Barbara returned from Hamburg ten days later. They sat outside, on the green wrought-iron chairs that Dora had bought in the Homebase sale, a pot of coffee and some cherry torte that Dora had made placed on the garden table.

Dora had never been back to Germany. The country had made strides in the last forty years, she knew that, the cities rebuilt, the past confronted. But she had no one there now, although her soul was with Vati, in the Jüdische Friedhof in Weissensee. She could see it now, the branches of the beech and birch trees linked into a canopy that shed a dappled light over the ground, amber in the autumn when the fading sun filtered through a filigree of red and yellow, luminous in the spring when the world was fresh and the leaves were green. He lay next to Mutti, beneath a matching granite slab. She’d chosen the inscription. Hier ruht mein geliebter Vater. Dr Alfred Simon. 1880–1933. He’d died too soon, in a rush. She should have written, always in a hurry, as his epitaph, but that would have been frowned upon. It was her last memory of him. But the Weissensee cemetery was on the eastern side of the Wall. It would be difficult to visit it, even if she went to Berlin.

‘He’s an architect,’ Barbara was saying, ‘Maximilian List. Still designing. His name was there, in the telephone book, in plain view.’

Dora didn’t want to hear this. She slumped her head forward, put her hands to her forehead. ‘Still designing?’

‘Yes.’

‘What kind of things? Offices? Houses?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Barbara said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Dora said. Ja, ja. Added, ‘I don’t know this man, and I don’t understand why you want to tell me about him.’ Couldn’t say, Don’t you understand how this kills me all over again? Brings out demons that I must confront?

‘If you prefer,’ Barbara shrugged. ‘I didn’t meet him, as it happens. He’s old, and ill, and his wife guards him like a Rottweiler.’

She broke off a piece of torte with her fork, took a sip of coffee.

‘But I want to tell you this, if I may. I did speak with his wife. They’ve been married now for sixty years, she told me. Apparently, my mother turned up in Hamburg one day in 1944 with a baby and claimed List was the father. She said that my mother had been infatuated with her husband during the war, followed him to the Channel Islands when he was sent to Alderney. Made a real nuisance of herself.’