She rose. Talking about the man who had led Germany into hell was pointless. No one knew where he was, for the minute the war had turned against him he had ceased making public appearances. Rumours were he was in Berlin, conducting military operations from a bunker deep below the bomb-shattered Reich Chancellery. Wherever he was, he wasn’t on the streets giving comfort, through his presence, to the thousands who had lost their homes in the raids or who had been left terribly injured and bereaved.

‘I’m going,’ she said to her mother, grateful her mother’s nerves were still holding up so well. ‘And I’m going home via the Tiergarten. It’s become the biggest black-market centre in the city. A friend of Nicky’s gave Ilse a half-dozen bottles of schnapps, so I’m in a good position to do some bartering. If I can get you some sugar, I will.’

‘Never mind sugar,’ her mother said tartly. ‘Get me some decent cigarettes.’

Lotti grinned. ‘Will do,’ she said, admiring her mother’s inbred American feistiness. ‘And your idea about Eva is a good one. She’s not only deeply compassionate, which is why she will take Uncle Berthold under her wing, but being a ward sister she’s also implacably firm. And firmness is what poor old Uncle Berthold needs these days.’

Zelda nodded and for the first time Lotti became aware that there were strands of silver in her mother’s blue-black hair. ‘I wonder,’ Zelda said in her cracked-ice voice as Lotti kissed her on the cheek, ‘where Paul is now? I wonder if he’s fighting with the American forces that are approaching the Rhine? I wonder how soon it will be before the war is over and he and Eva marry?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lotti’s voice was unsteady. ‘Let’s hope it’s soon.’ She flashed her mother a lopsided smile. ‘And let’s hope we’re all still alive when it happens.’

As she let herself out of the apartment her thoughts weren’t on Paul, but on Max. It was over three years since she had last seen him and in all that time there had been only one brief telephone call. Daily, she wondered where he was and what he was doing. As an intelligence officer there was no telling where he had been posted. He could very well be in Greece, or Yugoslavia. Or—and her nails dug deep into her palms—he could be attached to the British troops who, like the Americans, were forcing the German army deeper and deeper into a retreat there could be no coming back from.

She took a pair of heavy gauntleted gloves out of her coat pocket and pulled them on. The only reliable method of transport now was a bicycle and in February temperatures her hands would have frozen to the handlebars without the military gloves Nicholas’s friend had left behind him.

As she wheeled the bicycle over the snow-covered pavement and onto the road, her heart and mind were still full of Max. They had been lovers for such a short space of time and under such extraordinary conditions that there were times when she wondered if their precious weeks together had been nothing but a figment of her imagination. The feeling of unreality about their relationship wasn’t helped by everyone close to her being ignorant of it.