‘You need to put a little weight back on, Zelda. That’s all,’ she said a little awkwardly, taking off her hat and laying her stole over the back of a familiar, spindly legged chair.

‘And I will.’ The words were said vehemently and her dark eyes flashed fire. ‘And I’ll get my looks back, by God I will!’

For a heart-stopping moment Vicky was reminded of Nancy, who was always saying ‘I will’ with equal fierceness. Perhaps Nancy, when she grew up, was going to be as strong-willed—and difficult—as her aunt. It was a thought she couldn’t quite cope with and she thrust it to the back of her mind.

‘You may have been on short rations in England,’ Zelda said, picking up a long ebony holder from her dressing table and putting a small black Russian cigarette into it, ‘but you didn’t go hungry. I can tell that by looking at you.’

She lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply and then blew smoke out through her nose. ‘Thanks to the naval blockade we went hungry in Berlin. In Berlin we starved.’

She moved across to one of the long windows that looked out towards Unter den Linden’s lime trees. ‘I know by your letters that after the Armistice life in Britain just went back to being normal. There were no revolutions for you, in Yorkshire, were there? Your army didn’t collapse like a deck of cards, did it? Your king didn’t go scurrying off to Holland, did he?’

Slowly, Vicky came and sat opposite her.

Zelda gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. ‘God, you’ve no idea what it was like here, Vicky. There were riots in the streets, Bolsheviks in our factories and Allied army personnel barracked here, in the house. And though Josef has more or less gained control of the Remer factories again, other things haven’t improved. In February, the police turned machine-gun fire on a crowd demonstrating outside the Reichstag. Machine-gun fire! Can you imagine? I could see people from here, dammed up against the Brandenburg Gate, shouting and screaming.’

She shuddered and took another deep draw on her cigarette. ‘There is no sense of order in the country, no sense of control. Germany needs a leader and hasn’t got one. The Fatherland is dying. Britain isn’t dying, is it? Britain, as usual, is simply going from strength to bloody strength.’

Vicky hugged her arms to her chest. ‘I’m sorry life has been such hell for you,’ she said sincerely, ‘and I’m sorry you feel so bitter at my having left Berlin when war broke out. But my going, and you staying, were the choices we made, Zelda. What matters now to us as a family, is the future. And we need to be friends and our children need to be friends.’

Zelda gave an unladylike snort. ‘German children, English children and an American child? What kind of a mix is that? Berthold may have taught Claus a little English, but take it from me, the words will be sticking in his throat. As for Paul…’ She averted her eyes from Vicky’s and looked out towards the lime trees. ‘I once thought I would be able to make a German out of him, but those days are long gone. I don’t even feel as if I’m his mother any more. He’s become more your child than he is mine.’