It was so true that for a moment she didn’t know what to say. Their relationship had been asexual for so long it had simply never entered her head that there were people who would naturally assume the child she was carrying was Berthold’s.

‘And have Max, Hugo and Nancy think that also?’ she asked, knowing it was something she could never do. ‘Have them believe that you are the baby’s father? And have the baby growing up believing that? Have the baby never knowing that Adam is its father? And have Adam unable to acknowledge his child?’

As he read the tone of her voice and the expression on her face, he shielded his eyes with his hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said inadequately. ‘I hadn’t thought…It’s just that I was happy with the way things were. Seeing you and the children at Shuttleworth Hall every Christmas and for weeks at a time during the summer, the children being here for Easter—‘ He broke off, too distressed to continue.

She slipped to her knees in front of him and took hold of one of his hands, pressing it close against her cheek. ‘Where you and I are concerned nothing is going to change, Berthold. We will still be loving friends. I will still want you to spend the summer and Christmas at Shuttleworth Hall. Our children will still visit you every Easter. Hugo is sitting the Foreign Office examinations when he leaves Oxford in the hope he can work at the British Embassy in Berlin. Nancy wants to be a journalist in Berlin. We will still all be a family—a family you will see more and more of, not less and less. But I love Adam, Berthold. He’s loved me for a long time, and because he loves me he’s denied himself one opportunity after another of marrying and having a family. Now, in a few months’ time, he will have a child. I want him to be able to acknowledge that child openly. I want him to experience all the joys of fatherhood, just as you have. I want this child to grow up knowing who his father is and being proud of him.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ There was defeat in his voice and he added plaintively, ‘It would all have been so different, Liebchen, if you had returned to Berlin for good in 1920.’

She hesitated, sorely tempted to point out that things could have been very different if he had left Berlin to live with her at Shuttleworth Hall.

The temptation passed. It was too late for such remarks and they could serve no purpose.

Instead, she said, ‘I’m going to break the news to Zelda. She is back from Schloss Niedernhall, isn’t she? I spoke to her on the telephone before leaving England and she said she would be returning to Berlin so that we could spend some time together.’

‘Yes, she’s back.’ He lowered his hand away from his eyes and she was aware of how fast and prematurely he was ageing. ‘I don’t know why she spends so much time in Baden-Württemberg. Josef only leaves Berlin now in order to visit the Ruhr and the steelworks, and the children are nearly always here. Zelda used to love Berlin, but now she seems to have taken an aversion to it.’