The Kirilov Star

Chapter Four

‘I want to talk to you about this,’ her tutor said, tapping the essay Lydia had been asked to write about the causes of the Russian Revolution and why the Kerensky Government failed to halt the rise of the Bolsheviks in 1917, which led to the execution of the Romanovs and the Civil War. Lydia had spent an inordinate amount of time on it, drawing from stories she had heard from Sir Edward and Alexei, who frequently visited Upstone Hall, and her own very clouded memories of Kirilhor and the privations her family suffered there. Sir Edward’s accounts were factual, couched in the words of a diplomat, but Alexei’s were fiery and one-sided, which was hardly surprising since his father had returned to Russia once too often and been arrested and executed for spying after Stalin came to power in 1927. His mother had become frail because of it. ‘We got out safely in 1920, why did he have to keep going back?’ she had lamented on a visit to Upstone Hall.

The tutor was in his mid-thirties, a handsome man, a good teacher. ‘This is very interesting,’ he said. ‘How did you come to be so passionate about it? Have you ever been to Russia?’

‘I was born there. My name was Lydia Mikhailovna Kirillova then. My father was Count Mikhail Kirilov. He and my mother were executed by the Bolsheviks. I have every reason to be passionate.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. Is that why you decided to read Russian history?’

‘Yes. I want to understand how it could have happened.’

‘You will not understand if you only study one side of the argument. There is a lot to be said for Communism, you know.’

‘I can’t think what it can be. They take people’s belongings without compensation and murder for no reason except fear of losing control. If they are so sure they are right, why do they have to execute people? My parents never did anyone any harm. In fact, they did a lot of good, employing people who would otherwise be out of work, making sure they were fed and housed and educating the children. When their assets were taken from them, they could no longer do that.’

‘A lot of that is Western propaganda, you know. The freeing of the serfs did not change much; the rich still exploited the poor, which is neither fair nor just. The peasant is as much of a human being as the tsar and deserves better than that. Now the Communist state employs and feeds everyone.’ He held up his hand to stop her interrupting. ‘Oh, I know it is not the Utopia the purists want and there is a lot of putting right of old wrongs before that can happen, but it will come, you’ll see.’

‘And you think murder by the State is justified?’ It was not only her parents’ death in 1920 she was thinking of, but the arrests, trials and executions which had been taking place in Russia since Stalin came to power.

‘In some cases, yes. We execute murderers and traitors in this country, don’t we?’

‘It’s not the same. We do not kill innocent people.’

‘In an ideal world no one would, but with so much evil to sweep away, there is bound to be a degree of injustice. It cannot be helped.’

She was becoming increasingly angry. ‘My brother and nurse were killed by soldiers in front of my eyes. You call that sweeping away evil? It was horrible and senseless and I shall never forget it.’

‘I am sorry for that, but do you know for sure who perpetrated the deed? They might have been bandits, there were a lot of those about. The Red Army was being blamed for everything, whether guilty or not. How much do you actually remember?’

‘Very little, I was too shocked.’

‘So you relied on what other people told you.’

‘But I saw them die. Andrei fell across me, his blood was all over me.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘It doesn’t matter who did it.’

‘If you want to separate what is true from what is false, you need to study both sides,’ he said. ‘I advise you to set aside your prejudice and be more even-handed, so that you can offer a reasoned and balanced treatise. You have exams coming up and I should not like you to fail.’

Lydia took the sheaf of papers and left the room, seething. It seemed she was not to have an opinion of her own. For two pins she would abandon the whole course. After all, as a woman she was not going to be given a degree, even though her studies were on a par with the men’s. They wouldn’t have women in their colleges, and Girton had been built so far out of town, the ladies felt cut off from university life. A certificate to say she had done the study and passed the exams was all she could hope for. But she knew Papa would be disappointed if she walked out, so she had better grit her teeth and rewrite the essay. The result was a cold, dispassionate dissertation which made her feel a coward.

