slip in) because whatever is said can either annoy someone or it is misunderstood. I swallow Valerian pills every day against worry and depression, but it doesn’t prevent me from being even more miserable the next day. A good hearty laugh would help more than ten Valerian pills, but we’ve almost forgotten how to laugh. I feel afraid sometimes that from having to be so serious I’ll grow a long face and my mouth will droop at the corners. The others don’t get any better either, everyone looks with fear and misgivings towards that great terror, winter. Another thing that does not cheer us up is the fact that the warehouseman, V.M., is becoming suspicious about the ‘Secret Annexe.’ We really wouldn’t mind what V.M. thought of the situation if he wasn’t so exceptionally inquisitive, difficult to fob off, and, moreover, not to be trusted. One day Kugler wanted to be extra careful, put on his coat at ten minutes to one, and went to the chemist round the corner. He was back in less than five minutes, and sneaked like a thief up the steep stairs that lead straight to us. At a quarter past one he wanted to go again, but Bep came to warn him that V.M. was in the office. He did a right- about turn and sat with us until half past one. Then he took off his shoes and went in stockinged feet to the front attic door, went downstairs step by step, and, after balancing there for a quarter of an hour to avoid creaking, he landed safely in the office, having entered from the outside. Bep had been freed of V.M. in the meantime, and came up to us to fetch Kugler, but he had already been gone a long time; he was still on the staircase with his shoes off. Whatever would the people in the street have thought if they had seen the Manager putting on his shoes outside? Gosh! the Manager in his socks!
Yours, Anne
Wednesday, 29 September, 1943
