Nancy shifted the heavy bag she was carrying over her shoulder into a more comfortable position and set off in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate. It was shell-pocked and charred, but still standing. A huge placard informed pedestrians and motorists that it was now the entry point to the Russian sector. There were no Red Army guards checking identity papers and no one else seemed to be bothering and so Nancy didn’t either.

Walking through it and on to Unter den Linden was a strange sensation. On its corner, the Café Krantzler was a burned ruin. The Hotel Adlon, near by, was still open for custom, but badly bomb damaged. What had once been a magnificent boulevard of neoclassical mansions and palaces was a wasteland of ruins, with hardly a linden tree remaining.

The sun beat down strongly as she walked with increasing slowness to where her father’s family home had once stood. Two walls were still standing, windowless and roofless, a third wall was half demolished and the fourth wall, once the pillared facade of the mansion, had been obliterated entirely. All that remained was rubble over which chains of women were clambering, buckets in hand, scavenging the good bricks from the broken ones.

She went no nearer. She simply looked and turned away. That her father had died in the devastation was not something she even considered. Ever an optimist she was sure he was still alive and that, with a little patience and a lot of detective work, she would find him.

Her next two ports of call were Lotti’s flat in Lützowstrasse and the apartment Ilse had shared with Nicholas.

One was as ruined as the house on Unter den Linden, the other was occupied by a British official who had no idea where the original occupier now was.

Deciding that her best plan of action was to book into whatever hotel was still standing and offering accommodation to the press, she began walking in the direction of a bar in the British sector that she knew would be a hot-spot meeting place for her fellow reporters. As she did so she became aware of a long queue of battered-looking women. At first she thought they were queuing at a public kitchen, for soup. Then she saw that the building was an air-raid shelter and that the sign above it, written in Russian, said ‘Typhoid’.

With all her journalistic instincts aroused she crossed the road towards it and, ignoring the queue, walked straight in.

It was a medical centre. There was a reception desk. A dozen or so examination cubicles. A larger screened-off area that looked as if it was for minor surgery and a half-dozen nurses who looked to be run off their feet.

In her usual direct manner she strode towards the reception desk. ‘Hi,’ she said, flashing her press card and ignoring the fact that the woman behind the desk was speaking to a very malnourished and deeply distressed young girl. ‘The typhoid sign outside. This isn’t really a typhoid clinic, is it? And why is the sign written only in Russian?’