Lydia went home to Upstone Hall for the traditional Christmas, though it was both the same and somehow different. There was still much hardship after the severe depression earlier in the decade and the village did not seem to be the happy place it had once been. Or was it that now she was grown up, she saw things the child had missed? On the surface Sir Edward appeared to be his usual urbane self and Alexei, who joined them with his mother as usual, was charming and teasing – a kind of big brother, to whom she found it easy to confide – but underneath there seemed to be a heaviness about their conversation. The situation in Russia was worrying, though Lydia did not think it was that. It was as if Alexei had something on his mind he could not speak about, which had never happened before and puzzled her. When she asked him what was wrong he laughed and said, ‘Nothing. What could possibly be wrong, here at Upstone?’

In early January, in wintry weather, she went back to college where the discussion centred around the abdication, which seemed to have stunned everyone. Opinion was divided. There were those who could not understand the king falling for a twice-divorced American fortune-hunter, who had threatened the very fabric of British life and tradition, and there were those of a romantic bent who applauded his decision to put love before duty. At least, Lydia thought with wry humour, no one was going to execute him as they had his kinsman, the tsar.

The coronation in May of George VI cheered everyone up. The new king did not have the charisma of his older brother but he had a strong sense of duty and a lovely family. Undeterred by the cold damp weather, crowds packed twenty-deep behind barriers in Trafalgar Square, to watch the glittering State Coach pass in procession. Many more listened to the broadcast on the wireless, an innovation which was a great success. A few who had television sets watched in their own homes, though the cameras were not allowed into the Abbey. Lydia, who had completed her final examinations, went up to London with some college friends to join the crowds. Her Russian roots were not forgotten, but she felt as British as anyone, cheering and waving a little Union Jack.

The following month she learnt that her hard work had paid off and she had been awarded what would have been considered a good degree if she had been a man, and she went home to Upstone with her certificate and no idea what she was going to do next.

Edward met her at Upstone station with the Bentley. He hugged her and then held her at arm’s length. She was wearing a straight mid-calf-length skirt in deep blue, a silk blouse with ruffles down the front and two-tone shoes. On her chestnut-brown hair was a small pillbox hat set at an angle. It had a brooch pinned to the front of it. ‘You look splendid,’ he said. ‘All grown-up. Not my little girl anymore.’

‘I’ll always be your little girl,’ she said, as they walked out of the station arm in arm, with a porter bringing up the rear with her luggage on a trolley.

‘Your mama has gone to one of her charity meetings but she will be back for tea,’ he said, directing the stowing of the cases, the tennis racket and the box of books in the boot and on the back seat. Then he held the door open for her to settle in the passenger seat before walking round to get behind the wheel. He enjoyed driving and dispensed with the services of a chauffeur except when on official business. He was doing less and less of that now and was planning to retire in a year or two.

‘What are you going to do with yourself now?’ he asked as they pulled out of the station yard. ‘Do you still want to be a translator? I could probably find you a niche somewhere.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it, but I can’t make up my mind.’

‘There’s plenty of time. A holiday first and your twenty-first birthday. Mama is planning a ball for you. A sort of come-out. That will be fun, don’t you think?’

No one knew when her birthday actually was and so they had always celebrated it on the sixth of June. ‘It’s a lovely time of year for a birthday,’ Margaret had said when she and Edward discussed it after she had been with them a few months and Margaret had come to accept her as part of the family. ‘Long warm days when we can use the garden or go for a picnic.’

‘It will be a lot of extra expense for you and Mama,’ Lydia said, not really sure she wanted it. The country was only just coming out of the depression which had seen thousands out of work. Many still were. Poverty was everywhere and the twin evils, as she saw it, of Communism and Fascism were rife. And yet, she, who had seen horrors most British people could not even imagine, was cocooned from it by money and privilege. It made her feel guilty.

‘But you are worth it, sweetheart. And I know Mama is really looking forward to it. She has already drawn up a guest list and put the preparations in hand.’

She chuckled. ‘I must not disappoint Mama, must I?’

They both knew that Margaret was thoroughly spoilt and liked to have her own way, but as both loved her, they went along with whatever she wanted. It was a long time since she had objected to Lydia’s presence in the house and she would probably have denied it if someone had reminded her.

The ball was the talking point of the village. Margaret was immersed in making the arrangements, hurrying about with lists. An orchestra was booked and the two largest reception rooms opened out for a ballroom and the carpets taken up. Since the war, they had had to manage with fewer servants, so temporary staff were called in to polish the floor, prepare the bedrooms for those guests who would be staying overnight, and to help with the catering. ‘Mama, you will wear yourself to a frazzle,’ Lydia said the day before the ball when everyone seemed to be at odds and the servants were falling over each others’ feet. ‘Do take a break. Let’s go for a ride and blow the cobwebs away.’

