Changing the subject, she said, ‘As Claus is going to disappoint Nancy when he tells her he has to attend school today, I think I will take her and Ilse to the Zoological Gardens. Exotic creatures always give pleasure.’

‘They most certainly do.’

The throb in his usually hard, clipped voice, told her he was referring to herself.

As he lovingly shooed her off his knee in order that he could meet with Kirchner, he did so conscious that he was as dazzled by her now as he had been nineteen years ago, when they had first met. The government might be corrupt and inept, the spectre of unemployment for the masses might be growing by the minute, his steelworks might still be banned from producing armaments, but he did have one security and that was his marriage. Built on a rock of physical desire that never waned, it never disappointed him and he found it inconceivable it ever would.

Keen as Nancy’s disappointment was at not spending the day with Claus, she had enjoyed her day at the zoo.

‘My aunt looked like a gorgeously plumed South American bird,’ she said to Hester the next day as they swung on a hammock together in the Dresners’ garden, catching up on things over a jug of lemonade. ‘Her dress was turquoise silk and she wore a long string of pearls with it and slave bangles on her upper arms. Can you imagine it? Slave bangles in the day time?

Hester couldn’t and wished she’d been at the zoo to see the sight herself.

‘And we had Ilse with us which was nice, but she’s still such a child.’

Hester looked disconcerted. There was almost the same difference in age between her and Nancy, Nancy being ten months her senior, as there was between her and eleven-year-old Ilse. It made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want Nancy thinking she was a child as well.

‘Afterwards, we went to a very smart café for chocolate ice creams—all of which Lotti missed because she disappeared for the day with Max.’

Nancy didn’t tell Hester that Max and Lotti had probably gone to the Romanische Café—a café so worldly it hadn’t even occurred to her aunt to take her and Ilse there.

‘And what about Hugo?’ Hester asked. She liked Hugo. Unlike the super-confident, gregarious Max, he was quiet and studious and he always went out of his way to make her feel part of things—as if she too was a Remer.

‘Hugo spent time with Pa.’

‘It must be odd,’ she said, ‘seeing your father only two or three times a year.’

Nancy shrugged. ‘Not really, because we’ve never had the experience of seeing him more often. All families are different and it’s just the way ours is. Pa lives in Berlin and we live in Yorkshire. Though Pa likes visiting us in Yorkshire, he wouldn’t like living there. Yorkshire is almost a country of its own and Pa’s not very adventurous. He doesn’t like new experiences.’