‘We’re going into town this afternoon, Lena,’ said Charlotte. ‘Why don’t you come?’

‘It was my afternoon off yesterday.’

‘I’m sure Martha wouldn’t mind.’

‘It’s not for me to say,’ said Martha. ‘I’d have to ask Daisy.’

‘I’ve only got a few more days here,’ said Charlotte, ‘and I promised I’d take some things back to our mother. But I need some help.’

‘I don’t think I could be much help. I’ve never met your—’

‘I’ll do a stint of cleaning for you instead, tomorrow. God knows, I used to do enough in the school holidays. Scrubbing the wretched floors. Do you remember, Martha?’

‘I still have the scars on my knees.’

So it was decided. Daisy was informed (by Charlotte, who had been nursed by her as a child) that the cleaning rota would be changed. The three of them set off in the unreliable van with Martha at the wheel. She had never had a lesson, but had learned how to change gear by watching Joseph.

The shopping was quickly done, with twenty minutes in the confectioner’s yielding four boxes of different chocolates and a short stop for a woollen skirt of a charcoal colour first stocked by Herr Thaller’s father and now by his son.

Lena suggested shops that offered the kind of clothes that she had once sold from her single rail, but neither twin seemed interested. She tried to guide them towards a fruit stall in the market and the famous bookshop near St Thomas’s, but sensed their enthusiasm for shopping was already starting to flag.

‘Do you like cake?’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Lena, remembering how Rudolf had once asked her what she liked for dinner. Cakes and fruit, she’d said, which had made him laugh.

‘All right,’ said Martha. ‘That’s really the only part of shopping Charlotte’s ever liked. Let’s go to the Café Mahler.’

This was a mock-Viennese building on the Bahnhofstrasse that Lena had never been inside before, though she had often eyed the confections in the window. They were shown to a round table near the back, where the lighting was strong and they had a view of the other customers.

Feeling self-conscious in the brightness, Lena excused herself to check her appearance in the lavatory. It was not much more than a cubicle, dark and primitive beside the gilded main room, but she could see her own face in the mirror above the sink. Did she look like a girl from the wrong side of the bridge? Did the twins want to be her friend? She wished she had had some powder or rouge in the handbag she carried: she looked pale. And her face was altering, she could see – as though the features of her parents were trying to push their way through her skin. She thought of Stefan and the way he had held his hand to the sun, next to hers, as they sat on his boat.

Back at the table, the twins were arguing about which cakes to order, but in the end agreed to a selection made by the waiter. Martha wanted English tea, Charlotte ordered coffee and Lena asked for hot chocolate because she never had it at the Schloss. There was a boring conversation with the waiter about what made a genuine Sacher cake and then some chat about political things of no interest to Lena.