‘Thank you. And now I must circulate. Good talking to you, Woody.’

‘My pleasure.’

Bexforth moved away.

Woody put his drink down untasted. ‘Fuck it,’ he said quietly. Then he left.

(iv)

The first day of September was sultry in Berlin. Carla von Ulrich woke up sweaty and uncomfortable, her bedsheets thrown off during the warm night. She looked out of her bedroom window to see low grey clouds hanging over the city, keeping heat in like a saucepan lid.

Today was a big day for her. In fact, it would determine the course of her life.

She stood in front of the mirror. She had her mother’s colouring, the dark hair and green eyes of the Fitzherberts. She was prettier than Maud, who had an angular face, striking rather than beautiful. Yet there was a bigger difference. Her mother attracted just about every man she met. Carla, by contrast, could not flirt. She watched other girls her age doing it: simpering, pulling their sweaters tight over their breasts, tossing their hair, and batting their eyelashes, and she just felt embarrassed. Her mother was more subtle, of course, so that men hardly knew they were being enchanted, but it was essentially the same game.

Today, however, Carla did not want to appear sexy. On the contrary, she needed to look practical, sensible, and capable. She put on a plain stone-coloured cotton dress that came to mid-calf, stepped into her flat, unglamorous school sandals, and wove her hair into two plaits in the approved German-maiden fashion. The mirror showed her an ideal girl student: conservative, dull, sexless.

She was up and dressed before the rest of the family. The maid, Ada, was in the kitchen, and Carla helped her set out the breakfast things.

Her brother appeared next. Erik, nineteen and sporting a clipped black moustache, supported the Nazis, infuriating the rest of his family. He was a student at the Charité, the medical school of the University of Berlin, as was his best friend and fellow-Nazi, Hermann Braun. The von Ulrichs could not afford tuition fees, of course, but Erik had won a scholarship.

Carla had applied for the same scholarship to study at the same institution. Her interview was today. If she was successful, she would study and become a doctor. If not . . .

She had no idea what else she would do.

The coming to power of the Nazis had ruined her parents’ lives. Her father was no longer a deputy in the Reichstag, having lost his job when the Social-Democratic Party became illegal, along with all other parties except for the Nazis. There was no work her father could do that would use his expertise as a politician and a diplomat. He scraped a living translating German newspaper articles for the British Embassy, where he still had a few friends. Mother had once been a famous left-wing journalist, but newspapers were no longer allowed to publish her articles.

Carla found it heartbreaking. She was deeply devoted to her family, which included Ada. She was saddened by the decline in her father, who in her childhood had been a hard-working and politically powerful man, and was now simply defeated. Even worse was the brave face put on by her mother, a famous suffragette leader in England before the war, now scraping a few marks by giving piano lessons.