She was about to say ‘Dachau’, but stopped herself. She didn’t want that hellish nightmare intruding on their gathering.

Instead she said, ‘All the way across Germany and into the Italian Tyrol, where . . . where I found you, my darling . . . and thought I’d arrived too late . . .’

The sudden, vivid memory of Gerhard’s skeletal, feverish wreck of a body lying on what seemed to be his deathbed took Saffron unawares. She could not speak for the lump in her throat and had to blink back the tears before she could mutter, ‘Sorry,’ to the rest of the table. She pulled herself together, took a deep breath and with a forced briskness added, ‘But I hadn’t . . . and everything was all right, after all.’

Silence fell across the table. They all had their own bitter memories and understood how shallow the emotions of war were buried, how the pain could creep up on one at any moment.

Peter Churchill knew what a decent English gentleman should do at such a moment: lighten the mood.

‘I say, Saffron,’ he piped up. ‘It seems to me that you’re hogging the limelight in the matter of the Gubbins–Meerbach connection. After all, if I hadn’t been stuck in the same concentration camp as Gerhard, we wouldn’t have been on the same grim charabanc ride across the mountains. Thus I wouldn’t have been able to keep him more or less alive . . .’ He glanced towards Gerhard. ‘You were in the most terrible state, old boy, we thought you were a goner for sure . . . And I only happened to be on the bus thanks to Baker Street’s determination to keep sending me into Occupied France until I finally got caught. Ergo, the Law of Gubbins applies to me too.’

‘Then I agree, I must also thank Brigadier Gibbins,’ Gerhard said. ‘And I thank you, Peter, from the bottom of my heart. I would have died without you.’

‘Think nothing of it, old boy. Anyone in my shoes would have tried to help. Inhuman not to.’

Gerhard nodded thoughtfully. He frowned as he collected his thoughts and the others gave him time, knowing that there was something on his mind. Then he said, ‘Here we are, talking about the war. I can’t help but think of the terrible things I saw . . . You know I was imprisoned, but before that I spent three years on the Russian Front. I was at Stalingrad, almost to the very end. I saw what was done to the Jews – the firing squads, the gas vans. All my closest friends were killed.

‘Sometimes I feel cursed by fate to have had to endure so much horror, so much suffering and death. But then I tell myself, no, I am blessed, truly blessed, for I have experienced a miracle. I stumbled to the edge of the grave, but I did not fall in. I lived.’