With no destination in mind she walked down Unter den Linden in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate and from there into the familiar leafy acres of the Tiergarten. The Tiergarten was where she had often come when Max was a baby and Paul a small boy, and at the thought of Paul she smiled wryly. Though he and Zelda had a satisfactory relationship, it was one that most people wouldn’t have recognized as being that of mother and son. Always quite pleased to see each other, they never went out of their way to do so. During all the years Shuttleworth Hall had been Paul’s home, Zelda had never troubled to visit him there, and as Paul had grown to adulthood his visits to Berlin had become more and more infrequent. Like Vicky, he was always deeply uncomfortable in Berlin.

She began walking without any thought of where she was going, wishing her sons shared a little of Paul’s antipathy. Berlin had always possessed a hard, smart, glittering and cynical atmosphere, but now other ingredients had added to the mix, ingredients she found deeply repellent.

The sidewalk cafés where, before the war, she and Zelda used to enjoy a morning coffee, were now the haunt of rouged and bedizened transvestites. The Kurfürstendamm, where they used to shop, was littered with prostitutes. In beer gardens and nightclubs, pleasure was pursued frenetically, the sensation of barely reined-in hysteria emphasized by Hitler’s screaming rants at Nazi Party rallies.

That her children regarded such a city as being their home, just as Little Ridding was their home, deeply disturbed her, but there was nothing she could do about it. Their father was a Berliner. Max had been born in Berlin. Whenever possible she had brought her three children on long, regular visits to the city and the result was that they all spoke German with an unmistakable Berlin accent. What she hadn’t anticipated, though, when she had instigated their yearly visits to see Berthold, was that the day would come when Hugo and Nancy would want to live and work in Berlin. And she had never anticipated that—if Zelda’s reading of the situation were correct—Hugo would fall in love with a Berliner.

She had reached the Victory Column, or, as the rest of her family referred to it, the Siegessäule. She turned away from it. By now Max, Hugo and Nancy would have returned to the Remer mansion and it was time for her to return to it too.

Tired and hot, she flagged down a gold-striped black taxi. The next hour or so was going to be the most difficult she had ever lived through and afterwards—for her children—nothing would ever be quite the same.

‘And so you see, darlings, now that you are all adults and living independent lives of your own—‘

‘Nancy isn’t living an independent life of her own,’ Max said reasonably, wondering what on earth his mother was leading up to.

‘I am. And working,’ Nancy chipped in indignantly. ‘Being a cub reporter on the Yorkshire Post means I’m just as independent as you are.’