office work; Mrs. van Daan puts a kettle on the gas ring; Mummy is coming downstairs with a pan of potatoes; each one knows his own job.
Peter soon returns from the warehouse. The first question is bread. This is always put in the kitchen cupboard by the ladies, but it is not there.
Forgotten? Peter offers to look in the main office. He crouches in front of the door to make himself as small as possible and crawls towards the steel lockers on hands and knees, so as not to be seen from outside, gets the bread, which had been put there, and disappears; at least, he wants to disappear, but before he quite realises what has happened, Mouschi has jumped over him and gone and sat right under the writing table.
Peter looks all around—Aha! he sees him there, he crawls into the office again and pulls the animal by its tail. Mouschi spits, Peter sighs.
What has he achieved? Now Mouschi is sitting right up by the window cleaning himself, very pleased to have escaped Peter. Now Peter is holding a piece of bread under the cat’s nose as a last decoy. Mouschi will not-be tempted and the door closes. I stood and watched it all through the crack of the door. We work on. Rat, tat, tat. Three taps means a meal!
Yours, Anne
Monday, 23 August, 1943
Dear Kitty, Continuation of the ‘Secret Annexe’ daily timetable. As the clock strikes half past eight in the morning, Margot and Mummy are jittery: “Ssh...
Daddy, quiet, Otto, ssh. Pim.” “It is half past eight, come back here, you can’t run any more water, walk quietly!” These are the various cries to Daddy in the bathroom. As the clock strikes half past eight, he has to be in the living room. Not a drop of water, no lavatory, no walking about, everything quiet. As long as none of the office staff are there, everything
