‘For once in his life, Berthold has come to a correct conclusion,’ Zelda said waspishly, minutes after their reunion. ‘Berlin isn’t the city I fell in love with before the war. That was a city of imperial pomp and splendour and culture. Now it’s a city of demonstrations and street fighting and arm-saluting Nazis.’

Vicky was quite aware of what kind of a city Berlin had become and she was also aware that Josef was a fully paid-up member of the Nazi Party. That Zelda was not supporting Josef to the hilt could mean only one thing.

‘What’s wrong between the two of you?’ she asked.

The drawing room they were in was exquisitely decorated and furnished in the art deco style Zelda favoured. She looked around it and then, as if deeming it not private enough for what she wanted to say, said: ‘Let’s go for a drive out to Wannsee. Then I’ll tell you.’

Escaping from the city to the wooded shores of Lake Wannsee was always a pleasure for Vicky. When the children had been much younger and she had accompanied them on their visits to Berlin, picnics beside the lake had always been her favourite way of spending a day out.

Zelda drove out of the city unusually quiet and tight-lipped. Vicky, having more than enough to think about, didn’t try to make conversation. She was too busy wondering how to prepare Max, Hugo and Nancy for the bombshells she was about to drop—and which to drop first. Was it best to tell them that she and their father were divorcing before she told them of her long-term love affair with Adam? Or should she tell them about the divorce after she had told them about Adam? As for the coming baby—she still couldn’t even imagine how she was going to break that news.

‘Let’s walk on the promenade,’ Zelda said as they stepped from the car. ‘There will be a nice cool breeze blowing in from the lake.’

Willowy and graceful, she was wearing an apple-green silk dress, her hair coiled in a twist beneath a straw hat dyed the exact colour of her dress, its brim saucily upturned and pinned in place by a white silk rose. Her mouth was a deep glossy red, her eyebrows and eyelashes a glossy blue-black. She was forty-eight and looked all of thirty-two. Vicky, wearing a cream-coloured linen dress, its matching loose jacket hiding her condition, was well aware she looked frumpy in comparison.

‘So what is it?’ she asked bluntly, hoping it was simply that Zelda had tired of Josef’s autocratic humourlessness.

‘It’s this idiotic, anti-Semitic drivel the National Socialists continually pump out,’ Zelda said savagely. ‘It’s so rife you can practically smell it in the air and the damage it has done to my relationship with Josef is enormous.’

They were approaching a seat positioned to give a scenic view of the lake. Zelda sat down on it abruptly and began searching in her lizard-skin handbag for her cigarette case, holder and lighter.