‘It seems I am to inherit Uncle August’s property. I am the sole beneficiary in his will. It will make a perfect pension or small hotel, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed I do.’

He stayed for lunch and they sat outside eating black bread and mountain cheese and drinking home-brewed beer.

As he was leaving, she touched his arm. ‘Will you not tell me what happened in the house up at the hidden meadow, Professor?’

‘Better you don’t know.’ He squeezed her hand, then kissed her cheek and bade her farewell.

At Apfelwald, he found Angie Gray and her new unofficial adoptee Jerzy packing up.

‘So your mission is complete, Professor?’

‘That’s for others to decide. What about you?’

‘Yes, this is the end of my posting. Let others take over, I must continue with my medical career and earn some money. I now have a child to raise and educate.’

‘Where are you planning to go?’

‘Paris. We are taking Lilly back to France. She plans to get work as a waitress or a seamstress and rebuild her life. You know, she may not be the cleverest young woman in the world, but she’s very sweet and with those film star looks, I rather think she’ll survive – and probably prosper. I also think it would be good for Jerzy to learn some French. He is good at languages. We leave this afternoon.’

‘Is Lilly around? I haven’t really met her properly.’

‘I’ll get her. I’m afraid she doesn’t speak English and has very little German.’

‘Then I’ll rely on you to interpret.’

For such an astonishingly beautiful young woman, Lilly Marais appeared remarkably shy and diffident as she approached him. Something told him that she had not always been like that, however. That recent events had knocked her confidence.

He tried to put her at ease with a warm smile and a lingering handshake. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ he said in schoolboy French.

‘I feel such a fool, Professor Wilde,’ she said, using Angie Gray to translate.

‘Love makes fools of us all.’

‘But you know he was very handsome and charming. He told me there would be a great welcoming party for me in his village, that I would be honoured as his bride. The true nature of the welcome was awful.’

Wilde felt a pang of sympathy for the woman. Like many thousands of other young women in the occupied territories, she had suffered abuse and worse from her own family and friends. Many had had their heads shaved, others had been banished from their villages and communities. Their crime? Falling in love with the enemy.

‘I always knew Julius was in the SS, but I was naive – I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t know what he did in the war – and I don’t want to know – but he was never cruel to me.’