‘You and Klara will be in here. Tom and I will be with Johnny in the other room. He may come and see you at some dreadful hour, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘I’ll leave you to get Klara settled, then.’

Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

A few minutes later, Romy returned to the sitting room. She took a gulp of her wine.

‘And so I begin my story. It was in a little village in Upper Austria called Braundorf. My very good friend Geli was six and a half months pregnant and it was showing. She had managed to get away from Munich where she lived in Hitler’s apartment.

‘Hitler thought she was overweight and depressed and had reluctantly agreed to let her go away for a few weeks to get some mountain air. He even offered to pay for her to go to the spa at Bad Gastein to take the waters, but instead she and I agreed that she would go to Braundorf where my old friends the Riegers lived. Matthias was the village schoolmaster.

‘Geli had confided her plight to me – and pleaded with me to join her. I was recently married, but my husband was away with his work, so he did not notice my absence from Vienna. In Braundorf, Geli and I lodged with the Riegers, who fed us and looked after us. Together we all lived through the last weeks of Geli’s confinement, knowing that it was a great secret that must never be told.’

‘Hadn’t anyone in Munich noticed anything?’ Lydia asked.

‘You mean Hitler? No, he was very preoccupied at that time. He could feel power nearing his grasp. Geli was never skinny, so at first it was easy to dismiss her weight gain as a few too many strudels and schnitzels, and she wore loose-fitting clothes. In the end it was her mother who noticed, of course. Mothers always do, don’t they? She was desperate for Geli to get away, for she knew this could all be ruinous for her brother’s political ambitions – and for herself.

‘Once or twice I travelled to Gastein to send Hitler postcards written by Geli, as though she was there. If he ever wrote back I have no knowledge of his letters. He was certainly not a man to keep in touch by telephone. But those were good days for Geli and me. We laughed a lot at her situation, but at the same time we knew the happiness couldn’t last and that great sadness awaited us.