‘Mords!’ a six-foot transvestite on the other side of her suddenly shrieked. ‘My saxophone! Where is it? Where is it?’ He was a member of the orchestra and beneath his toweringly high blond wig and garish make-up his face was panic-stricken.

This time, Lotti could be of no help.

As bedlam continued all around her she fluttered her eyelashes, relieved to see she had got them on evenly.

When she had telephoned London, which was where Max now lived and worked, and told him she was no longer a small-time chorus girl, but a big-time chorus girl, his congratulations had been instant. Which meant she was worrying unnecessarily about his reaction when he saw her on stage in twenty minutes’ time. Max knew his way backwards around Berlin’s nightclubs. Though other members of her family would probably have heart attacks if they saw her on stage, bicycling her legs slowly in the air, wearing only a sequinned bolero and skin-tight black satin shorts, Max wouldn’t. It would be something he could take in his stride.

She painted her wide, full mouth a vibrant red and then smeared a touch of Vaseline on her lips.

Hugo had once come with Max when she was dancing in a club on Leipzigerstrasse and had been most unhappy at what he had seen.

‘You are a Remer, Lotti,’ he had said bewilderedly. ‘You’ve been well brought up. How can you dance half naked every night? The other girls probably need the money, but you don’t.’

‘Well, first of all, no one knows I’m a Remer,’ she had said, unrepentantly. ‘I have a stage name. Lotti Lennartz. And I do it because I enjoy doing it. I like plastering stage make-up on and wearing sequins and feathers and being applauded. It’s exciting. And I need the money just as much as anyone else, because Vati has totally given up on me. I’m barely welcome beneath the family roof these days and I definitely get no allowance.’

He hadn’t looked any happier, but then nightclubs and revue bars were not places Hugo was at home in. He’d been posted to the British Embassy in Berlin just over a year ago and could, if he had wanted, have been enjoying the kind of social life that went with such a posting. Instead of which, he and Hester lived very quietly in a small flat in Kaiserallee.

She took one last look at herself in the mirror, liked what she saw, and bounced to her feet, reflecting that Hugo and Hester probably lived quietly so as not to draw attention to Hester’s Jewishness. To be a Jew, now, was to live in a constant state of anxiety and fear. It was one reason she loved the tawdry glitter of the clubs. They were the one place Hitler was never likely to be seen.

From the stage, Max couldn’t be seen, either. The spotlights were so bright Lotti couldn’t see anyone seated beyond the pool of light following her wherever she went. As a chorus girl she was one of the line-up that acted as backing and eye-interest to whoever was centre-stage—the comedians, the top-of-the-bill singers, the skits. She had her own moment of glory, though, as did several other girls. Hers was a zippy, erotic act that involved her doing cartwheels, splits and, last but by no means least, what had become her signature routine: bicycling her legs slowly in the air to a storm of gratifying applause.