The weather had started to turn as autumn dawned, and by October it was growing cool in the evenings. Today, Romy had just emerged from the hospital after her double shift to find Wilhelm waiting at the bottom of the steps, his hands in the pockets of his threadbare blue coat.

He’d been avoiding her since she’d recovered in August—dashing out for deliveries no sooner than she arrived at the bakery, so she’d stopped visiting. Try as she might to be patient, Wilhelm’s rejection stung.

She smiled and said hello as she tried to scoot down the steps without stopping. He reached gently for her elbow, but Romy had snatched it away.

‘Please, Romy,’ Wilhelm had begged. ‘I need to talk to you alone. I want to explain—’

But Romy shrugged him off politely. ‘Wilhelm, it’s all right. I understand.’ She was pleased to hear that her voice sounded far more reasonable than she felt.

She’d spent the afternoon on her knees sterilising floors, cleaning up vomit and diarrhoea, before scrubbing in and assisting a midwife with a difficult breech birth. There’d been a horrific amount of tearing that needed to be stitched without morphine or ether and Romy was instructed to hold her legs apart, knees up.

She felt too tired—too empty—to hear the truth. That it was over. That Wilhelm had perhaps found comfort elsewhere. And who could blame him, given her absence and then her increased workload?

‘I can’t stop, I’m afraid. I’m off to visit Nina, before she starts…work.’ Romy had taken to stopping in on her way home from the hospital for a cup of black tea. This was the comfort she craved now. She wanted to rest her head on Nina’s lap as they perched on the edge of her lumpy mattress and listen to her tales of dancing in the glamorous nightclubs while Nina stroked her hair.

With a last wave to Wilhelm, she ran down the steps into the evening.

She no longer visited the bakery now. Besides, Romy had exams coming up, and Mutti and Papa were run off their feet at the hospital. Delma was feeding nearly ten thousand refugees each day at the kitchen and always needed an extra pair of hands. Romy decided to concentrate on where she could do some good. But a piece of her still longed for Wilhelm…

It was Saturday evening, and Mutti and Papa were on the extended overnight shift. The sun had come out last week, and the streets were dry and filled with soccer matches, fruit peddlers, pedicabs and rickshaws. Romy started to read Les Misérables for the third time, but was tempted to throw the book out the window. She was so bored and lonely. She wanted to do something. Anything.

She missed music, laughter and joy. She missed Li. Perhaps she could find a way to go to the Cathay just to see for herself that her friend was well. She wasn’t putting Li in any danger—her dear friend wouldn’t even know Romy was in the audience. Besides, Romy had never stood out in crowds and she knew the hotel from her childhood. There was no way anyone in that heaving, dark and smoky jazz bar could connect the two of them. She felt a frisson of excitement. Also, fear. She was breaking Papa’s rules—or at least she would be if he’d ever considered she might want to visit a nightclub instead of studying. Or working. She could easily use her medical pass to get through the ghetto checkpoint to the Bund.

Jittery with nerves, Romy opened the wardrobe door. The only outfit not moth-bitten and ragged was a brown two-piece suit of Mutti’s. She put it on, and pinned it tight at the waist. Then she pulled her hair up in a bun and turned this way and that in front of the broken shard of mirror. She looked pale, hollow—and about fifty years old. She placed her identity card, hospital card and refugee pass, showing she was a medical student in Frenchtown, into her jacket pocket. On impulse, she grabbed her infectious diseases textbook and tucked it into her satchel—just in case she was stopped and questioned—and took one last look at herself.

It would have to do.