The Versailles Peace Treaty was, as everyone knew, a nightmare, with many German delegates refusing to sign it. Once again, Paul was voicing exactly what she felt herself. That Berthold had even suggested Max and Hugo should attend schools in Berlin had taken her breath away, for the bullying they would be exposed to would be horrendous. And, as Paul said, neither of the boys any longer spoke even a word of German.

With an unpleasant lurch of her stomach she wondered if Berthold was under the impression Max and Hugo had been receiving lessons in German all through the war years? That she, perhaps, had regularly talked to them in German?

With a dreadful feeling of foreboding she unearthed the two large trunks with which she had travelled from Berlin in 1914 and, with very mixed emotions, started the mammoth job of packing for her return.

Chapter Eight

Berlin, May 1920

Leaning out of the carriage window he was the first thing she saw as the train hissed into Berlin’s main railway station.

‘Berthold! Berthold!’

He was standing at the barrier and as she waved furiously towards him his face lit with joy.

‘Is that Papa? Lift me up, please, so that I can see him,’ Nancy demanded imperiously, tugging on the skirt of her lilac suit.

As the train juddered to a halt she flung the carriage door open and, leaving Josephine to shepherd the children onto the platform, began running as if she were a young girl and not a mature woman of thirty-two.

In a way she was to remember with pleasure all her life Berthold behaved totally out of character. Instead of waiting for her to reach him at the barrier, he pushed through it, running to meet her.

Her first thoughts in the seconds before she reached his arms, were that he looked much smaller than she remembered, and much older. His hair had thinned and everything about him seemed, somehow, to be diminished. She was uncaring.

As his arms closed around her she was aware only that whatever her emotional chaos where Adam was concerned, her family was at last reunited.

‘Vicky, meine Liebchen!’ As they hugged tight, his cheek against hers was wet with tears. ‘I thought this day was never going to come!’

‘And I was beginning to think I would never be called Liebchen again,’ she said, laughing through reciprocal tears as she drew away from him so she could look up into his face.

For a long perfect moment they simply beamed at each other, and then a little dark-haired tornado hurtled towards them.

‘So you’re my papa!’ Nancy shouted exultantly, throwing her arms around Berthold’s legs and hanging on to them like a limpet.

As he transferred his attention from Vicky to the daughter he had never previously seen, Paul, Max and Hugo walked up to them, Paul with easy confidence, Max with curiosity and Hugo hesitantly.

‘Hello, Uncle Berthold,’ Paul said as Berthold succeeded in lifting Nancy away from his legs and into his arms. ‘It’s nice to see you again. You’re looking well, sir.’