One file led to another and by the time he was finished the night sky was pearling to grey. Putting the files back in his briefcase and leaving unnecessary ones on the coffee table, he went back to bed, sliding his arm around her. In the morning, they would have to talk. She had to be made to understand that her career as a journalist couldn’t be continued, that there were too many people eager to report anti-Nazi remarks to the Security Service.

She was lying turned away from him and he kissed the nape of her neck. She hadn’t been too obdurate to travel from Berlin in order to make things right between them again. She wouldn’t be too obdurate when, in a few hours’ time, he finally made her understand just what was necessary if they were to have a life together. And they were going to have a life together, of that he’d become certain.

It was just after seven o’clock when she woke. Claus was still deep in sleep and, vaguely remembering that sometime during the night he had told her he was going to go into the sitting room to do some paperwork, she didn’t disturb him.

Slipping on his dressing gown, she headed for the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

As she crossed the sitting room she paused to pick up their two empty wine glasses. There were other things on the glass-topped table, files and a large, stiff-backed envelope.

Snooping was as far from being a vice with her as stealing. Under normal circumstances she would never, in a million years, have looked at anything not meant for her eyes. The envelope was open, though, and the glossy photograph spilling from it showed Adolf Hitler, arm outstretched.

To be confronted by a glossy photograph of Adolf Hitler was not normal circumstances. With her heart beating somewhere up in her throat, she slid the photograph farther from the envelope.

It was a line-up similar to many she had seen before, only then the photographs had been grainy press photographs. This was a personal photograph and the reason it had been sent to Claus was obvious.

In front of a mammoth swastika-emblazoned flag, stood an array of dinner-jacketed men flanking their Führer, arms outstretched in the Nazi salute.

Himmler and Göring, Hitler’s key players, stood at either side of him. Himmler, camera reflection dancing off his round rimless glasses, looked extremely pleased with himself. Göring looked slightly drunk. There were three other men in the lineup. One she didn’t recognize and two she did.

One of those she recognized was Dr Schacht, President of the Reichsbank. The other was Claus.

In a split second she was aware of her whole life changing course. Until then she had never realized how much of a romantic she was. Now she did. Only a romantic would have believed there was a future for her and Claus that did not include politics and Berlin and the House of Remer. It had been wishful thinking. A castle in the air. A pipe dream.