Thoughts of Claus were obliterated as there came an explosion so ear-splitting she thought the shelter itself must have been hit. As she rocketed to her feet, there was widespread screaming and then someone shouted over the din, ‘It’s stopping! They’re going away!’

The noise in the shelter subsided as everyone listened with bated breath. Sure enough, the massive overhead drone was a receding one. The raid was over. A little later, confirming what they now already knew, the all-clear sounded.

Lotti stumbled out of the shelter to be met by the sight of fire consuming what had been her end of the street. The air was scorching hot, thick with smoke and ash.

‘I think,’ she said to the woman who was still clutching a bag full of documents, ‘that I’ve probably just lost my home.’

‘I think,’ the woman said soberly, ‘that you’ve probably been very, very lucky. You could have been inside it.’

‘And so Lotti has moved in here, with me,’ Ilse said to Nicholas, winding her arm lovingly through his. ‘And she arrived travelling very light. We went back to rescue what we could from her apartment yesterday and all we found was—‘

‘—the staircase leading up to it,’ Lotti finished for her from where she was sitting on the sofa, her legs comfortably curled beneath her. ‘And then nothing but fresh air and smouldering ash. No walls. No floors. Nothing. My entire apartment was simply wiped off the face of the earth.’

Nicholas sat down in a near by chair and drew Ilse onto his lap. ‘Neither you nor Ilse should still be living in the city,’ he said gravely. ‘The raids aren’t going to stop. They’re going to get heavier and more frequent. You should move out to Wannsee. It isn’t far out, but it’s far enough to make a lot of difference where raids are concerned. Ilse would be even nearer to Babelsburg and it’s within cycling distance, Lotti. The advantages would be that you would both be a lot safer.’

‘It isn’t within easy cycling distance, Nicky,’ Lotti said wryly, ‘especially not if there is a raid on.’

‘And we’re Berliners born and bred, darling,’ Ilse said, speaking for both of them. ‘And Berlin is where we are going to stay.’ She kissed him on his nose. ‘So tell us both the latest news.’

‘The latest news is that I may very well find myself in uniform and at the Russian front,’ Nicholas said drily. ‘Nearly everyone in the Foreign Service is now suspected of holding disloyal views and so they are replacing us with SS hardliners as fast as they can. My turn can’t be long in coming.’

Ilse’s arm tightened around his shoulders. For a moment, she didn’t say anything and then she said hesitantly, ‘Would it mean an end to your involvement in the conspiracy?’

‘Probably.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Even as it is, our particular conspiracy group is being blocked at every turn. There are very few occasions now when Hitler can be counted on to put in an appearance. Any city that’s been bombed he avoids like the plague, as if his not seeing the devastation means the devastation hasn’t happened. The schedules he has, he constantly changes. When he travels he does so at irregular times and unexpectedly. The only occasions on which he can definitely be counted to appear are his twice-daily military conferences with generals of the Army High Command. He would have to be killed at one of them, and though another conspiracy group has members who have access to such conferences, ours does not.’