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‘What’s going on? What’s happened to your grades? Why are these two essays marked as a fail, and why aren’t there any others in your book? I’ve never known you to skip homework or get less than a good for anything.’

Frieda had barely waited for Noemi to get through the door, or unwrap herself from the layers of damp wool that had collected ice crystals deep in their folds, before she went on the attack.

It took Noemi a moment to warm up and focus.

To realise that her exercise book must have fallen out of her bag.

Now Frieda was brandishing it like a mislabelled bottle of poison and gearing herself up to explode.

Noemi stared from the notebook to her mother, wishing she’d been more careful.

She hadn’t been hiding her problems at school to spare herself – as Frieda clearly believed was the case – but to spare her parents.

She should have known from the start that wasn’t possible.

The new year had swept new teachers into Unterwald’s high school along with the chill winds.

The men and women standing at the blackboards now wore their swastika lapel pins with pride and had turned their classrooms into shrines to Hitler, where the chart explaining who was German and who was Jewish took centre stage.

Pascal went to the Olympics in February to cheer on Germany’s medal-winning skiers and figure skaters.

Noemi was moved to a desk at the back of the classroom and had to watch as a group of girls as blond as the ones who’d tormented her at Nuremberg drew a ring round it with soapy water ‘to keep the bugs at bay’.

The curriculum shifted and shoved her out of place.

Lessons began to focus themselves around the Nazi’s pet ‘Theory of Racial and Hereditary Science’, which went to great pains to describe how far from the Aryan ideal she was.

Noemi, who’d always been a curious and diligent pupil, started to skip lessons rather than listen to all the ways she was a failure.

She began to hide in the corridors or in a far corner of the playground until the worst teachers were done.

None of the subjects she’d previously achieved high marks in had room for her contributions anymore.

She gave up trying to write history essays when the class were asked to explain ‘the treacherous role played by Germany’s Jews in the Great War’.

Or stories when they were asked to respond to the title The Jew: a Master of Crime .

She knew when a battle was one she couldn’t win.

But although Noemi stopped expecting good grades, she’d deliberately avoided telling her finally smiling parents that poor grades were her new reality.

Except now, in the face of Frieda’s fury and the start of a lecture beginning, ‘If you spent less time daydreaming about climbing and…’ she could no longer keep up the pretence.

‘I don’t get good marks anymore, no matter how hard I try.

It’s impossible. I’m Jewish, and Jews are stupid and have to be kept in their place at the bottom of the class.

’ She back-pedalled a little as Frieda gasped.

Not worrying her mother had been the point of hiding her exercise books in the first place; spilling her frustration without thinking would completely negate the point of that.

‘I don’t believe that obviously, but most of the teachers do.

And yes, I know I should have told you before, but you’d finally stopped worrying about the business, and I thought I could manage the situation myself. ’

She stopped. She’d been so busy trying to do that, she hadn’t let herself accept that she couldn’t. It was a relief to finally admit the truth.

‘I could stay and stick it out if you want me to, until the summer when I’ll be sixteen.

But I don’t see the point. They don’t care if I’m there or not, and they’re not going to make life any easier for me.

And as for sitting exams and going to university…

’ She tailed off. Like marrying Pascal, whether university was the right pathway for her or not wasn’t what mattered.

The possibility had slipped away without her involvement.

‘Well, it might be easier to start working in the business sooner rather than later.’

Frieda sat down with a soft thump. She stared from the essays which had been scored through with red back to her daughter’s pinched face as her fight drained away.

‘Is everyone unkind to you?’

There was nothing to be gained now by keeping her problems hidden. Noemi shrugged, trying for one last moment to act as if being so cruelly isolated for so long hadn’t deeply upset her. It was clear from her mother’s white face she wasn’t fooling anyone.

‘To different degrees, yes, I suppose they are. Except Pascal, although I’ve been trying to keep my distance from him. I don’t want his father accusing me of ruining his prospects or accusing Dad of putting me up to that.’

Frieda closed her eyes for a moment. Viktor had been keeping his distance from the Drachmanns too, but none of them had forgotten his furious, You’ll regret this. Which was why, Noemi assumed, her mother latched so quickly onto trying.

