Aware that it was no idle threat, Nancy scooped a fruit bowl from a small table, tipped the fruit onto the floor and thrust it towards him.

As he retched she turned to her mother and said, with a maturity far beyond her sixteen years, ‘Don’t feel too badly, Mama. They’ll get used to having Adam as a stepfather. They’ve always liked him and they’re not going to be able to stop liking him just because he loves you, and you love him. And I think it’s smashing news about the baby. I didn’t know people your age could still have them. I hope it will be a girl because, when the chips are down, men can be pretty useless.’

‘I know your mother is annoyed at my calling on you so late, but I had to see you. I had to.’

It was nine o’clock at night and Hugo was standing with Hester on the lamplit front step of the Dresners’ imposing-looking family house in Haberlandstrasse.

‘What on earth is it?’ Hester’s concern was immediate. ‘Are you ill? You look ill. Do you want to come inside? I know my mother won’t mind if I explain.’

‘No.’ Hugo shook his head, a lock of fine, mouse-brown hair falling low across his brow. ‘I just need to talk to you…need to be with you.’

He was so distressed he was on the verge of tears.

At the drawing-room window a curtain twitched.

Well aware of the scrutiny they were under, Hester took hold of his hand. ‘Let’s walk round the side of the house and sit on the garden swing. We won’t be able to be seen there.’

Uncaring of what Hester’s parents might make of such a move, Hugo nodded. He was done with worrying about whether he upset people or not. His mother hadn’t worried about upsetting him and Max and Nancy when she had become pregnant with Adam Priestley’s baby. At the thought of what his gentle, mild-mannered father must have felt when he had been told the news, he felt ill. ‘What is it, sweetheart?’ Hester’s delicately boned face was fraught with anxiety. ‘What has happened? Has there been an accident? Is your mother all right?’

They were out of sight of the drawing-room windows now and he pulled her towards him, burrowing his head in the smoke-black cloud of her hair, sobbing like a child.

Horrified, certain that someone was either dead or dying, she propelled him towards the garden swing.

‘It’s my mother,’ he said, as she pulled him down next to her. ‘She’s going to divorce my father and marry Adam Priestley—and she has to marry Adam because she’s having his baby.’

In the deepening dusk he could see Hester’s eyes widen in stark disbelief.

‘I know it’s incredible, Hester, but it’s true. And the worst thing is, the truly terrible thing is that, though she was uncomfortable telling us, she wasn’t unhappy about it. She wasn’t full of guilt or shame or…or any of the things you would think she would be.’ He ran a hand agitatedly through his hair. ‘And when she marries Adam, she won’t move into his home. His mother is still alive and she won’t want another woman moving into her house, will she? It will be Adam who will move into Shuttleworth Hall, and when he does I will have to move out. To remain there would be just too excruciatingly embarrassing.’