‘Neither is mine,’ Nancy said, joy bubbling up in her throat. ‘It’s Remer. Nancy Remer.’

For a moment, Eva simply stared at her and then she said weakly, ‘You’re Paul’s cousin?’

Nancy nodded, her grin nearly splitting her face in two. ‘And you’re the woman Paul’s told everyone he’s going to marry.’

It wasn’t a question, simply a statement of fact.

‘Oh, God!’ Eva began to tremble, hardly able to believe that so suddenly, so out of the blue, she had contact with the English side of Paul’s family. ‘Do you have news of him? Is he safe? Is he in Germany?’

‘Last I heard he was uninjured and with the US Ninth Army. Which means he’s in Germany and likely to show up any time. And what about my father and Lotti and Ilse? Are they safe and uninjured?’

Eva blinked tears of emotion away. ‘Your father is living with my mother and me. He’s fine physically, though mentally he’s become very vague and not too aware of what’s going on around him.’

‘He never was aware of what was going on around him. What about Ilse and Lotti? I checked out where they were living before the war, but the house where Lotti once had an apartment no longer exists and the British have requisitioned Ilse’s old home.’

‘They’re living in a tiny flat not far from the Ku’damm with their mother and Hester.’

‘Hester?’ Nancy stared at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. ‘Hester?’

Eva nodded, her smile radiant. ‘Yes. Thanks to your cousin Claus, Hester has survived the war too. There can’t be many families in Berlin who have emerged from the last six years so intact.’

There was a band around Nancy’s chest so tight she could hardly breathe. ‘Not completely intact,’ she said. ‘My brother Hugo was shot down on an RAF bombing raid. He died thinking Hester was already dead. We all thought Hester was dead.’ She paused, steadying her breathing, and then she said, ‘How did Claus help Hester to survive? Where is Claus? Does anyone know?’

‘Claus hid her,’ Eva said succinctly. ‘And no one knows where he is, though as he was in Berlin when it fell to the Red Army, we’re assuming he’s been arrested and is being held as a war criminal.’

Nancy sucked in a deep breath, marshalling her thoughts. ‘I need to make contact with Ilse and Lotti,’ she said, scrabbling in her bag for pen and paper. ‘Can you let me have their address? And will they be there now? What are they both doing?’

‘Lotti won’t be at the flat now. She’s working as an interpreter for the Americans. She’ll be here about six or six-thirty. We always meet up for a drink before curfew. Ilse may be home. She has a part in a film being produced at Babelsburg and is there at the crack of dawn, but home by late afternoon.’

‘Okey-doke.’ Nancy slipped the piece of paper with Ilse and Lotti’s address on it into her army-shirt pocket. ‘I’m going to find somewhere to lay my head. Ilse and Lotti’s flat is obviously packed to capacity and so is your home by the sound of it. Then I’m going to see if Ilse is back from Babelsburg. After that, the two of us will come here to join up with you and Lotti.’