She needn’t have worried. Uncaring that she had walked away from him to speak to people he did not know, he was jumping up and down on the touchline, his cheeks flushed with excitement as he shouted at the top of his lungs: ‘Come on, Paul! Pick up the ball and run!’

‘Yes,’ she said, relaxing in relief. ‘Max will be starting at St Dunstan’s in September.’

‘And you have other children?’

‘I have another two.’ Knowing of Elise’s childlessness, Vicky felt uncomfortably guilty at her good fortune. ‘You are very blessed.’

‘Yes.’ A lump was forming in Vicky’s throat. ‘Yes. I know.’

Adam’s attention was on the game and the difficult moment was ended as he shouted, ‘Paul’s got the ball! He’s going to make a break for it! Oh, good Lord, he has done! He’s away!’

Amid a roar of applause and approval, Paul, head down, the ball tucked under his arm, legs pumping like pistons, stormed down the field to score a try.

Elise Priestley clapped her hands delightedly.

Adam grinned down at her. ‘Happy, darling?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes!’

She clasped hold of his hand and kissed it, and when Vicky saw the expression in Elise’s eyes she looked away, overcome by the same realization that had overcome her so often when she had been in Zelda and Josef’s company. As a married couple, Adam and Elise shared something she and Berthold didn’t.

That night, sleep wouldn’t come. She counted sheep and, when sheep failed her, she counted her blessings. She had a loving, kind-hearted husband, three splendidly healthy children, a nephew she loved as if he were her own son, a father who doted on her and a wartime occupation that challenged her to the utmost. Why, then, her growing feeling that there was something lacking in her life? She’d been aware of it before, in Berlin, but never to this extent.

She turned her pillow over, pummelling it fiercely, knowing the answer and not wanting to face it.

The turbulent, unsettled feeling troubling her had stemmed from one very precise moment. The moment when she had looked across the tea rooms in Harrogate and seen Adam Priestley walking towards her.

The self-knowledge the realization brought filled her with anguish.

She no longer felt as if she were the same person who had left Berlin a little over a year ago—and she most certainly wasn’t the same person who had so naively married in Little Ridding’s church nearly six years ago.

Somewhere along the way she had turned into someone else. Someone she didn’t recognize. And if she didn’t recognize herself how, when the war was over, would Berthold be able to do so?

Chapter Six

Yorkshire, Christmas 1915

‘…and so I’m already pregnant again,’ Zelda wrote in distinctive purple ink.

I’m not over the moon about it and can only hope it will be another boy. Lotti is more tiresome than any baby I’ve ever known. C is now attending a military preparatory school. Even though he’s only four he loves army routines and all the shouting and marching. He also shows every sign of being scholastically brilliant. Paul will be old enough for Harrow next year and I don’t want him to remain a day longer than necessary at St Dunstan’s. It’s far too minor a public school and I can’t understand what possessed you to send him there. I see very little of J. He works constantly. B isn’t much help to him.