Dumping his bag unceremoniously on a fragile chair, Philip strides down the long hallway. The sound of chattering leads him unerringly to the right doors, which he throws open so he can step inside. At first glance, the room seems full of women, but as his gaze sweeps over them, he finds just his three sisters. Margarita, Theodora, Sophie.

Only Cecile is missing.

They are all looking older and thinner, but there’s plenty of the old dash about them, too, Philip thinks.

All three are sitting on uncomfortable-looking sofas but have turned their heads at the sound of the door opening and, as their eyes alight on him in incredulous disbelief, he grins.

‘Hullo.’

There is a moment of absolute silence. Unconsciously, the three women are in the same pose, hands pressed to the base of their throats in shock. They stare at him as if he is a ghost.

‘Philip?’ Sophie whispers at last. She puts a hand on the arm of the sofa and pushes herself to her feet as if unsure her legs will hold her. ‘Philip, is it really you?’

‘You didn’t think I’d miss your wedding, did you, Tiny?’

‘Philip …’

Sophie stumbles towards him and Margarita and Theodora are up too and the next moment they have enfolded him in a warm, scented embrace. They are all crying and babbling in a mixture of German, French, and English, kissing and hugging and patting him as if to convince themselves he is real.

Philip endures it for as long as he can before disentangling himself. ‘Come on, now, let me breathe!’

Margarita wipes her cheeks. ‘Oh, Philip, I can’t believe it! What are you doing here? How did you get here?’

‘I hitched a lift with the Canadian army.’ Philip has spent the past two days in the back of a truck with a platoon of friendly gum-chewing Canadian soldiers. He only made it to the cab to give directions to Schloss Salem. He makes a show of rubbing his backside. ‘Not the most comfortable journey I’ve ever had!’

Far worse than the hard seat was seeing the terrible destruction as the truck jolted across a continent ravaged by war. Almost a year after the Allied victory, Germany is in chaos still, so many of its buildings reduced to rubble, its roads pot-holed, its people bowed under the weight of defeat. After years of patriotic bombast and anti-German propaganda, it is sobering to see the other side of the war. The struggle to rebuild Britain is hard enough, but to Philip the task facing the Germans seems insuperable. Nobody, surely, wanted victory to look like this.

‘I am sorry you had an uncomfortable journey,’ Sophie says, lifting his hand to her cheek, ‘but thank you! Thank you so much for coming, Philip.’

Her eyes fill with tears again and he shifts, uncomfortable with her gratitude. His war has been so much easier than theirs.

Seeing him squirm, Margarita interrupts. ‘Oh my God, when he came in, I thought for a moment it was Papa standing the doorway, didn’t you, Dolla?’

Theodora nods vigorously. ‘I thought the same thing! They look exactly the same. The same way of standing even!’

‘I haven’t got a monocle,’ Philip protests. ‘Or a moustache.’

‘But everything else … your features, the way you hold yourself … it is incredible.’ Theodora pats her chest in remembered shock. ‘It was like seeing a ghost.’

‘Poor Papa, how proud he would have been to see you looking so strong and handsome!’

Three pairs of eyes well up at the thought of their father.

‘Here,’ Philip says bracingly. ‘If you’re all going to snivel, you’ll make me sorry I came! Weddings are supposed to be happy affairs.’

‘Oh, I know,’ sniffs Sophie. ‘It’s just so wonderful to see you and to realise that our little brother has grown up. You’ve changed so much!’

‘So I should hope,’ he says. ‘I was only sixteen when—’ He breaks off, remembering that the last time they had all seen each other was that desperate day in Darmstadt when they had buried Cecile with her husband and two sons and the baby that had never been named.

They are all silent, remembering. ‘That terrible day,’ Margarita says softly at last. ‘The worst of days.’ She lets out a long sigh. ‘Things have been very bad lately but I often think nothing could be as bad as that day.’

‘I wish Cecile could be here now,’ Sophie adds. ‘She loved it when we were all together. Remember how much fun she was? And you were her favourite, Philip, you know that.’

Cecile had been his favourite sister, too, but Philip keeps that to himself. The memory of Cecile is like a boulder sitting on his chest, crushing his ribs, but somehow he finds a smile.

‘I thought I was the favourite of all of you?’

‘So you are,’ says Margarita, bravely following his lead in trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘That’s why you were always the spoilt little prince!’

Philip spreads his hands and affects an air of humility. ‘Is it my fault Mama and Papa were so pleased to have a son after all you girls?’

‘Hah! We never got a look in after you were born, did we?’ Margarita says. ‘Do you remember that day, Dolla? Poor Mama had to give birth on the dining room table!’ She shudders at the thought.

‘Like yesterday,’ Theodora says. She claps her hands onto her thighs. ‘But before we start on the do-you-remembers, Philip must want a wash.’

‘No, I don’t,’ he says, to tease her, but Dolla is not to be overruled.

‘After two days in an army truck, Philip, you certainly do! I’ll sort out a room for you,’ she says as she stands up. ‘Tiny, why don’t you ring the bell for some tea?’

‘Or something stronger,’ says Sophie, getting obediently to her feet and winking at Philip.

Philip stands up too. It never was any use trying to resist Theodora, who was always the practical member of the family, but there’s something comforting about how quickly they are able to fall into their old roles. ‘Still a bossy boots, I see, Dolla,’ he says with a grin and she laughs and makes shooing motions with her hands.

‘Still cheeky, I see!’

He is glad to have banished some of the sadness in the room. After the first joy of meeting again, he is shocked at what his sisters have been through. He has heard some but not all of it. Sophie’s first husband, Christoph, was killed when his plane crashed in 1943. There are rumours that he was murdered on Hitler’s orders, but when Philip raises the question, his sisters are evasive.

‘We have learned to keep quiet,’ Sophie explains later when they are walking in the neglected gardens alone, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm. ‘Anyone who spoke out …’ She sighs a little. ‘Do you remember Princess Mafalda? They sent her to the camp at Büchenwald. She may have died because of an American bomb, but it was that devil Hitler who killed her.’

Her voice shakes with emotion. Philip isn’t sure if it is anger or grief; maybe it is both.

‘I have been looking after her children ever since. Poor things, it has been hard for them, with Mafalda in that dreadful camp and their father in prison. We were all staying with Christoph’s mother at Friedrichshof, but when the Americans came, they wanted the castle as a rest home for their soldiers.’

She lifts her shoulders in a gesture of resignation. ‘Well, we are defeated, we have no choice. We had two hours to pack up and get out. There was no time to retrieve all the family jewels that Christoph hid in the cellars. We thought they would be safe. They were well hidden. And what else could we do? We were all jammed into a tiny house, but it was unendurable. In the end, I took all the children to Wolfsgarten where they gave us refuge.’