Adam felt the familiar knot of utter helplessness he so often felt when confronting his wife over anything to do with the plight of Germany’s Jews. That a woman so beguilingly feminine and tender in all her dealings could have a streak of such steel-like stubbornness and pig-headed tenacity, dumbfounded him no matter how many times he came up against it.

He understood, of course, why she felt as she did, even though he didn’t think her reasoning logical. That she had once borne the name Remer, a name synonymous all through the Great War with arms production—arms used against Britain and her Allies—had inculcated in her a feeling of guilt that ran deep. Helping others, especially those persecuted by the government the House of Remer was still so closely allied to, was her way of expiating that guilt—that and the fact that, like her daughter, it was in her very nature to fight tooth and nail against injustice and tyranny and to do so with no thought for her own safety.

Behind him, Paul put the telephone receiver back on its rest. ‘He’s going to wait for us,’ he said, his usually good-natured face grim, ‘but only because there’s no night train or ferry he can leave on. If we want to be in London before he leaves for Folkestone we need to go now.’

‘I’ll be right with you,’ Vicky said. ‘There’s just one thing I have to do.’

And as Paul and Adam headed out of the room and down the stairs, she hurried along the landing into Emily Elise’s bedroom to give her sleeping daughter a farewell kiss.

The private hospital room was dimly lit by a ghoulishly green light. A grey-faced Nicholas was seated at one side of Ilse’s bed, Zelda on the other.

‘How long until she comes round, do you think?’ Nicholas asked, Ilse’s hand held in his.

‘After emergency surgery to remove a ruptured spleen? Hours, I should imagine. Probably not till midday tomorrow.’

With his free hand Nicholas wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. ‘I thought she was going to die,’ he said, his voice choked. ‘I truly thought she was going to die, Schwiegermutter.’

Much as she approved of her handsome, well-born and wealthy son-in-law, Zelda eyed him with displeasure. Being addressed as ‘mother-in-law’ was not something she relished, but now was not the time to tell him so. She said, ‘She nearly did die. Internal bleeding on the scale Ilse was bleeding nearly always causes death. As it is, she’s going to have to live without a spleen for the rest of her life and what the consequences of that are going to be is anyone’s guess.’

Hatred for the Gestapo agent who had kicked her daughter so savagely she had nearly lost her life made her voice rasp like a rusty saw.

Taking his eyes momentarily away from his unconscious wife, Nicholas looked across at her. He had known her all his life. Even though the friendship between their two families had become distant at times, it had always endured, becoming once again close when he had married Ilse. Zelda Remer was, though, still a mystery to him—as he suspected she was to her own children and to her niece and nephews.