Annexed by Sharon Dogar

ever get out of here.
    I'll make money.
    I'll eat whatever I want.
    Wear different clothes every day.
    Buy a trilby.
    I won't be a Jew, or a Christian or anything; I'll just be a man.
    I'll make furniture. I'll swim in the sea. I'll have cats. I'll live. I'll never see Pfeffer or the Franks again. But right at this very moment I have to study commercial English. It is so boring. Shipments. Trainloads. Here's my letter.
Dear Sir/Madam,
    I am pleased to inform you that we have your requirement of one shipload of prophylactics, as requested. These are for your newly freed Jews.
    As you are aware, they are captive for years many now. And the need is quite high up, I believe. Please dispatch, forthwith, the said sum. Yours faithfully,
    Peter van Pels
    I have to underline the relevant business phrases. I didn't give this letter to Mr. Frank to mark, even though it's quite good for me! Maybe I'll show it to Margot; maybe not.
    I like to see her blush sometimes.

FEBRUARY 13, 1944— PETER STRUGGLES WITH DR. PFEFFER
    Pfeffer is driving me mad. He can't sit still. We should have made it clear: Please do not come and live in such a small space if you are incapable of not moving. We're trying to listen to the radio, he's up and down and fiddling with the reception, pretending to make it better until I can't bear it.
    "Please, can't you just stop?" I mutter.
    "I'll be the judge of when I stop!" he says.
    "A poor judge!" The words come out before I know it. I blush.
    "Yes, Fritz, sit down and allow us all to listen in peace!" says Father. Mutti sends him a glance of approval. I look at the floor.

FEBRUARY 14, 1944— ANNE AND PETER ARE IN THE ATTIC TOGETHER
    I'm lying in a patch of sunlight in the attic. It's cold; cold and dusty all around me. On my left the clothes are drying. Sometimes I swap them around, just for fun. I put Mutti's big knickers next to Mr. Frank's underwear. It makes me smile. It makes Mutti so cross when the washing gets mixed up.
    I concentrate on the sun on my face. I try to forget that it's not really summer. I pretend we still live on Zuider-Amstellaan near Merwedeplein and that I'm on a day trip to the beach. I can hear the waves beside me; feel the sand beneath me. The open sky and air are all around me. Soon, I'll sit up and we'll have a picnic, and when I get back we'll all go to Oasis, the ice cream parlor where all us kids used to go. Anne was always there; she could have been bought ice creams every day for a year! Everybody loved her. Other times I'm on the beach at Zaandvoort and sometimes I'm just floating in the sea.
    Weightless.
    Anne and Margot sometimes pretend they're on the flat roof at Merwedeplein. Anne says she's with her grandmother. Margot, as usual, says nothing, but thinks a lot. I look at them both sometimes, with their heads so close together that their hair tangles. But today it's just me.
    "Peter?"
    I didn't notice Anne in the corner, searching through a box of books.
    She's so quiet I didn't hear a thing. Anne isn't so clumsy these days. There was a time when she couldn't make it through a room without banging into something or knocking it over.
    "Mmm?" I say.
    I open my eyes. Just a bit. Above me the chestnut tree is golden in the light. The sun's a halo around its brown branches. In autumn the leaves are as gold as coins. Or brown—and sometimes, but not often—there's a red leaf. They fall off the tree in shoals.
    "I wish I could do that," I whisper.
    "What?" Anne says.
    "Float away, like leaves."
    I feel her head arrive on the floor next to mine. She has to put it there. The patch of sunlight's only small.
    "But then they all die, silly!" she says. I close my eyes. I don't answer. The sunlight's so glorious after winter. Wonderful. We just lie there—it's nice. I wish we could float away like this in the sun. Like leaves. But we can't—and it's only February, and so even with each other's body warmth it's too cold to lie still for long. We sit up.
    "I hate