‘It will have to be a Jewish doctor. No other doctor will want to come.’

As they gained the doorway Lotti fiercely hoped Hester wasn’t known to any of the bystanders watching them. Informing had become a national pastime. Giving aid to a victim of SA brutality would, if reported, be interpreted as interfering with SA activity. And a Jewess charged with interfering with SA activity would be dealt with far more severely than she would be.

‘I know of someone. And if he won’t come, my father will.’

Lotti had forgotten all about Hester’s father’s profession.

‘Let’s hope there’s a phone in the house,’ she said grimly as the woman’s head fell against her chest, smearing her astrakhan coat with blood.

The sitting room was in chaos. Tables and chairs were overturned, crockery smashed. The phone, however, was still connected.

They laid the groaning woman down on a sofa and it was only then, when she was no longer supporting the woman’s weight, that Lotti felt her knees give way with delayed shock.

She slumped down against a corner of the sofa, her knees up to her chin. She needed a cigarette. Hell, she needed a brandy.

As she heard Hester make telephone contact with a doctor she clasped her hands around her knees to stop herself from shaking, wondering what pit of hell her country was hurtling into.

Chapter Thirteen

Yorkshire, Christmas 1933

Nancy drove down to Little Ridding’s station in a state of high elation. Christmas was always a special time of year because it was when the Berlin contingent, as Paul referred to them, became part of their family life in Yorkshire.

Her one fear, when she knew her parents were to divorce, and especially after Emily Elise had been born, had been that her father would no longer make his annual Christmas visits to Shuttleworth Hall. It had been a fear that had proved groundless.

As far as she could discern, nothing much had changed in her parents’ relationship—which, as she had once said to Hugo, showed that their marriage had never been all that it should have been.

Adam wasn’t living at Shuttleworth Hall, of course, and wouldn’t be until he and her mother were able to marry, which wouldn’t be for another few months. Their not living in sin was a vestige of respectability that made little sense when it was common gossip that Emily Elise was Adam’s child, but it was a vestige her mother was stubbornly clinging to. Adam was, however, a regular visitor and after Emily Elise had been born it had been unthinkable for him not to be with them over Christmas.

The previous Christmas she had geared herself up for what she had anticipated would be the appalling difficulty of seeing her mother, her father, Adam and Emily Elise all in the same room for the first time. It had been yet another needless worry.

Her father and Adam had been pleasantly courteous to each other, and her father—who loved children—had speedily taken Emily Elise on his knee and become a great favourite with her. Her mother had behaved as if it was quite usual to have her aged father, her husband, a lover, her husband’s adult children and her lover’s child all under the same roof and around the same dinner table and had been just as openly affectionate to Berthold as she had always been. Everyone had been put at ease. Everyone had had a wonderful Christmas.