Lotti pushed her cup of coffee to one side. ‘It’s Max,’ she said simply. ‘I’m terrified that when he returns to Berlin it will be because Ilse is a widow. I’m terrified of her throwing herself into his arms and of his keeping her there.’ Her voice wobbled, her eyes overly bright. ‘I’m terrified he won’t be in love with me any more, Eva. I’m terrified that when he knows Ilse wants him back—and she does, I’m sure of it—he will barely remember the weeks when he and I were lovers.’

Eva frowned. She had never been able to understand why Lotti and Ilse constantly skirted the subject of Max without ever admitting to each other what their true feelings for him were. ‘If Ilse does throw herself into his arms, it will be your own fault,’ she said reasonably. ‘After all, why shouldn’t she, when she doesn’t know you’re in love with him and that when you were last together he was in love with you? As far as she is concerned, the way is clear and there is no one to hurt. Tell her differently and she’ll act differently.’

‘I don’t want her to act differently.’ Lotti’s voice was taut with tension, her lemur-like eyes fierce. ‘I want Max to know that if he still wants a life with Ilse, he can have one. And then I want him not to want a life with her, but to want a life with me. Does that make sense, Eva? I don’t want him to return to me because he can’t have Ilse. I don’t want to be second best. And I just want this awful uncertainty to be over. I just want him to return to Berlin so that I will know what my future is to be.’

‘And if he does decide that Ilse has always been his love and that it’s Ilse he wants to spend his life with, what then?’

Lotti’s face was ashen. ‘Then I’ll go to Frankfurt and see if Major Gleeson can find me a job there as an interpreter,’ she said, her heart feeling as if it were being squeezed into extinction. ‘And I shan’t come back to Berlin. I’ll do what Nancy did when she knew there was no future for her with Claus. I shall build a life for myself without him, but I’ll never fall in love again. I couldn’t. Max is in my heart and soul. He’s my other half—and without him I shall never be complete again.’

The American who had given Nancy a lift into the city dropped her in Potsdamer Platz. ‘If you ever want a night out, ring me on this number,’ he said, taking a card out of his shirt pocket. ‘That husband of yours need never know.’

Ignoring the proffered card, Nancy stepped out of the jeep. ‘No,’ she said with a cheery grin. ‘But I would. Bye. And thanks for the lift.’

He gave a good-natured shrug of his shoulders to show there were no hard feelings and seconds later was zooming out of Potsdamer Platz, tyres squealing.