Page 30 of The Watchmaker of Dachau

Then she quickly found her own clothes and began to undress. It was then that she saw a pair of eyes in the mirror that were not her own. A reflection of the boy – of Friedrich – standing in the doorway. She turned quickly, but he was gone.

‘I broke this.’ Anna’s hand shook as she showed Greta the perfume bottle.

Greta looked at Anna’s face intently. ‘I’ll tell her I did it.’

‘But you’ll get in trouble,’ Anna said, knowing that Liesl took every chance to complain about Greta’s age, how the plates rattled, how slowly she moved.

‘And what will they do to me? Send me back to my home, that is all. You would face much worse. It’s all right.’ Greta patted Anna’s hand and took the bottle away. ‘It’ll be all right.’

That evening, Anna was back in the camp early as there was no one to serve at the house.

She sat with Nina and Joanna, who looked ready to fall asleep in their bowls of soup, which was clear and held a piece of carrot.

Anna had eaten Greta’s soup earlier, and allowed Nina and Joanna to share her meal.

‘You’re not hungry?’ Joanna asked.

‘I’m all right.’

‘You look really pale,’ Nina said, her eyes wide with worry.

‘I was busy all day, that’s all. I just need to sleep,’ Anna looked down at her hands, not daring to raise them to her nose to check if she still smelled of Liesl Becher’s scent. She picked at a ragged nail and tore it off so it bled, the pain a welcome distraction.

‘You’re bleeding!’ Nina reached over to take Anna’s hand in hers, but Anna drew it away and placed it on her lap, allowing the blood to drip onto the rough cotton.

Merely a minute later, the women were ordered out of the mess hall, all of them walking slowly as if their legs had been filled with lead.

Anna was glad to get to her bunk for the first time since she had returned to the camp. She wanted the solitude, the quiet.

She lay down and pulled her blanket over her, turning to face the wall, thinking of the boy’s reflection in the mirror, his expressionless face. She felt sick. She knew he would tell his mother, and she in turn would tell her husband, and then – she couldn’t bear to think.

Nina’s body was next to Anna’s, curling around her as soon as the other women had silenced themselves into sleep.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nina asked.

Anna did not turn to look at her friend. ‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me, Anna, I know something is wrong. Please.’

‘I did something stupid.’

‘What? What did you do?’

Anna shifted so she was now face to face with Nina. ‘I made a mistake. I don’t know what happened – one minute I was fine, and then the next it was as though there was someone else in my body, making it move and do things, and I couldn’t stop it.’

Anna told Nina of wearing Liesl Becher’s dress, of the perfume bottle and of the boy who had seen her in his mother’s bedroom, dressed in her clothes.

‘Maybe it wasn’t someone else who made you do those things. Maybe it was you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Anna replied, sniffing as silent tears ran over her face once more.

‘I mean that maybe you, the person that’s deep inside, which we have to keep hidden from everyone, maybe she came out, and for a minute you were yourself.’

‘I was angry. I was so angry, Nina, and I don’t know, I felt a kind of disgust when I saw myself, but it was more than that – I just can’t find the words to explain it.’

‘That’s you, the deep-inside you.’

‘No. I was never like that – never – I was always happy, and I never had feelings like that before.’