never to be able to go outdoors, also I’m very afraid that we shall be discovered and be shot. That is not exactly a pleasant prospect. We have to whisper and tread lightly during the day, otherwise the people in the
warehouse might hear us.
Someone is calling me.
Yours, Anne
Friday, 14 August, 1942
Dear Kitty, I have deserted you for a whole month, but honestly, there is such little news here that I can’t find amusing things to tell you every day. The van Daans arrived on July 13. We thought they were coming on the fourteenth, but between the thirteenth and sixteenth of July the Germans called up people right and left which created more and more unrest, so they played for safety, better a day too early than a day too late. At nine-thirty in the morning (we were still having breakfast) Peter arrived, the van Daans’ son, not sixteen yet, a rather soft, shy, gawky youth; can’t expect much from his company. He brought his cat (Mouschi) with him. Mr. and Mrs. van Daan arrived half an hour later, and to our great amusement she had a large pottie in her hat box. “I don’t feel at home anywhere without my chamber,” she declared, so it was the first thing to find its permanent resting place under her divan. Mr. van Daan did not bring his, but carried a folding tea table under his arm.
From the day they arrived we all had meals cozily together and after three days it was just as if we were one large family. Naturally, the van Daans were able to tell us a lot about the extra week they had spent in the inhabited world. Among other things we were very interested to hear what had happened to our house and to Mr. Goldschmidt. Mr. van Daan told us:
