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Noemi came home to Unterwald as twilight settled over the streets and the town closed its shutters against the coming dark. She weaved her way round its corners like a ghost, noting what was old, what was new, what was gone.

There were no more swastikas – or at least none on show.

The town was decorated instead in its traditional style for a summer wedding.

Bunches of white campion and columbine hung from silver ribbons tied to the church’s door handles.

Garlands studded with deep blue and pale pink gentians decorated the colonnade which ran along the exterior of the ancient market hall.

Long tables had been set out behind its thin columns, laid with an assortment of crystal and china vases ready to receive the fresher flowers which would come in the morning.

Everything had been done in the way weddings were always done.

Except they won’t have made my mother’s special cake, and no wedding here is complete without that.

The instant Noemi pictured a laughing bride cutting into the almond and cherry layers, she had her plan. She made her way round the square by hugging its edges and headed towards the long row which housed the buildings which had once belonged to the Drachmanns.

The doors to the café, and to the bar and shop, were locked, as Noemi had expected.

There was one lamp burning softly behind the curtains in the flat above them where she’d once lived.

But there was no light at all at the back of the building; there wasn’t even a cat to notice her coming as she circled round the side of the bakery.

The smells creeping from that were intoxicating.

Vanilla, cinnamon, ground spices and fruit steeped in brandy.

They promised a stockroom the war hadn’t decimated – or a town with good contacts on the black market.

And they led her to a window which, as she’d hoped, had been left slightly open to let the wedding feast cool down in time for the last flurry of decorating in the morning.

It took Noemi less than a minute to slide the window fully open and wiggle through.

It took her a few minutes more to recover from the tide of memories which immediately hit her.

Frieda in a flowered apron, teaching her how to balance the spice mix which gave Pfeffernüsse their distinctive bite, and how to shape delicate sugar pretzels.

Scraping out mixing bowls with Pascal, both of them sticky with butter icing and crumbly streusel topping.

The bakery had been both a school and a playground, and every inch of it belonged – whatever Viktor had done to remove her – to her mother.

Noemi was an expert at reining in her feelings – the life she’d been living had demanded that.

But when she spied Frieda’s faded apron still hanging from the hook where she’d always kept it, the tears finally came.

Noemi ran to it and gathered the soft material into her arms, convinced Frieda’s violet perfume would be caught in its folds.

The tears fell heavier when she couldn’t find a trace of the sweet smell.

Time to get started now, Noemi; time to focus. Collect your ingredients up first – make sure you’ve got everything you need to hand.

It didn’t matter that the perfume was long gone.

Frieda’s voice was in her head; her hand was on Noemi’s shoulder, its touch as light as a dusting of flour on a rolling pin.

Ground almonds, cherry compote, raspberry syrup to colour the icing .

Her mother’s voice danced on, listing the cake’s ingredients and the steps needed to make it.

Noemi mopped her eyes with her sleeve and followed Frieda’s instructions into a pantry which was every bit as well stocked as the baking scents had promised.

She deliberately searched at the back of the shelves, looking for – and finding – bottles and jars which bore the old Drachmann label and would bring their own brand of magic.

Frieda’s voice guided her while Noemi gathered everything up. And stayed in her head while Noemi put on her mother’s apron, assembled her tins and started to mix up her cake.

Noemi knew Unterwald’s rhythms as well as she knew the seasons, so she was ready to greet the town long before it woke.

She’d worked through the night to finish and decorate the wedding cake, and to tidy herself.

She’d used the bakery sink to wash the road’s dust out of her hair.

She’d taken off the apron – which was now safely stored in her rucksack – and changed out of her hiking clothes into her only dress.

That was a leaf-green and white sprigged cotton shirtwaister which she’d liberated from a farmyard washing pile, leaving a woven straw basket full of mushrooms in exchange.

It was a little large on the hips and a little too floaty for her taste and somewhat at odds with her heavy walking boots, but it was more appropriate for a party than her baggy twill trousers.

According to the mirror in the bakery’s bathroom, she looked as much like the Noemi she’d once been as the years and the life she’d lived would let her.

She would be recognised instantly, there was no doubting that. Now it was time to set the stage.

She put the cake – which she’d covered in pink icing as soft as a dawn cloud – in the centre of the top table and sat down at its head.

The only other change needed was to move the embroidered runner – which she’d last seen in her family’s dining room and was waiting now to delight the bride and groom – to lie in place in front of her.

