‘Only when the last nail has been knocked in my coffin,’ Lotti retorted, much to Vicky’s amusement. ‘I don’t smoke any more, if that’s a comfort to you. Max has suddenly taken against it.’

She screwed her eyes against the sun, looking towards the steps leading down to the lawn. ‘Here come your roses,’ she said, as Eva and Ilse approached, their baskets laden. ‘Did you say you only wanted enough for table decorations? They’re carrying enough to start a flower shop.’

Eva was pregnant and Vicky walked swiftly down the steps to meet them, relieving her of the basket she was carrying.

‘It’s only flowers, Vicky,’ Eva said with amused affection. ‘It isn’t heavy.’

‘Yes, well, a basket of any sort can throw you off balance when you’re walking up steps. Are these small pink buds for the table and the full-blown white roses for the house?’

Eva nodded. ‘Those were the instructions Paul gave me. The red ones are for Hester’s wedding bouquet. Paul has asked me to put them in a dark place with water up to their necks. The white roses are Madame Alfred Carrière. I don’t know the name of the red ones, do you?’

Ever since she had married Paul eight months ago in Little Ridding’s village church, Eva had been intent on learning all she could about roses.

‘The red one is Mrs Anthony Waterer,’ Vicky said helpfully.

Ilse slipped her arm through her aunt’s. ‘I love the names roses are given, Aunt Vicky. Who was Madame Alfred Carrière, do you think? And who was Mrs Anthony Waterer that she should have such a lusciously beautiful rose named after her?’

‘I don’t know about Madame Alfred Carrière,’ Vicky said as Max walked across the terrace towards them, tapping his wristwatch meaningfully as he did so, ‘but the gentleman who bred Mrs Anthony Waterer was named Waterer, so perhaps he named it after his wife.’

‘Time to go,’ Max said, his voice taut with the excitement he was feeling. That Claus had been released so soon from British custody was due largely to his efforts. That he had been released with a commendation from the Joint Distribution Committee, the international Jewish relief organization, was due solely to Hester’s efforts.

In part, the commendation said:

As the owner of a Ruhr Nazi steelworks and a Berlin Nazi labour factory, Mr Claus Remer preserved the lives of the slave labourers employed by him, ensuring that Jewish men in his Ruhr steelworks and Jewish women in his Berlin factory, were spared death in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and other concentration camps. Witnesses have testified that no Jew employed by Mr Claus Remer was ever beaten, starved or suffered death at his hands, but every Jew was always treated as a human being.

Coming from the source it did, this testimony was enough to ensure he could face the future with his reputation untainted. Life would never be the same for him, of course, but Max knew from his meetings with him that Claus had no desire for anything approaching his old way of life. The Allies had razed the House of Remer steelworks and armaments factories to the ground. Steel production and armament production would never again play any part in his life—and nor did Claus want them to.