Lotti faced Hester across the checked tablecloth. ‘And so I put this red streak in my hair this morning. What do you think of it? Do you like it?’

‘It’s attention-grabbing,’ Hester said with utter truth.

They were having lunchtime coffee and cakes in a small café near to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

‘It is.’ There was immense satisfaction in Lotti’s voice. ‘I got the idea when I was with Max last night, talking about Emily Elise.’

Hester’s amusement deepened. ‘But Emily Elise’s hair is Titian. The streak you’ve put in yours is the colour of a British pillar box!’

‘I wanted it to match my lipstick and nail varnish—and it does, perfectly. It also looks sensational with my astrakhan fur.’

The fur was draped over the back of her chair and it was true, the red did look sensational against it.

‘I sometimes think Hugo should have sought a position with a bank, instead of with the Foreign Office,’ Hester said, reaching for a macaroon. ‘I’ve never known anyone have so much time off work as Max manages to get.’

It wasn’t a statement that needed a response and Lotti didn’t make one. She had her own idea as to why Max was able to spend so much time in Germany—and it was an idea she had no intention of putting into words.

Hester glanced down at her watch. ‘It’s nearly time for me to be back,’ she said regretfully.

Lotti pushed her coffee cup to one side. ‘I’ll walk with you to the shop.’ She signalled to the waiter that they were ready for the bill. ‘Don’t you get bored working in a florist’s all day, Hester? Don’t you ever long for something a little more exciting?’

‘Such as dancing in feathers and sequins every evening?’ The amusement Lotti always aroused in her was thick in her voice. ‘No. I prefer flowers to feathers and as for the dancing bit, I don’t think I could do one of your routines in front of Hugo, let alone a revue bar full of strange men!’

With arms linked, both giggling, they walked from the café, Hester the epitome of respectability in a streamlined grey coat, matching trilby-style hat and low-heeled shoes and Lotti looking far from respectable in astrakhan coat, Cossack hat and teeteringly heeled high boots.

‘If Max is in Berlin, perhaps he’ll come to the apartment for dinner one evening with you and Ilse. He’s very fond of Ilse, isn’t he?’

It was a rhetorical question. Ilse was the baby of the clan and, sweet-natured and shy, had always been treated with great protectiveness by all the males in the family, Max included.

Lotti was just about to point out that, though Ilse was still treated by everyone as if she were a child, she was less than two years younger than herself, when a truck full of SA men hurtled past, screaming to a halt fifty yards or so in front of them.

Hester stopped abruptly, the blood leaving her face.