Banishing all thoughts of Berthold she sat down, hoping against hope he wasn’t going to say he no longer needed her. If that was the case she would, with luck, simply be assigned to someone else; but whoever that someone might turn out to be, he was unlikely to be as straightforward in his dealings with her as Gleeson. Nearly every uniformed American she had met had made a pass at her. Major Gleeson, who had a photograph of his wife prominently displayed on his desk, had never done so.

‘I’ve been given another posting,’ he said without preamble. ‘I’m being shunted down to Frankfurt and I leave this evening. It’s not much notice for you, but finding another interpreter as free of Nazi connections as yourself may not be easy and I’d like you to consider either coming with me, or joining me there as soon as possible.’

She shook her head, not having to give his offer even a moment’s thought. Leaving Berlin now, when Max could well show up at any time, was unthinkable.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hating the feeling of letting him down, ‘but I can’t leave Berlin. I have family here and I’m hoping that someone close to me will be arriving in the city very soon.’

His disappointment was obvious. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving on a military flight from Tempelhof at seven-thirty and I’d like not to be leaving alone. While you’re thinking about it, here’s today’s agenda.’ He passed her a typed sheet of paper. ‘My first meeting is with the newly appointed waterworks superintendent. That will take place here. My second meeting is with the manager of the Domäne Dahlem dairy farm and we’ll be going to Dahlem by jeep. And until the waterworks guy shows up, what about coffee and cookies?’

At the end of a working day that took in not only meetings with the waterworks superintendent and manager of the dairy farm, but meetings with a dozen other Germans, who had all been screened as being free of Nazi Party connections, Lotti set off for Eva’s home in the French sector, her jaw aching from the endless repetition of sentences in German beginning, ‘The Herr Major says…’ followed by, in English, ‘The Superintendent says…’

Wedding had always been a predominantly working-class district and Lotti found it strange to be visiting Max’s father in surroundings so different to the grandeur he’d previously been accustomed to. To his credit, he had acclimatized remarkably well. He and Bertha, Eva’s mother, had settled into a relationship that was almost marital in its comfiness. Bertha, who was in her sixties like Berthold and who, like him, was vague and confused to the point of irrationality, was happier in his company than in anyone else’s, including Eva’s—and Berthold seemed unaware of anything but the minutiae of his and Bertha’s almost childish daily routine.

‘Yes?’ he said, peering owlishly at her through his pebble-thick lenses, as if he couldn’t quite place her and didn’t particularly want to. ‘Yes?’