‘Trying but not succeeding. You haven’t broken with him entirely, have you?’

Frieda fixed Noemi with the stare she hated. The one that said, I might give you a long rope, young lady, but I’m reining you in now. Noemi had never had any defences against that particular look.

‘No.’ Her mother’s flare was instant, but Noemi wasn’t a child anymore, and she was determined to be heard. ‘I understand you’re angry – I understand why. And I did try, I really did. But Carina was struggling, and Pascal asked me to go and see her. How was I supposed to say no to that?’

Frieda bit back whatever retort she’d been planning. ‘Is it Viktor again? Is he hurting her, like you told me you thought he’d been doing?’

Noemi started to say, No, I don’t think so, because she hadn’t seen any more evidence, but that was too easy an answer.

‘I don’t know, although he’s a brute so I’d be surprised if he’d stopped.

She’s clever at hiding things, and I’m certain Pascal hasn’t a clue – you know how he hero-worships his father.

But he was right about her being lonely.

She told me Viktor said she gets in his way.

That “men with dowdy wives and one child don’t rise through the ranks the way they’re supposed to.

” It was so sad. I didn’t really know what to do, except to keep visiting her. ’

Frieda’s sigh was strong enough to blow out a candle, but she knew when she was beaten.

‘Poor Carina. I’ve not been a good friend to her.

I didn’t ask her about the bruises you saw; I didn’t know how to.

And I’ve avoided her since the town hall meeting.

So it’s partly my fault if she’s lonely, and she’s so fond of you.

I suppose you’re the daughter she always… ’

This time it was Frieda who didn’t finish the sentence, although they both heard the wanted which should have filled the gap. Which Noemi now could never be.

Frieda rubbed her eyes and went on. ‘I hope you’ve at least been going to the farm only when Viktor’s not there. How often? Please don’t say every week.’

When Noemi answered, ‘For the last six months or so, pretty much, yes,’ Frieda’s shoulders slumped.

‘So not trying at all then. Visiting Pascal as much as his mother.’

Denying it would have been a lie, and while Noemi had always told herself that hiding parts of her life – especially the riskier exploits she and Pascal got up to on the mountains – made things easier for everyone, she drew the line at actually lying.

But her mother did not need the details.

Frieda certainly didn’t need to know that staying angry or disappointed with Pascal had made Noemi miss him too much, so she’d licked her wounds for a little bit again, given in to his apologies again, blamed the father not the son, and let her anger go.

Or that she and Pascal had drifted back into spending whole days in each other’s company when they could snatch the time, hiking through the alpine meadows and forests and practising their climbing skills on the peaks behind those.

Or that Carina encouraged their wanderings and smiled when they went off together.

And she definitely doesn’t need to know that those days with him are the one time I feel like my old self.

As she couldn’t say any of that, she simply nodded and waited for another explosion.

It didn’t come. Frieda reached out for her daughter’s hands instead.

‘I wish I could order you to stop seeing him, but that’s pointless so I won’t.

But I do want you to listen to me, Noemi, even if you ignore everything I say.

This friendship you two have – I know how deep it runs.

I know you both think nobody will ever understand you in the same way.

But it can’t continue. You’re both clinging to a bond the world we live in now is determined to break.

’ She held tighter as Noemi – who couldn’t bear the pain in Frieda’s eyes or the fear she might one day have to share it – tried to wriggle away.

‘And I know that hurts, sweetheart, but it will hurt far more when he rejects you. When he’s forced to make a public stand by his father or by his Hitler Youth leader.

Or because spending so much time in rotten company spreads its own sickness and he starts to believe what they say about us. ’

‘He won’t do that.’ Noemi twisted hard enough to pull herself away and refused to give in to the tears pricking at her eyes. ‘He would never reject me like that, whatever his father does. He’s promised he won’t.’

She could escape her mother’s hold on her hands, but she couldn’t make her mother stop loving her or spelling out what they both knew was the truth, no matter how painful that truth was to hear.

‘Then you’ll have to be the brave one, Noemi, and break away from him. Because there’s nothing but misery coming for you if you don’t.’