told herself that the red glow was the sunset and the rockets were fireworks, and the searchlights were the last dancing rays of the sun.

He might not be badly hurt. He might make it to Praga. We might find each other again.

So many mights , but she had to hold on to them. They were a reason to keep going in a world where reason had gone.

‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

The words danced away on the wind, in an echo of her last parting with Pascal. Noemi refused to be blindsided by that. This was about the future, not the past. This was about her and Matthias. They’d survived the ghetto and the worst days of the uprising; they could survive this.

She closed her eyes briefly and focused all her thoughts on Matthias, imagining his smile, imagining him healing. Then she turned her back on the city and slid down into the water again.