It is all the fault of the Allies. The fighting has stopped but their naval blockade continues. No food can get to Germany and people are dying of hunger. I believe you have had a very good war in Britain. Plenty of food and no hardship. The British always come out of things smelling of roses, but this wasn’t a war they won on their own and the peace treaty the Allies are cobbling together is a disgrace. Alsace-Lorraine to be handed over to the French? It’s monstrous. I wouldn’t hurry back to Berlin if I were you, Vicky. As an Engländerin, your life would be in danger from the mobs. Zelda

PS Berthold was imprisoned for a short while but is back in the house on Unter den Linden. Josef has moved into the Adlon. After experiencing conditions in Berlin I have returned to Schloss Niedernhall.

Vicky put the letter down, sick with relief. Berthold was no longer under arrest. He would now be able to write to her. Hard on the heels of her relief came outrage at Zelda’s bitter, hostile tone. What Allied injustices was she thinking of? It hadn’t been Britain which had been thirsting for war, with a king always dressed in military uniform and wearing a steel helmet complete with a vicious spike sticking out of the top of it. As for Zelda’s indignation at having to stand in food lines—didn’t she realize that British women had had to queue endlessly for food too? And her remark about Britain always coming out of things smelling of roses, as if Britain hadn’t suffered at all, was unforgivable.

Also unforgivable and quite, quite incredible, was the way she had barely mentioned Berthold and had only mentioned his release in a hastily added postscript.

‘Zelda is Zelda,’ her father said placatingly when he read the letter, keeping his thoughts to himself. ‘She always speaks before she thinks and obviously writes the same way too. If Josef has lost control of the House of Remer he will be facing a very uncertain future. She’s writing from a position of great stress. We have to make allowances.’

Vicky didn’t feel so magnanimous. Zelda wasn’t a fool. She had brains and, as far as Vicky was concerned, it was unconscionable of her not to use them.

‘So will Papa now come and live with us?’ Hugo asked her at teatime, unaware of the danger his father had been in.

She ruffled his silky-straight hair. ‘I don’t know, darling. Maybe. Or maybe, when things have settled down, we will go and live with him.’

He blinked. ‘In Germany? We can’t go and live in Germany. It’s full of all the people we’ve been fighting against. And don’t tell me that I’m a German, which is what Max says when he wants to annoy me, because I’m not. I know I’m not. If I was a German I’d speak German and I don’t. Just because Papa is a German doesn’t mean that I’m a German, does it? I’m English, aren’t I? Just like Grandpa.’