Marianne and Ronald, who had persuaded their elders to let them go along for the ride, were fast asleep when they arrived. There were no motorways then, she reflected. Dad and Uncle David must have driven hell-for-leather to get there in time. And seeing the refugees leaving the ship – the expressions on their faces, and the weeping when those meeting them embraced them – was something that would remain with Marianne for the rest of her life.

Also Sigmund Moritz’s joy when he espied his great-nephew, Peter, whom he recognized from a photograph though they had not met. And then Sigmund’s sorrow when Peter told them that the rest of the family had been taken by the Nazis.

With Peter was a forlorn young girl with whom he had somehow escaped the fate of their two families. Nearly five decades had since passed, but Marianne could still not contemplate that fate without a shudder. It had not taken that long for the evil she had naively thought stamped out to prove otherwise.

Catching a glimpse of her workaday appearance in the hall mirror was sufficient to hasten Marianne to freshen up before Jake arrived. Not on your life, though, would she have bothered to brush her hair and put on lipstick had she known Shirley was coming!

While doing so her mind returned to Shirley’s ex-husband.

David had taken Peter into his family and had considered him a second son, later welcoming him as a son-in-law. Was it perhaps gratitude for all he had received from his foster-parents, including love, that had kept Peter tied for so long to their daughter?

Little by little, marriage to Shirley had diminished his spirit. Nor could working beside his high-powered wife in the family business have failed to emasculate him. But a trip to Israel had served as Peter’s salvation. There he had encountered Hildegard, with whom in their youth he had walked hand-in-hand from the ship at Dover, and he was now married to her.

Peter’s was one family story that had ended happily, Marianne thought wryly as the doorbell pealed.

But not for Shirley – whose outrageous conclusion that Jake was having it off with the au pair had surpassed even Marianne’s estimation of her cousin’s nasty mind.

That isn’t to say his wanting to talk to me privately hasn’t got me worried. She went to let him in. And this had been the sort of day that drove her from her native north. Family taking precedence. She had barely done a stroke of work.

‘Thanks for seeing me, Marianne. I know how busy you are.’

That was what they all said. North and south. As if Marianne’s sparing time for her relatives was bestowing a favour. It wasn’t like that at all. Simply that publishing was no longer the leisurely ethos many supposed it still to be, but a highly commercial operation that began with the author.