Tight-lipped, he strode towards his private dining room, hoping he wouldn’t need to be merciless with his mining and armaments director. Production at the House of Remer needed to escalate and, if it was to please the Nazi hierarchy, it needed to escalate fast. Closing his mind to his personal problems, focusing on production figures and output, he entered the dining room intent on putting the fear of God into a man old enough to be his father.

Nancy hauled an overnight bag from the bottom of her wardrobe and threw it on one of the twin beds in the room she shared with Lotti. Then she went into the bathroom they shared with two of Lotti’s friends and scooped all her toiletries into a toilet bag. At high speed she headed back to the bedroom, dropped the toilet bag into her overnight bag and yanked open a drawer. A second or so later there was a change of underwear in the bag, a pair of pyjamas and—as an afterthought—an uncrushable and very pretty turquoise silk dress.

Slightly breathless, she stood and looked down at the packed bag.

Why was she doing this? Claus hadn’t phoned to apologize for their appalling row of three days ago. He certainly hadn’t thought to suggest she take a train to the Ruhr and join him so they could spend a night together and make up.

She chewed the corner of her lip.

What he had done was to behave abominably.

With violent suddenness she seized the bag and tipped the contents onto the floor.

She wasn’t going to go running to him when he couldn’t be bothered even to pick up the phone to talk to her in order to make things right between them again.

Fighting back tears of rage and frustration she walked swiftly into the kitchen and put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

As she waited for the water to boil she continued to fume. Why couldn’t he see what was staring him in the face? Why couldn’t he admit that monstrous injustices were taking place in Germany and that they would continue to take place as long as Hitler and his cronies retained power? Why, in the face of all the bullying repression being suffered by the Jews, did he persist in insisting that Hitler was good for Germany?

‘Is there any street fighting now Hitler has put paid to Röhm?’ he had demanded furiously when she had tried to make him understand just how bad things were for people like Hester’s parents. ‘No, there isn’t.’

They had been in the grand drawing room at Unter den Linden and he had begun striding up and down it, hardly able to control his anger. ‘And there isn’t any mass unemployment any longer, either,’ he had shot at her, his face taut with the force of his feelings, his eyes blazing. ‘All that is thanks to Hitler. And it’s thanks to Hitler that this country is no longer plunging headlong towards civil war.’