Riding was Margaret’s passion and the only thing likely to tear her away from the preparations. Lydia enjoyed it too and whenever she came home from Cambridge they would spend hours on horseback, roaming the Norfolk countryside she had come to love. It lacked the spectacular views of the Pennines, the Lakes and Scotland, but it had the Broads and the Fens, gently rolling countryside and wide, glorious skies. ‘I loved Cambridge, but it is good to be home,’ Lydia said, breathing deeply as they walked their horses towards the common.

‘You really think of Upstone Hall as home now?’ Margaret queried.

‘Of course. I have done for a long time. Why did you ask?’

‘I just wondered. When you first came to us you talked of nothing else but going home to Russia and I wondered if, now you are growing up, you might have started thinking about it again, especially as you have been studying it.’

‘Sometimes I think about it, but it doesn’t seem real anymore. It’s like a dream. One day I might like to go on a visit, but that’s a long way into the future.’

‘It would not be safe. Papa is worried about what’s happening in Germany too. He thinks Hitler is as bad as Stalin and there could be a war in Europe.’

‘Oh, they talked a lot about it at Cambridge, especially among the men, who seemed to think it would be a great adventure. Do they never learn? War tears families apart.’ She shuddered as a sudden glimpse of a droshky and bloodstained bodies clouded her vision. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’ They had reached the edge of the common and she spurred her horse into a gallop. ‘Come on, I’ll race you to the oak tree.’

Margaret followed and the ugly memory was dissipated and they trotted back home refreshed and ready to tackle whatever problems cropped up.

On the day of the ball, a florist arrived in the morning to arrange the flowers, and after the last-minute instructions and a look round to see nothing had been forgotten, Margaret went to lie down before getting ready. Lydia went to her room too, but instead of lying down she sat at her window looking out on the park that surrounded the house. Every inch of it was known and loved. Here she was, at twenty-one, loved, cosseted and privileged. Others had not been so lucky. So why did she sometimes feel unsettled, as if there was something missing, something she ought to be searching for? Not her parents; they were long gone. Not Andrei and Tonya, whose deaths still haunted her dreams.

Was she twenty-one? The only evidence they had for that was her own declaration that she was four when she met Sir Edward in Yalta. How had she known that? Had she just turned four or was she nearer five? It felt strange not knowing when her birthday was. She supposed somewhere in Russia there was a record of it. Or had all the records been destroyed? She gave up musing and left her seat to go and run a bath. It was time to start getting ready.

Claudia, who had stayed on making herself useful in a dozen different ways for no other reason than she had nowhere else to go and Edward would not dismiss her, helped her dress. The gown, which had cost Edward a fortune, was of heavy cream silk embroidered with seed pearls. Without a distinguishable waist, it was cleverly cut to emphasise the slimness of her figure. Its back was very low and had a train which she could loop up on a catch at her wrist for dancing. Claudia helped her with her hair which was swept up in a chignon and fastened with two glittering combs, a present from Mama. She put a pearl necklace about her throat, slipped into her shoes and went down to the small parlour where Edward and Margaret waited.

Margaret was in a soft dove-grey crêpe dress and Edward in immaculate tie and tails. She entered the room demurely, smiling. ‘Will I do?’

‘Beautiful,’ her father said, coming forward to take both her hands. ‘Absolutely stunning – isn’t that what the young bloods would say?’

She laughed. ‘I’m very nervous.’

‘No need to be, you will be the belle of the ball, as is only right and proper.’ He turned from her to reach for a jewellery box from the mantelpiece. ‘This is already yours,’ he said. ‘I have kept it safely for you, but now I have had it made so that you can wear it.’ He opened the box and took out the Kirilov Star, adapted and hung on a silver chain so that she could wear it as a necklace. The central diamond sparkled in the light from the electric chandelier above her head and all the smaller diamonds in its points glistened like drops of water.

Another of her fleeting memories came to her of her mother sitting at a table in tears, sewing it into her petticoat, and her father taking her on his knee and gruffly telling her she was the star of the Kirilovs. She thrust the recollection from her and turned dutifully at Edward’s command so that he could take the pearls from her throat and replace it with the necklace. ‘There!’ he said as she turned back to him. ‘All yours now. Wear it with pride for what you were and what you have become.’

