They were gathered in the bedroom always allocated to Vicky on her Berlin visits. She was seated on her dressing table stool, but facing away from the dressing table. Nancy was sitting cross-legged on the bed. Max was leaning nonchalantly against the door, his arms folded, one foot crossing the other at the ankle. Hugo was seated on a spindly legged gilt chair and, without much respect for its fragility, had tipped it back against the wall so that it was balanced on only two legs.

‘You’re a junior reporter,’ Max responded crushingly to Nancy’s interruption, ‘and only earning peanuts.’

Before a full-scale verbal battle broke out, Vicky clasped her hands a little tighter together and said, ‘Now that you are all old enough to come to terms with changes of circumstances and to understand just how complex life can be…’

‘What’s the matter, Mother? You’re not about to tell us that you and Pa are getting divorced, are you?’ Max’s voice was full of teasing laughter.

Nancy giggled at the thought.

Hugo smiled.

Vicky cleared her throat, gripping her hands together so tightly that the knuckles shone white.

‘Yes,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘Yes. I am.’

Max’s eyes flew wide open, all laughter vanishing. Nancy looked bewildered. Hugo jerked his chair back onto all four legs, the blood draining from his face.

‘If this is a joke, Mother, it isn’t a very funny one.’ Max’s voice was as terse as the crack of a whip.

‘It isn’t a joke, darling.’

Their eyes held. Of her three children, he was the handsome one. His hair was darker than either hers or Berthold’s and was thick and curly and worn a trifle too long. His eyes were blue, like hers, but a hot, electric blue and were as thick-lashed as a girl’s. There was nothing girlish about his physique, though. At nearly twenty-one he was tall and slim-hipped and had the shoulders of a young man at ease and at home on a rugby pitch.

They had never, as far as she could remember, ever had a serious disagreement about anything. From the expression in his eyes, she knew they were about to have one now.

‘If it isn’t a joke, then it ought to be,’ he said tersely. ‘What reason could there possibly be for the two of you to divorce?’

As she licked dry lips, Nancy said with hard-headed practicality, ‘Well, they don’t live together, do they? They’ve never lived together.’

‘That’s no reason for them to divorce!’ The words erupted out of Hugo as explosively as balls from a cannon. ‘Mother prefers living in Yorkshire and Pa prefers living in Berlin. Their not living together is simply a sensible arrangement, that’s all.’

His eyes begged her to agree with him.

‘No,’ she said gently. ‘There is more to things than that, Hugo. Though your father and I love each other and always will, we are loving friends who are no longer in love with each other and haven’t been for many years.’