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the aromas coming from her kitchen. Gertrude had been a good cook, and used vegetables from her garden to create a variety of delicious dishes. Felix and his twin sister Susanne had loved coming to stay at Motzen on extended visits. But as he remembered his grandmother, or Oma , an unpleasant memory filtered through. The final time he had stayed in Motzen was when Gertrude died. After the funeral, his mother, Sofie, had had a bitter argument with her sister Ingrid and then dragged Felix and Susanne away. They had never returned to Motzen after that, and Klaus and Ingrid never visited them again in Berlin. Felix used to ask his mother why they couldn’t go back to the lake but she just said, ‘One day. Not now.’ Without really understanding why, he accepted her explanation and after a while stopped asking.
    Things went from bad to worse for his family after that. His parents separated and his father, Jakob, continued in a drunken, downward spiral until luck abandoned him not only at the bottom of a glass but in the depths of a river whilst attempting to escape to the West. A few years later, Sofie was knocked down by a speeding cyclist on a busy East Berlin street, sustaining serious head injuries. She never recovered consciousness.
    The twins were 12 when their mother died. East German authorities tended to view those who attempted to escape to the West as traitors to the Socialist State. Jakob Waltz was a traitor and also a drunk, therefore his children were tarnished by his genes and guilty by association and were punished in their father’s place. Without consulting the two bereft young twins, or bothering to contact any of their relatives and thereby reflecting the cruelty of the system, the social services declared Felix and Susanne orphans and therefore wards of the state. In East Germany at this time, orphans and disruptive youths were often sent to institutions where abuse was rife and punishments were inflicted by staff without mercy or moral conscience.
    So it was that in 1987 Felix and Susanne ended up in an institution called Torgau, approximately two hours south of Berlin on the outskirts of Dresden. Its reputation meant it was only ever mentioned in undertones and the only way out for anyone to escape was to risk their lives by jumping into the swirling River Elbe, far below.
    For two years Felix and Susanne suffered mental, physical and sexual abuse in this notorious institution, a place totally lacking in humanity and empathy. The perpetrators of these crimes went unchallenged by the authorities or their colleagues because abuse was conspiratorial and hidden. They grew to believe they were invincible and there would be no retribution for their heinous crimes, no price to pay. The children who were unfortunate enough to be put in Torgau were out of sight and out of mind to the rest of the world and were later given the name the weggesperrt , which meant the forgotten children.
    Felix left Gertrude’s garden and made his way slowly out of the village. As he walked along the main street it seemed every house in the village was in a party mood. It was late but many lights were on with music playing amidst the sound of laughter. It wasn’t normally like this so he felt bemused and wondered what was going on.
    Felix headed back to the lake and at the water’s edge stripped to his swimming trunks, wading out to waist high with a bar of carbolic soap in his hand. The coldness of the water was bearable. At Torgau, punishments were handed out indiscriminately for trivial and minor offences. He’d sometimes been made to stand knee-deep in a darkened cellar for hours on end, or hosed with icy water in a slippery, cobbled courtyard whilst the wardens looked on in amusement. The cold water held no fears for him as the urge to feel clean now overwhelmed him.
    Felix found it difficult to stop washing himself repeatedly, even though his excessive daily scrubbing had left him with dry skin that