‘Five minutes,’ she said, blowing a kiss. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes.’

It took her at least a minute to retrieve her handbag from where she had left it at the side of the piano and to then lock herself into the Ladies toilet with it.

Feverishly, she rifled through the names in her address book. Wagner, Wahnfried, Warburg, Watzdorf. There was no Wasserman. Then, as sweat broke out on her forehead, she turned to the Ps. There was a long list of Peters. Peter Schaumberg. Peter Mertz. Pete Zeller. Pete Kempka and then, so low down the page it came under the Qs, Peter Wasserman.

She couldn’t phone from the club. She would be seen. She had to phone from somewhere outside—and without being seen as she left. The window in the toilet was small and high, but she hadn’t spent years working as a dancer for nothing.

Taking off her shoes, she stood on the toilet seat, opened the window as far as it would go and levered herself upwards, so that she could hang head first out of it. From then on it was just a case of wriggling until her chest was through the narrow opening as well, and then, with her hands on the sill for leverage, she jettisoned the rest of her body out of the window in a somersault that ensured she landed on her feet and not her head.

In the thick darkness of the blackout no one saw her spectacular exit, but how many minutes had it taken? Three? Four?

The area was one she knew like the back of her hand and she sprinted towards the nearest bar, descending the stairs that led to it with the agility of a cat.

Once inside and free of the blackout curtains, she made straight for the public phone booth. Only as she was dialling the number did it occur to her that the SS would have taken the precaution of cutting the telephone lines to the house. She gave a sob and then heard the sweetest sound she had ever heard in all her life. The connection tone and then Nicholas’s voice, low and guarded as he repeated the phone number and waited for her to speak.

‘It’s Lotti.’ Her voice was scarcely recognizable, even to herself. ‘You’re all about to be arrested! You must leave the house now! Immediately!’

He didn’t even waste a second in speaking to her. He simply crashed the receiver back on its hook and she was left listening to nothing but the dialling tone.

With clammy, shaking hands, she replaced the receiver. She’d done it. She’d warned them. With luck—if an SS squad weren’t already in position around the house—they would all get away. Max would be safe.

Her heart was beating so erratically it hurt. Would she be safe, though? When the SS discovered that their birds had flown they would know the men meeting in the house had been tipped off, and the men she had left behind her in the Three Kings would remember their careless talk and her immediate disappearance after it. She would be in a cell in Gestapo headquarters within hours.