In the middle of our last summer in Bamberg, a no–man’s-land between the exams and our results, Julia and I went out to the bomb hole. I rode to her house that morning, through the intermittent shade of birch trees and liquid ambers. When I rang the bell Julia appeared so quickly I figured she must have been crouching behind the door, tight as a pine cone. She was wearing a faded red singlet and blue combat shorts, and on her feet she had a pair of battered sandshoes, no socks. She handed me a picnic basket and a tartan blanket.

‘We can take Mum’s car,’ she said.