Dear Jim,

Something has just happened that’s left me a bit shaken up. After posting up my last entry (a dirty poem, first draft), I felt like stepping out and catching the last few minutes of sunshine and a bite to eat when I turned to close and lock the door behind me and saw that someone had written ‘Nutter und Schlampe’ or ‘whore and slut’ on the door to our flat. The words had been written in lipstick and it looked as if a child had done them.

I closed the door gently and decided to take a walk even though I’d suddenly lost my appetite. Outside families were strolling along the canal and children were playing catch near the synagogue. There are quite a lot of children in the building where we live and until now, we’ve had no problems. I remember the day we were unpacking, a couple of kids came and sat on the window sill and asked me a lot of questions, which I answered openly, and one of them even asked if he could hide his shisha in our flat, which I declined. Sebastian is out at the moment at a museum with friends, so during my short walk I decided I wouldn’t do anything about it until he got back home. I thought the best thing to do would be to leave the words there for everyone to see and certainly not to wash them off ourselves.

When I got back I heard a door closing a few floors above me in the stairwell and as I reached our door, I saw that someone had erased the words from our door. A neighbour was just coming up the stairs behind me with her bike, we said hello and I slipped inside.

I’ve been at home all day working on the computer, so I was literally just 2 metres away when they did it. And whoever washed it off probably now thinks they managed to do so without me ever having noticed anything. But I have.