He knew Tony was dead. He knew the plane must be on fire. And he knew he was only seconds away from being directly over his target. Bailing out never occurred to him. Opening up the throttle he flew straight on as if the hell taking place around him didn’t exist. He was still receiving signals from his Cat station, the station responsible for guiding him in on his run to the target. Only if he maintained the right altitude would the station known as Mouse kick in, signalling to him that it was time to release his marker flares.

The bomb-marker release order came. In the same second that he fulfilled his mission, releasing cascade after cascade of brilliant flares onto the Reich Chancellery, a Ju88 honed in on him, guns spitting.

A hail of bullets hit him. With the tail-fire now out of control the Mossie steepled into a deathly nosedive. Hugo didn’t care. He was going to die and he was going to die in the city he had shared with Hester.

He could see a lake again and knew that this time it was the lake in the Tiergarten; the lake where his mother had taken him for picnics when he had been a small boy; the lake where he had photographed Hester when she had been happy and smiling, when her eyes had been full of love for him and when neither of them had had a care in the world.

The moon sailed over the water and as he dove down to it in a sea of flame, the lake rose up to meet him. Above, in the sky, the battle continued and on Hitler’s Reich Chancellery bombs rained down, signalling to Germany’s Führer that defeat was unavoidable and that victory for the Allies was now only a matter of time.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Berlin, February 1945

Lotti gazed around at her mother’s drawing room in incredulity. Charlottenburg had not been bombed as heavily as the rest of Berlin and the spacious second-floor apartment bore not the slightest sign of damage. Lalique mirrors hung on the walls. A priceless collection of Ferdinand Preiss bronze and ivory figurines were on careless display.

‘Don’t you think you should pack everything valuable away?’ she asked as Zelda handed her a cup of ersatz black coffee made from chicory beans. ‘You’re bound to either be hit or suffer a near miss eventually. And what about the vibration when hundreds of planes fly overhead? I would have thought that would be enough to bring everything crashing down.’

‘That was your father’s opinion as well, but I never shared it. Outside this room Berlin may be being reduced to ashes, but inside it I’m going to live for as long as I can as I’ve always done. With beautiful things around me.’

It was freezing cold and, as there was no heating, she was buried deep in her favourite sable coat. Though the world was falling around her and though she was rake-thin from short rations and stress, she was still exotically made-up, her sloe-dark eyes heavily mascaraed, her beautifully sculpted mouth a deep, glossy red.