Relief crossed his face to be speedily followed by concern. ‘What about the children and Berlin?’ he asked, struggling now to remove the stud from his wing collar.

She turned around on her stool so that she was no longer looking at him through the mirror, but face to face.

‘I think living permanently in Berlin is going to be too difficult for them, Berthold. And that it is going to be too difficult for me. What we would like is for you to live with us in Yorkshire.’

‘Unmöglich!’ It was an indication of how distressed he was that he reacted in German.

‘But why is it impossible? Berlin is still devastated by the consequences of the war. Little Ridding isn’t. The boys enjoy the school they go to in Yorkshire—and it is a good school. Under the present circumstances, school life in Berlin will be nearly impossible for them. Everything would be so much easier if you would only live with us in Yorkshire, instead of us living with you in Berlin.’

Slowly, he sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped between his knees. ‘But you and the children returning to Berlin is what we have both been planning and looking forward to for so long, Liebchen. And everything is going so well. Max and Hugo are already remembering a little German and Nancy doesn’t seem to need German to make herself understood. She and Lotti are already as thick and thieves and Ilse is following Hugo around in exactly the same way you said Nancy used to do when she was a toddler.’

She rose to her feet and moved across to him, sitting by his side. ‘The plan for the children and me to return to Berlin has always been your plan, Berthold dear. Not mine. And not the children’s. We are just here because we so longed to see you again and because we want to be a reunited family again. It would be easiest, though, to be a reunited family in Yorkshire. Surely you can see that, Berthold?’

‘It isn’t what I want,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I want my children brought up as Germans—even if they will be Germans who also speak English.’

‘At the moment, they only speak English,’ she said, trying to humour him into seeing the situation sensibly. ‘Your English is so flawless there won’t be the language problems for you in Yorkshire that there will be for the boys in Berlin. And in a village like Little Ridding you won’t meet with violent antiGerman feeling, whereas the boys will certainly meet with anti-British feeling here.’

He groaned, holding his head in his hands, and then he looked towards her, saying, ‘If I promise that by the end of the summer I will think about leaving Germany for England, will you promise that until then you and the children will live here as Berliners, as Zelda and her children are Berliners?’

His eyes were so pleading that much against her better judgement she said, ‘I promise, but only until the end of the summer, Berthold. Only until the start of St Dunstan’s Michaelmas term.’