While casting his eye in search of an unoccupied one, Jake said, ‘If I were Howard, the day after I became a family man again I’d apply for Ben’s custody. I can’t wait to meet that kid, by now he’s like an off-stage character to me.’

‘And as every playwright knows,’ said Marianne dryly, ‘a character never seen on stage is often responsible for much of the action.’

‘Lest that was too subtle for my husband,’ said Laura, ‘what Marianne means is that were it not for Ben, none of us, including Howard, would now be in Germany. Howard wouldn’t have met Karin, would he? But don’t you go suggesting to him what you just mentioned, Jake. It has to be his and Karin’s decision.’

Marianne laughed. ‘If she’d lived long enough, it might have been Sarah Sandberg’s carefully contrived decision! And I doubt that she’d have seen fit to take a child from its mother. Shall we see if there’s a free table inside, instead of standing watching others guzzle?’

‘Inside there won’t be the same atmosphere,’ Jake opined, leading the way.

He could not have been more right.

After mounting a spiralling wrought iron stairway, its appearance a freshly painted white, it was as though they had been transported backward in time to the thirties. The waitresses, deferential and clad in brown, their organdie aprons and caps a discreet beige, seemed as if preserved from that era, as did the aged clientele.

After they had ordered coffee and chosen their pastries, Laura voiced their mutual impression. ‘I wish I had my camera with me. This has to be a slice of pre-war Berlin set in amber.’

‘And there’s something about it that’s giving me the creeps,’ said Marianne.

‘Since you mention it, me too.’

‘But we mustn’t let it put us off our nosh,’ said Jake.

There was in the genteel atmosphere, enhanced by the women without exception wearing hats and the equally formal attire of the men, a sense of time for them having stood still, though they themselves had grown old, thought Marianne.

Since one thought leads to another, she found herself thinking, This is the generation that let Hitler do what he did, who got on with their own lives while people like Karin’s parents were dragged from their homes and dispatched in freight trains like animals to the slaughter, to the camps where death was the fate of the majority.

Fifty years later, here this lot were, smiling and chatting as if their consciences were clear. Did they ever let themselves remember that what was once a sizeable Jewish population was largely gone to dust at their nation’s hand?