‘Claus isn’t coming out of consideration for me,’ Nancy had said, telephoning from London. ‘Because if he were at Shuttleworth Hall, I wouldn’t be. I couldn’t be. It would be too much for me to bear.’

‘And I am in a play, Aunt Vicky,’ Ilse had said, telephoning from Berlin, her lovely voice full of deep disappointment. ‘It’s not in performance on Christmas Day, of course, but it is being performed both the day before and two days afterwards. I’ll be thinking of you, though. And I’ll be in Yorkshire for Easter, I promise.’

Berthold had also decided against coming to Shuttleworth Hall for Christmas. ‘It isn’t as if I don’t see the children at other times of the year,’ he had said, sounding apologetic and defensive, even though there was no reason for him to be either. ‘Because of his living in Berlin, I probably see more of Hugo than you do and, until a few months ago, I saw more of Nancy than you did. As for Max, he’s always in Berlin. I don’t know why Barings don’t transfer him here permanently.’

‘Will you be spending Christmas with Josef and Zelda?’ she had asked, concerned that his Christmas should be pleasant.

‘Er, no,’ he’d said, sounding uncomfortable. ‘I shall be spending it in Potsdam…with a lepidopterist friend.’

She’d known that Berthold’s interest in butterflies had escalated over the years and that he had begun spending a lot of time with people of a like mind, but hadn’t realized he’d forged any real friendships within Berlin’s Lepidopterist Society. That he apparently had done so pleased her. What she hadn’t thought to ask until it was too late, was if his friend was male or female.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone shouting, ‘Cooee!’

She turned to see Josephine at the open kitchen door.

‘Sorry I’m late, Vicky!’ Josephine shouted. ‘I didn’t like to bicycle when there was so much snow on the road. The egg-man gave me a lift in his van. Do you want me to crack on with icing the Christmas cake or is that something you want to do?’

Brushing snowflakes from her eyelashes, Vicky began walking back to the house, Tinker at her heels. ‘You do the Christmas cake, Josephine,’ she said as she neared her. ‘I’ll do the mince pies. The snow looks as if it’s going to be with us for days yet, which means we’re going to have a gloriously beautiful white Christmas.’

*

Nancy was the first of her chicks to arrive home. By the time the taxi dropped her off, mid-morning, the snow had stopped falling and the sky was no longer grey but a pale icy blue.

‘The main roads aren’t too bad,’ she said, entering the hall and throwing the bag she had brought with her onto the nearest chair. ‘They’ve all been sanded. The taxi driver wouldn’t bring me up the drive, though. He said the snow was far too deep.’ She took off her coat and dropped it on top of her bag. ‘What are you going to do about it? I thought Paul and Will would have cleared some of it by now.’