‘Yes, it does. And yes, I’m happy with it,’ Vicky said, all doubts set to rest. ‘And where will you marry? Here, or London?’

‘London, if that’s OK with you. It will be a Register Office wedding, not a church one.’ There was impishness in her eyes that Vicky hadn’t seen for years. ‘Though I still have to break the news to Emily Elise that I’m no longer a card-carrying communist, just a very far-to-the-left socialist, a church wedding is still definitely out.’ She began giggling. ‘Did you see Hugo’s face when Emily Elise said the word “communist”? I thought he was going to choke.’

‘I thought I was going to choke,’ Vicky said drily as, in mutual accord, they began walking again.

Nancy turned up the collar of her coat against the damp chill of the approaching dusk. ‘It’s nice to see Hugo with a friend in tow, isn’t it?’ she said as they reached the river bank. ‘I wonder if Hugo has told him he’s half-German? I bet he hasn’t. I think I probably will, though. It’ll be interesting to see what his reaction is.’

*

Tony’s reaction was to drop his jaw and gape at her wide-eyed. ‘You mean…Remer is a German name?’ he said when he recovered his power of speech. ‘You mean it really is a German name? It doesn’t just sound like one?’

With coats buttoned up to their chins they were sitting on one of the terrace’s wrought-iron and wood benches, watching Vicky wielding a pair of secateurs and cutting long sprays of delicate sunshine-yellow blossom from the winter jasmine growing against the house wall.

‘No, it doesn’t just sound like one,’ Nancy said with all her old bluntness. ‘It’s very German. German as in House of Remer steelworks German.’

Tony stared at her. ‘Please tell me you don’t mean that literally?’ he said, appalled. ‘Please tell me you and Hugo aren’t related to the House of Remer Remers.’

‘Why? Because you’ll refuse to even speak to us again if we are?’

‘No. Because some joker in the squadron made a crack linking Hugo to the steelworks—not believing it for a moment, of course—and Hugo nearly bit his head off.’

‘Well, he would.’ The amusement in Nancy’s eyes died. ‘The German connection is far worse for Hugo than it’s been for our older brother, Max, and me. Berlin is where our father, aunt, uncle and cousins live. We don’t live in fear of having to bomb it, or, now that he’s flying Mossies, having to locate and mark targets in order that other planes can bomb it. Hugo does. It can’t be easy for him. It must be a nightmare on a par with the nightmare of his losing Hester.’

‘Aah,’ Tony said as Vicky transferred her attentions to a shrub abutting the jasmine and began cutting stems of greenery to go with it. ‘That’s something else I don’t know about.’

‘Don’t you?’ Nancy hesitated, but only for the briefest of seconds. ‘As I don’t see why you shouldn’t know,’ she said, plunging straight in as usual, ‘I’ll tell you.’