description of today’s spelling test, in which she had done well. But she was too late. Kirsti had gotten there first. ‘And he poked Annemarie’s book bag with his gun, and then he grabbed my hair!’ Kirsti was chattering as she took off her sweater in the centre of the apartment living room. ‘But I wasn’t scared. Annemarie was, and Ellen, too. But not me!’ Mrs Johansen rose quickly from the chair by the window where she’d been sitting. Mrs Rosen, Ellen’s mother was there, too, in the opposite chair. They’d been having coffee together, as they did many afternoons. Of course it wasn’t really coffee, though the mothers still called it that: ‘having coffee’. There had been no real coffee in Copenhagen since the Nazi occupation. Not even any real tea. The mothers sipped at hot water flavoured with herbs. ‘Annemarie, what happened? What is Kirsti talking about?’ Her mother asked anxiously. ‘Where’s Ellen?’ Mrs Rosen had a frightened look.