‘It’s lovely,’ she said, fingering it. ‘I didn’t know you still had it.’

‘I could never part with the Kirilov Star,’ he said. ‘Neither the jewel, nor the child.’

‘Oh, Papa,’ she said, throwing her arms about him. ‘I do love you.’ She turned to Margaret and embraced her too. ‘You are so good to me. I sometimes wonder what I have done to deserve it.’

‘Just been yourself,’ Edward said, embarrassed. ‘Go on being that. Now, I think we had better go into the hall to receive our guests.’

There were more than a hundred of them: distant relations of Sir Edward and Margaret, family friends from far and wide, Lydia’s school friends and others she had met in Cambridge, people from the diplomatic corps, a few displaced Russians with whom Edward had kept in touch, the vicar and the doctor and Alexei, all dressed in their finest, come to wish her well, all bringing gifts. It was exciting and slightly out of this world, a dream from which she might wake and find herself… where? Back in a droshky in a snowy forest or crammed into a freight wagon with hundreds of others? Watching her weeping mother sew? It was strange how those visions kept coming back to her now, clearer than they had ever been. It was as if her traumatised body had shut them out at first, refused to acknowledge recollections that were too painful to bear, and only years later released them, as if saying, ‘Yes, you are stronger now. Now you can face them. You should not forget. It is part of what you are.’

Edward partnered her for the first dance but after that Alexei claimed her. Since the death of his father in Russia, Edward had taken him under his wing, though he really did not need it. He had become a tall, handsome man, popular with everyone, though there was a serious side to his nature that perhaps only Lydia and Sir Edward understood. His mother had died the year Lydia went to Cambridge – of a broken heart, he had said. Since then he had become a naturalised British subject, taking the name of Alex Peters, easily able to pass himself off as an Englishman. He was completely self-assured.

Lydia was very fond of him, had been ever since she had taken him to feed the ducks and he had been kind to a lonely, frightened little girl. He was a presence in her life, not an especially frequent one, but a stable one, someone she knew instinctively she could lean on if need be. He was practical and down to earth, the only one who could curb her more exotic flights of fancy and cheer her up when she felt pulled down by her memories. He understood.

‘You are looking ravishing,’ he said, as they waltzed. ‘I would hardly know the little waif I met in Simferopol.’

She laughed. ‘The waif is still there, underneath.’

‘You would never know it. All this…’ He moved his head to indicate the room, the dancers, the orchestra, the heady scent of hothouse flowers. ‘All this for a little waif.’

‘I do realise how privileged I am,’ she said. ‘Others were not half so fortunate. I should like to do something to help them. Surely there is a way of tracing their relatives and perhaps bringing some of their assets out of Russia?’

‘That was what my father was trying to do and he paid for it with his life.’

‘I’m sorry, I should not have reminded you.’

They were silent for a minute or two and concentrated on their dancing, each thinking of the past – unhappy, disjointed, another time, another world. And then he suddenly shook himself as if shaking off a cloak. ‘Are your studies all finished now?’

‘Yes. I have the equivalent of a degree, but I can’t call it a degree. It’s not fair, is it? I bet I worked just as hard as you did to get your BA.’

‘I’ve no doubt you did.’ He whirled her round. ‘But times are changing. Your day will come.’

‘I want to be useful, so I am thinking of taking work as a translator. Do you think I should?’

‘My dear Lidushka, it’s no good asking me. You must go where your heart leads you.’

Prophetic words, she decided later.

‘I don’t have to make my mind up just yet. We are going to Paris for a holiday in a couple of weeks.’

‘And is there a young man waiting in the wings?’

‘Oh, lots of them,’ she said lightly, oblivious of the intensity of his question.

‘But no one special?’

‘No one special. I’ve been too busy getting an education. What about you? Anyone special?’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I, too, have been busy carving out a career for myself in the diplomatic service.’

‘Have you ever thought about going back to Russia?’ she asked, as the dance came to an end and they left the floor.

‘That, my dear little Countess, would be the height of folly. The Russia we knew has gone for ever.’

