‘I’m going to wake Paul,’ she said, now fully dressed. ‘He needs to know what has happened and where we are going. Did Nicholas say if he’d got in contact with Max?’

Adam tugged a sweater over his head. ‘No. And I don’t know if Lotti knows, either.’

Josephine had arrived, Paul had insisted he was coming down to London with them and they were all ready to go downstairs and leave the house when the telephone rang again. This time it was Hugo.

‘I’ve just got home to find this insane note from Hester,’ he said to Adam, sounding to Vicky and Paul as if he were on the verge of hysteria. ‘She says she’s left for Berlin, but I can’t get through to anyone, not even Claus. Is she with you? Please say she thought better of it and that she’s with you?’

Vicky took the phone from Adam’s hand. ‘We’ve been trying to get you on the phone for the past hour, darling. She did go to Berlin and Nicholas says she has been arrested. We’re on our way down to London now. You can’t do anything till the train and ferry services start in the morning. When they do start, Paul and I are coming with you to Berlin.’

Paul, seeing the expression on Adam’s face and hearing Hugo’s almost demented questions as to how Nicholas knew of Hester’s arrest, took the receiver.

‘It may only have been by the Kripo,’ he said, referring to Germany’s state uniformed police force, ‘and it may be nothing life-threatening. Losing your calm now isn’t going to do any good whatsoever, Hugo. What you need to be thinking about is who you know in the Foreign Office who may be able to throw some weight around and get information for you.’

As his conversation with Hugo continued, Adam said flatly to Vicky, ‘You’re not going. The borders could close at any moment. What would Emily Elise and I do if you were thrown into an internment camp? I can understand Hugo going. Hester is his wife and as he works for the Foreign Office there may be strings he can pull in order to find out where she’s been taken. As for Paul—he has an American passport and even if war is declared between Britain and Germany, it won’t affect him. Your presence isn’t needed, Vicky. Where it’s needed is here. At Shuttleworth Hall. With me.’

She pushed a deep wave of silver-flecked hair away from her face. ‘Over the last couple of years I’ve taken enormous risks for people I scarcely know,’ she said, holding his deeply worried eyes steadily. ‘The least I can do is to take a risk for someone I love. I may always have abhorred Berlin, but I know it. The Jewish community trust me. If there’s even a whisper of a rumour as to which camp she’s been taken to—if she has been taken to a camp—it may filter back on the Jewish grapevine. If it does, I will be told. And if the boot were on the other foot, Adam, Hester would come looking for me, no matter what the dangers. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.’