‘Because you were born in Britain, you’re a British citizen,’ she said carefully, not wanting to get too embroiled in the question of his nationality and wishing with all her heart that Max had also been born in Yorkshire.

A week later she received her first letter from Berthold.

Meine Liebchen,

How wonderful it is to be in contact with you again! I know that Ernst wrote to you and that you must have been worrying dreadfully, but lots of people were arrested who have now been set free. Not Gustav Krupp, though. He, it seems, will almost certainly stand trial.

I cannot wait for us to be together again as a family, but the situation in Berlin is even worse than it was before the fighting stopped. You mustn’t think of returning here, Liebchen. Not yet. Not till things calm down. Naval mutineers are occupying the Imperial Palace, demanding money from the state. They are browbeating and bullying everyone. Government ministers. Military personnel. Civilians. Gunfire can be heard almost hourly and there is constant looting and housebreaking. The Tiergarten is being used as a military camp, but no one knows whether the soldiers are on the side of the mutineers or on the side of the government. Zelda and the children are at Schloss Niedernhall. Josef is sometimes here, more often at the Adlon.

Tell my very dear children that when the madness dies we will be together again and I will once again be their very loving papa, taking them for walks by the lake in the Tiergarten and to the zoo. As for yourself, Liebchen, I kiss your picture every night and pray that you remain safe.

Your loving husband,

Berthold

‘I hope you won’t think badly of me for saying this, Aunt Vicky,’ Paul said as he came in from tobogganing, stamping snow from his boots, ‘but I’m rather relieved we can’t go back to Berlin yet. I’m enjoying Upper School and I don’t want to leave. I know when we go back you’re going to ask my mother if I can finish off my schooling in Yorkshire, but somehow I don’t think she’ll say yes. For the moment, though, it doesn’t matter, does it? We can just go on enjoying life as usual, with the added bonus of knowing soldiers aren’t dying in battle any more.’

‘We can indeed, darling,’ she said, aware, not for the first time, that she and Paul nearly always thought the same way about things.

Though she didn’t admit it to anyone, she also felt relief that any question of an immediate return to Berlin was being postponed. When the day came that she and Berthold were reunited there were going to be too many issues to resolve for it to be an occasion to look forward to wholeheartedly. Though she had tried to prepare Hugo for the possibility of again living in Berlin, it wasn’t something she could actually imagine herself doing. Her fierce hope was that it wouldn’t be necessary and that no matter what Josef’s plans for the future, Berthold would feel free enough of all connections with the House of Remer to live with her at Shuttleworth Hall.