‘Rubbish,’ she said uncertainly. ‘They’re just good friends. Hugo is only nineteen and Hester is still a child.’

‘She’s sixteen.’ There was amusement in Zelda’s voice. ‘And in Berlin, Vicky, sixteen is quite old enough to fall in love.’

Well aware that Zelda didn’t often come to wrong conclusions, Vicky was silent, wondering how she felt about the thought of Hugo being in love with the quiet, grave-eyed Hester. Hester was far too young, of course, to be seriously in love—and there was the fact that, as a non-Jew, Hugo would hardly find favour in Hester’s parents’ eyes—but if they ever decided they did want to marry, it was a marriage that would have her approval. Hester’s integrity shone from her. She would be a daughter-in-law to be proud of.

‘Let’s walk down the promenade to the nearest café and have a couple of cocktails.’ Zelda removed her half-smoked cigarette from its holder and crushed it beneath a lizard-skin shod foot. ‘And since I’ve had a couple of pieces of earth-shaking news for you, what have you got for me?’ There was dry sarcasm in her voice. ‘Has Little Ridding’s vicar run off with the Sunday collection money? Has Violet Ramsbothan turned Presbyterian?’

‘No,’ Vicky said, completely deadpan, ‘but Berthold has agreed to divorce me and I will be giving birth to Adam’s baby in six months’ time.’

Zelda’s stupefied reaction was so glorious Vicky forgot all about the nightmare of telling her children the same news and began giggling.

Within seconds, Zelda was giggling just as helplessly and by the time they reached the café they were laughing hard enough to bust a gut.

It was laughter that did her the world of good; laughter that enabled her to get everything into perspective. Though her children’s shock was going to be painful to bear, they were, after all, now adults. Whatever the future held for them, they would no doubt live through it without too much concern as to whether or not they had her wholehearted approval.

And from now on, she was going to live the same way. At forty-three, her life was about to become wonderful. She was going to be a mother again and she had always adored being a mother. And when the divorce Berthold had agreed to was finalized, she would marry Adam.

Full of confidence now for the family council she was about to hold, she was disconcerted, when she and Zelda returned to Unter den Linden, to find that Hugo was at the Dresners’, that Max had taken fourteen-year-old Ilse to the Schöneberger Volkspark and that Nancy had badgered Berthold into taking her to a political rally.

Hoping the rally was on behalf of the Social Democrats and not the National Socialists, Vicky did something she did very rarely when in Berlin. She set off alone to take a long walk through the city.

Walking always soothed her. In Yorkshire, she walked for miles, though no longer with the dogs she had grown up with. When her father’s two spaniels and Yorkshire terrier had succumbed to old age and been buried beneath the shade of the trees in Shuttleworth Hall’s parkland, she had bought herself a little Norfolk terrier and named him Tinker. Wherever she went, Tinker went too. In Berlin there was no such companion. Wastl had died in 1921, shortly after her first post-war visit to the city, and Berthold hadn’t had the heart to try and replace him.