Resting her hands on the strawberry motif which Frieda had stitched for her own wedding day made it seem as if her parents were there with her. That final piece in place, she waited.

The women came in twos and threes as the sun began to smile.

Balancing piles of crockery and trays filled with cutlery.

Laden with armfuls of freshly cut flowers.

Laughing and chatting and looking forward to a happy day.

Until they were hit with a shock none of them expected, exactly as Noemi had planned.

First one woman dropped her jaw and her bundle of linen, then the next.

It took no time at all for the ripples to spread.

‘Good God. Is that Noemi Drachmann? What’s she doing here? How on earth did she stay alive?’

The startled squawk ran down the line and stopped the rest of the women as abruptly in their tracks. A plate fell and smashed. Cutlery clattered over the cobbles. Noemi heard all that, but what she heard loudest was the shock and disbelief.

I wasn’t meant to come back. I was meant to die with the others nobody cared about.

She’d grown more convinced of that the longer she’d lain in the meadow. She’d still hoped it wouldn’t be true.

‘And that’s Frieda’s cake. Surely she can’t be back too?’

The women stopped being a blur of half-remembered faces and snapped into sharp focus. A hand flew to the speaker’s throat, where it landed on Frieda’s amber necklace.

Another woman – another one-time friend – gripped tighter to Frieda’s beloved rose-patterned shawl. It appeared not every trace of her family was lost. Noemi’s tired heart stopped hoping someone would smile in delight at her safe return and hardened.

‘What if she is? Which outcome would you prefer? That we’d all survived or just me?’

She didn’t add or none of us , but the words were there in the question all the same.

She paused, searching the white faces for a kind answer, knowing the silence would last a beat too long.

The swarm of, ‘Of course we hoped all of you would make it,’ and, ‘It’s a shock – that’s all,’ was too thin and too late when it finally came and brought her no pleasure.

Pain pinched its sharp fingers through her body, but Noemi carried on poking at her audience anyway.

‘So tell me, did you know? About Auschwitz and Dachau and Treblinka, and all the other places they sent my people to die? Did you know about the gas chambers and the ovens, and the execution pits?’

White faces turned crimson; heads turned away. Noemi’s newly vulnerable eyes started to fill, but she would rather have died than spill a single tear.

‘I know that you did – your silence is full of it. Like I know you kept supporting the regime and sending your men to fight for your beloved Führer even when you knew him for the monster he was. That’s done with, I suppose, and can’t be changed.

But what happens now?’ She gazed at the flowers and the wedding linen.

‘Do you all simply move on with your lives and forget, hoping that the Jews and the Gypsies and the sick, and the millions of others whose blood you didn’t like will be forgotten too? ’

Nobody met her eyes. Nobody answered.

Noemi got to her feet and pulled the knife she’d taken from the bakery out of her rucksack.

The instant intake of breath would have been amusing if the scene had been a play, not her life.

One of the women had dumped a stack of plates on the end of the table.

Noemi spread them out and began cutting the cake into thin slices.

‘Well maybe that’s a question for another day; this is a wedding after all. Although I’m sure whoever the bride is, she’s made her own arrangements and won’t actually need this. So why don’t we use it to celebrate my homecoming instead?’

She began handing the plates round. None of the women refused to take one, but none of them took a bite either when she invited them to eat.

They think it’s poisoned. They’re afraid of me. They’ve no idea what I want.

But Noemi did.

She watched the women staring at the pink icing as nervously as if she’d coloured the fondant with deadly nightshade, not pressed raspberries.

‘I need somewhere to stay obviously. A room will do… For now.’

For now was another deliberate stone, another ripple she intended to watch play out. Noemi looked from the necklace to the shawl: if no one offered her help out of kindness, she’d make them do it from shame.

‘You can come to me. I’ve taken over Distel’s farm now he’s dead; I could do with some help with the animals.’

The woman making the offer looked vaguely familiar. She had Distel’s square jaw and lean frame, but clearly not his twisted personality. Whoever she was, she would do. Noemi nodded and noted the sigh of relief from the rest.

‘Does Herr Niehbur still work out of his old office on Goethestraβe?’

This time she enjoyed the gasp at the notary’s name and the panicked look when she suggested that she might take a piece of cake with her as a gift.

They think I’m going to poison the whole town. Maybe I should have done that in the first place.

It wasn’t a serious thought. Noemi was done with killing. But she wasn’t done with revenge, and she certainly wasn’t finished with the town. She’d barely even begun.