Over and above their cooking and kitchen duties another service was expected of them. Even though they were all Jewish, this fact was overlooked by the rabidly racist SS guards when it came to sexual gratification.

Hester survived the sexual assaults on her body by remembering the so-called ‘hospital wing’ at Ravensbrück. At least at Sachsenhausen she had physical safety of a sort, and though she was sexually violated she was able by sheer mental will power to keep her inner self somehow untouched and untainted. She was also an exceptionally good cook and when this came to the Camp Commandant’s attention, she was detailed away from preparing food for prisoners and guards and assigned the task of cooking for him alone.

It was for the mercy of the work she was assigned to, for the mercy of being beyond the reach of barbaric medical experimentation and for the mercy of still being alive, that she thanked God as she ate her paltry breakfast.

Through the day she never dared allow herself to think of Hugo or of Vicky and Shuttleworth Hall. To do so would be to bring her too close to breakdown and breakdown would mean being detailed back to prisoner and guard food-preparation duty—or even, perhaps, worse.

Thoughts of Hugo and Shuttleworth Hall were kept for the night-time when, for a few precious hours, she could transport herself away from the horrors of reality and lose herself in sleep and dreams.

Last night she had dreamed she was bringing armfuls of deliciously scented lilac into Shuttleworth Hall for Vicky to arrange in tall, crystal vases. Tinker had been in her dream, no longer the fit young dog he had once been, but still gamely keeping up with her and trotting happily along at her heels.

There had been other delicious smells in her dream too. As well as lilac there had been the aroma of freshly baked bread and Josephine’s sublime Yorkshire curd tarts. And there had been the scent of Hugo. The smell of the cologne he used after shaving. The lemon-clean fragrance of his hair when it was freshly washed. The tang of his sweat when they made love.

And then had come the sickening awakening. The shouts of ‘Raus! Raus!’ And now another day lay ahead. Another day that was going to take her all her stamina and will power to live through.

Claus strode through the textile section of his Berlin clothing factory. It wasn’t huge—woollens and worsteds still came in the main from other parts of the country—but it was an element of the factory he was keen to expand. As the clattering of looms almost deafened him he reflected wryly that the man he needed to speak to was Adam Priestley. Adam was a mill man down to his extremely capable fingertips.

The pity of it was that he didn’t know Adam better. The years since Adam and Vicky’s marriage had been years when he had rarely visited Yorkshire. Not because he hadn’t longed to, but because there had been issues that had made him feel uncomfortable in doing so. There had been his early support of Hitler, for instance. It had been something his aunt had never been in sympathy with, even before Hitler’s military aggression had become so nakedly apparent. And then there had been Nancy.