Everything from nuclear disarmament demonstrations to the Polish Solidarity movement had been actively supported by Henry. Nobody could say he wasn’t fearless. He had fought in the streets alongside Chilean dissidents, and that wasn’t all. But Leona had always suspected that the excitement, not the cause itself, accounted for Henry’s putting himself at risk as he so often had.

She could hear him now telling her son-in-law, Alan, who was studying for the rabbinate, that neo-Nazism was on the rise in Europe. As if that was inside information that he, the now middle-aged crusader who had made espousing political causes his way of life, was in a position to dispense.

‘But those orchestrating it haven’t a chance of getting anywhere,’ Alan replied. ‘Which isn’t to say that Jews shouldn’t be vigilant. The signs are there all right that the evil we’re talking about wasn’t entirely stamped out by the war.’

A brief pause followed, and Leona remembered other such awkward moments when Germany and Nazism were mentioned in Howard Klein’s presence. On this occasion, though Germany wasn’t mentioned, the implication remained. And the family’s feeling about Howard having a German wife, delightful though the girl was, had not gone away.

Christina, however, was not among them, but visiting her parents in Munich, with her little boy, Ben, a child as Semitic-looking as his mother’s appearance was Aryan, and now three years old.

It was Laura who ended the silence with a remark no less embarrassing for Howard. ‘I seem to recall hearing that Germany went through a denazification programme, but I wouldn’t say it extended to those born after the war being made to face up to what their elders let happen.’

‘Since when were you an expert on the subject?’ Howard flashed at her.

‘I’m not claiming to be,’ Laura replied, ‘but I’m entitled to my opinion. I was in Berlin on an assignment recently and – you know me! – I deliberately raised the subject of the Holocaust at a party I was invited to. Those there were my age and younger, but nobody wanted to talk about it. What I’m saying is, though they were no more than the proverbial twinkle in their parents’ eyes when it happened, it seemed none of them could bear to look that bit of the German past in the face.’

‘So they’re ashamed of it. What’s wrong with that?’ Alan inquired.

‘Shame isn’t enough,’ said Laura. ‘And you could’ve heard a pin drop when I told them I’m Jewish. There was an immediate change in the atmosphere. Make what you will of that. And now I have an announcement to make. I’m getting married.’

Shirley stopped wiping little Bessie’s nose and sat down with a thump. Nor was it any wonder that the kind of silence Laura had just described preceded the family’s crowding around her to say Mazeltov.