At almost six-thirty, Gerda still hadn't come down from the attic. Kitty decided it was time, therefore, for her to go up. For a long time she'd had a half-unconscious prayer that God would let her live a selfish life, not a life in which she had to be courageous in order to be good. She wasn't strong enough for that. She wanted everything to be easier. This was such a little thing, to investigate Gerda's activities in the attic, but still it pushed her farther than she wanted to go.

The stairs were narrow and steep. There was no door at the top. The long pull cord that switched on the lights brushed past her ear as she climbed the final step and she thought of bats and starlings. "Gerda, are you here?"

There was a small silence, as if Gerda was considering whether it would be possible to withhold a reply, but then, "Yes, Mama."

"Where, then?"

"Over by the window."

Kitty saw movement and picked her way towards it. They met beside a horsehair-covered trunk. An overall Gerda had borrowed from the kitchen was smeared with brownish dust, and wisps of hair escaped from her Gretchen braids like a halo. She looked quite dazed, almost drunk, other worldly and newly aware in a way that made Kitty suddenly wonder if she'd found something unsuitable up here...

Out of the smoke and shattered glass of Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht in November 1938, two families in impossibly different circumstances become linked by tangled bonds. Can Kitty draw something from this dangerous new relationship that could save her precious child?

"A magnificent story...couldn't put it down." - Jane Porter, bestselling author of "Flirting With Forty"

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"A brilliant book." - Barbara Hannay, award-winning author of "Zoe's Muster".

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