He had continued his pacing. ‘You weren’t living in Berlin during the 1920s, Nancy. You may think you know what it was like here when the Bolsheviks were gaining the upper hand, but in reality you haven’t a clue.’ He had come to a halt in front of her. ‘And you haven’t a clue as to what it was like when inflation was rampant. That this family still has a steelworks is due to Hitler. And don’t you ever forget it!’

‘That you still have a steelworks is due to Hitler!’ she had snapped back at him. ‘I don’t have a steelworks. I don’t take a penny piece from the steelworks and neither does my mother, nor Max nor Hugo.’

‘Your father does!’ he had flung back at her, his blond hair falling low across his forehead. ‘Your father has always taken a large share of the profits and has done so without contributing a day’s work towards them!’

It had been a hideous, unproductive, savage row and the worst thing about it had been that even when she was hating him for his pig-headed obduracy, as she watched him stride the room, slim-hipped and handsome, she had been aching with longing for him.

She was aching with longing for him now.

The kettle boiled. She took it off the heat. If it were not for the steelworks she was certain Claus would not be a National Socialist. He might well believe that Hitler had done a good job where unemployment and inflation were concerned and that a one-party state was preferable to living with the fear of civil war, but the Claus she had known since childhood and who had been her lover for well over a year was a sophisticate who hated crudity and vulgarity.

On that score, if on no other, he would never in normal circumstances have given his political support to a party who published such obscenities as Der Stürmer and had a leader who ranted and raved and promised the gullible that when Jews were driven from public life their problems would all be over.

The reason she and Claus could not be happy together was not because of their political differences. It was because of the House of Remer. If the House of Remer were taken out of the equation, Claus would not be flaunting a swastika in his lapel. Instead, he would be of the same mind as Lotti and her friends, wanting no part of the new, hateful Germany Hitler was creating. That was what she believed. It was what, for the sake of her sanity, she had to believe.

As so often in the past, the conviction it was still possible for everything to be all right between her and Claus swamped her. His kowtowing to Nazism was only out of concern for the future of the steelworks, a concern that was mainly on his father’s behalf. His father had, however, divested himself of ownership of the House of Remer and abnegated all interest in it. That being the case, surely Claus could now do likewise, if he so wished?