Early in 1946, it proved possible to establish contact with Finette. Three years of toiling and searching following the end of the war succeeded in tracing Finette and her flight, but it would take a further two years for her to be able to travel to England. They proved fateful years, for she was already terminally ill with tuberculosis. Predictably, her fiance had failed to get permission to marry her. After the fall of France, she applied to the Todt organisation which was responsible for securing the conquered territory against an eventual allied invasion, and where she could live in greater obscurity. It was there that she met Major Franz Scharfenberg, who in the fullness of time became her husband at an of necessity secret ceremony. Then came D-Day and within months began the retreat from France. They were soon separated, and all that is known of the husband is that he was shot in an SS prison for 'refusing to obey orders' - presumably a command to lead his men to a certain death.

Finette took with her an unborn child, where in Brandenburg on 13 February 1945 she gave birth to  Hans-Joachim Franz (‘Johnny’) Scharfenberg. Deprivations of war and sacrificing her own rations for the child aggravated Finette's condition. Finette's journey with her son took her via family members in Bochum and Reitzenstein to friends in Goslar, Bad Reichenhall and elsewhere. Her last correspondence is a testimony both to the warmth of the friendships she had made, and the shared trials of living through the immediate post-war years. They also speak vividly of the growing grip of the disease to which she succumbed only weeks after her arrival in Brighton.

By the time she reached her mother in Sussex, all she could do was to leave her the three-year old and enter Brighton Hospital, where she died a few weeks later, consumed by miliary TB.

The reunion of Mother and Daughter was as unforgettable as mine with my long-lost elder Sister. Now meeting as adults we were together long enough to bridge the ten-year gap and be in peace.  For Mutti it was the continuation of a conversation she had begun during the years of exile, recorded in a slim volume published in 1945 entitled The Enchanted Fountain. The powerful feelings it portrayed could hardly have failed to make themselves felt even over the physical distance that separated the two women.