With fevered thought after fevered thought racing through her brain she boarded a train for Cologne. If she was refused entry into Germany at the border, she would simply have to somehow contact Ilse and Lotti and they would know how to contact Max. She knew enough about Hugo’s family to know they wouldn’t let her, or her parents, down. But she was the one who should be aiding her parents. And as war hadn’t yet been declared, surely she wouldn’t run into problems at passport control? Surely she would be allowed in?

Her anxiety was such she couldn’t even see the irony of her situation. A Jewess terrified she wouldn’t be able to get into Germany when millions of her fellow Jews within Germany were terrified they wouldn’t be able to get out.

At the border, when she and everyone else had to disembark from the train, she struggled hard to keep her breathing steady. How did her mother-in-law manage, she wondered. Risking imprisonment and a probable death sentence every time she stood before a passport officer, a Jewish family’s worldly goods pinned to the lapel of her well-worn tweed suit or draped around her neck as carelessly as children’s glass beads.

There was an American in front of her, another American behind. The American passport was inspected, stamped.

‘Bitte?’

She handed over her passport. There was the usual long, nerve-racking scrutiny. With icy control she kept her face and eyes perfectly impassive, not letting her reaction to his uniform and swastika-emblazoned red armband show.

‘Danke.’

She followed the first American back onto the train, looking over her shoulder as she did so. The American who had been behind her in the queue looked to be having a hard time of it, for the border guard was deep in conversation on the telephone.

‘These damn Krauts can make you feel uncomfortable for absolutely no good reason, can’t they?’ said the first American, seeing her slip her British passport back into her handbag. He sat down opposite her in the carriage, eyeing her admiringly. ‘Still, their uniforms are pretty swell,’ he added, wanting to prolong the conversation. ‘I wouldn’t mind a tricky black outfit like that myself.’

Her relief when she reached Cologne and was finally free of him, was vast. On the Berlin train she had no unwelcome companion. Her dark hair and eyes attracted mild attention, but she didn’t look startlingly Jewish and she certainly didn’t carry herself with the diffidence that Jewish women now nearly always did.

As the train roared towards Berlin she wondered what exactly it was her mother was sick with and why neither her father nor her mother had contacted her. They didn’t have a telephone, of course. Luxuries like telephones had been left behind when they’d been forcibly removed from their beautiful house in Haberlandstrasse. Frau Debuss had managed to telephone her, though. And if Frau Debuss had managed it, surely her parents could have?

Flat monotonous landscape flashed past. She was oblivious to it. The task she had set herself wasn’t going to be easy. She was going to need help and asking for that help was going to put others in great danger. Max was the person to help her, if she could find him. She remembered how he had once told her that if she needed to contact him in an emergency, Zelda was the person to go to.