And now, with everyone safely in position, the household of Herr Doktor Fischer could march forward to the great climax of Christmas Eve. A frenzied last-minute clean-up began, the maids gliding silently up and down the already gleaming parquet with huge brushes strapped to their feet. Carpets were thumped, feather-beds beaten, and in the kitchen… But there are no words to describe what went on in a good Viennese kitchen just before Christmas in those far-off days before the First World War.

Bedtime prayers, for the children, became a laborious and time-consuming business. Vicky, obsessed by her angel, devised long entreaties for his safe conduct through the skies. The twins, on the other hand, produced an inventory which would not have disgraced the mail order catalogue of a good department store. And each and every night their mother got them out of bed again, all three, because they had forgotten to say. ‘And God bless Cousin Poldi.’

Five days before Christmas, the thing happened which meant most of all to Vicky. The tree arrived. A huge tree, all but touching the ceiling of the enormous drawing room, and: ‘It’s the best tree we’ve ever had, the most beautiful,’ said Vicky, as she had said last year and the year before and was to go on saying all her life.

She wanted presents, she wanted presents very much, but this transformation of the still, dark tree - beautiful, but just any tree - into the glittering, beckoning candlelit vision that they saw when one by one (but always children first) they filed into the room on Christmas Eve… That to her, was the wonder of wonders, the magic that Christmas was all about.

And though no one could accuse the Christ Child of having favourites or anything like that, it did seem to Vicky that when He came down to earth He did the Fischers especially proud. There never did seem to be a tree as wonderful as theirs. The things that were on it, such unbelievably delicate things, could only have been made in Heaven: tiny shimmering angels, dolls as big as a thumb, golden-petalled flowers, sweets of course -oh, every kind of sweet. And candles - perhaps a thousand candles, thought Vicky. Candles which caused her father every year to say, ‘You’ll see if the house doesn’t catch fire, you’ll see!’, and which produced also a light whose softness and radiance had no equal in the world.

The twins grew less seraphic, less placid as the tension grew. ‘Will the angel come tonight?’ demanded Tilda at her prayers.

‘No,’ said Vicky. ‘You’ve got to go to sleep for two more nights.’