Feeling more secure but still wary, he approached Cornflowers and opened the front gate. There was a figure in the dark grey gloom. He froze. Someone was ahead of him, at the front door.

The man was already turning and his face emerged in the dim light.

‘Hello?’ Wilde said.

‘Ah, good day. Are you Professor Wilde? Thomas Wilde?’

He hesitated no more than a split second.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’m looking for him, too.’

The man came closer.

‘I see. Got some sad news to impart about a mutual friend. I’m Charles Young, by the way. Friends call me Charlie.’

*

Lydia was trying to get it out of her mind that the girl playing with her son was Hitler’s daughter. She tried to focus on the thought that this was a child in need, a child in danger.

‘Mrs Wilde?’

‘Yes, Klara?’

Clearly the girl had no intention of calling her Lydia. Far too informal for a respectable German girl.

‘Why do you wear that stuff on your face?’

Lydia laughed. ‘The make-up, you mean? Well, it’s just a little rouge and eyeliner. Otherwise I look horribly pallid at this time of year.’

‘It is not correct to wear make-up,’ Klara told her with a serious expression.

‘Is that what you’ve been told? Well, you may very well be right, but it is a personal choice. And in England we women do not need someone else telling us how to live our lives or what to wear.’

‘But in Germany—’

‘Yes, I know, Klara. But we’re not in Germany now.’ Her eye caught a glint of silver from the necklace at her throat. ‘Anyway, I see you like to wear nice things, too.’

Klara removed the locket and handed it to Lydia, who examined it carefully. The silver was quite thick, a good solid weight, and there was some intricate engraving of hearts and flowers on the front.

‘It’s lovely, Klara. Does it have pictures in it?’

‘There was a band of my parents’ hair, braided together. It’s all I have left of them. But the man at the house – the one who was measuring my face – took it. He said he wanted to look at it under a microscope for some reason, but that he would return it. I didn’t want him to take it. He might mess it up.’

‘I’m sorry. I agree – he shouldn’t have done that.’

Tom had told her about Bromley; the man sounded an absolute charlatan. What could he possibly learn from a few strands of hair? That it was the same colour as Hitler’s? So was the hair of millions of people. And as for measuring Klara’s face with calipers? Wasn’t that the sort of thing the Nazi race department did? It sounded quite ghastly.