‘Hah! We never got a look in after you were born, did we?’ Margarita says. ‘Do you remember that day, Dolla? Poor Mama had to give birth on the dining room table!’ She shudders at the thought.

‘Like yesterday,’ Theodora says. She claps her hands onto her thighs. ‘But before we start on the do-you-remembers, Philip must want a wash.’

‘No, I don’t,’ he says, to tease her, but Dolla is not to be overruled.

‘After two days in an army truck, Philip, you certainly do! I’ll sort out a room for you,’ she says as she stands up. ‘Tiny, why don’t you ring the bell for some tea?’

‘Or something stronger,’ says Sophie, getting obediently to her feet and winking at Philip.

Philip stands up too. It never was any use trying to resist Theodora, who was always the practical member of the family, but there’s something comforting about how quickly they are able to fall into their old roles. ‘Still a bossy boots, I see, Dolla,’ he says with a grin and she laughs and makes shooing motions with her hands.

‘Still cheeky, I see!’

He is glad to have banished some of the sadness in the room. After the first joy of meeting again, he is shocked at what his sisters have been through. He has heard some but not all of it. Sophie’s first husband, Christoph, was killed when his plane crashed in 1943. There are rumours that he was murdered on Hitler’s orders, but when Philip raises the question, his sisters are evasive.

‘We have learned to keep quiet,’ Sophie explains later when they are walking in the neglected gardens alone, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm. ‘Anyone who spoke out …’ She sighs a little. ‘Do you remember Princess Mafalda? They sent her to the camp at Büchenwald. She may have died because of an American bomb, but it was that devil Hitler who killed her.’

Her voice shakes with emotion. Philip isn’t sure if it is anger or grief; maybe it is both.

‘I have been looking after her children ever since. Poor things, it has been hard for them, with Mafalda in that dreadful camp and their father in prison. We were all staying with Christoph’s mother at Friedrichshof, but when the Americans came, they wanted the castle as a rest home for their soldiers.’

She lifts her shoulders in a gesture of resignation. ‘Well, we are defeated, we have no choice. We had two hours to pack up and get out. There was no time to retrieve all the family jewels that Christoph hid in the cellars. We thought they would be safe. They were well hidden. And what else could we do? We were all jammed into a tiny house, but it was unendurable. In the end, I took all the children to Wolfsgarten where they gave us refuge.’

Philip frowns. He has heard of how dangerous it was in Germany in those first lawless days after the Allies moved in. Nobody was safe. ‘How did you get there?’