He did not tell her that he had been back because he had been sworn to secrecy. Nor did he tell her that the regime under Stalin was worse than it had been after the Civil War, that almost everyone, particularly the intelligentsia, waited for the knock on the door in the middle of the night when they were hauled off to prison and sentenced to death or years in a labour camp for being an ‘enemy of the people’ or not being ‘sufficiently vigilant’, for which little proof was needed. A simple denunciation was enough. Out of loyalty to the Party, or greed, or jealousy, neighbour was denouncing neighbour, sons and daughters were denouncing fathers, wives their husbands. It had become a cult of fear. It was an omission he would come bitterly to regret.

He delivered her back to Edward and Margaret and others came to ask her to dance and he did not see her again until they went into supper, when Edward asked him to join them.

‘Lydia tells me she is thinking of becoming a translator,’ he said to Edward, as they enjoyed a lavish meal.

‘It is one of her ideas,’ Edward said, smiling. ‘I don’t think she knows what she wants.’

‘She doesn’t have to do anything,’ Margaret put in. ‘She can stay here with us until she marries. I am sure that won’t be long.’

Lydia laughed. ‘I’m not ready for marriage yet, I want to live a little first. Besides, I haven’t met anyone I want to marry.’

Alex was not sure whether to be pleased or sorry about that. The little waif he had befriended was long gone and been replaced by a lovely woman, spoilt and yet not spoilt, whom he loved. The trouble was she was not aware of it and he would not tell her. He had nothing much to offer her. The money his mother had managed to bring out of Russia had soon been used up, and like so many others, he had been obliged to work for a living. He owed his present job at the Foreign Office to Sir Edward. He was thankful they paid him well and in time he would be in a position to marry, but the job he was doing could be dangerous and it would not be fair to Lydia to ask her to share his life. Besides, she must be allowed to make up her own mind about the man she married and he was perfectly aware she looked on him as a kind of older brother.

He escorted her back to the ballroom after supper and claimed another dance before relinquishing her to others: lively, confident young men who knew their place in the world. He watched her treating them with smiling courtesy, listening to their compliments with her head cocked on one side, intent on what they were saying. By the end of the evening more than one was sighing after her.

When the last waltz was over, everyone, except those who had come some distance and were staying the night, made preparations to leave. Lydia stood beside Edward and Margaret, wishing them goodnight and thanking them for their gifts. Then she looked round for Alex, but he was nowhere to be seen. She said goodnight to everyone else and made her way to her bedroom. The evening had gone off without a hitch and she was tired and happy and a little tipsy on champagne. But it was too bad of Alex to disappear like that; she would have liked to mull it all over with him and talk to him about his gift of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the original Russian. She wondered if it was a message to her not to forget her roots.

She went with her parents to Paris for the last two weeks in June, taking the train to Dover and then the ferry to Calais, where Edward hired a car and drove them to Paris and the Hôtel St-Germain-des-Prés on the Rue Bonaparte. It was warm and sunny and their days were filled with sightseeing, visiting museums and exhibitions, and going to concerts and the theatre. And when they weren’t doing that she and Margaret shopped for clothes at the best couturiers, until both were exhausted and Lydia began to wonder how they would get everything into their trunks for the return journey.

Paris was home to a great many Russian émigrés who tended to congregate in the area of the 15th arrondissement. Most of them were educated, former aristocrats, bourgeoisie, skilled workers, poets and writers, but few were wealthy enough to support themselves without work and had been obliged to take menial jobs in order to survive. But they maintained their own culture. They had their magazines, publishers, theatre companies, dance troupes, schools and churches. When Margaret was resting in the afternoons, Lydia would wander about those streets, listening to Russian being spoken and daydreaming of finding her parents there, safe and well. She even approached groups of women and asked if they had heard anything of a Count Kirilov or his wife, to which the answer was always a shake of the head and a muttered ‘sorry’.

One day, after a particularly long walk, she found a small park and sat down on a bench to rest. One shoe was hurting her foot and she kicked it off, rubbing her toes up and down her other calf. She did not notice the small dog until it had her shoe in its mouth and run off with it. She shouted and began limping after it, but could not catch it.

A young man noticed her predicament, caught the dog and retrieved her shoe which he presented to her with a half-mocking bow and a broad smile.

‘Thank you,’ she said, hobbling back to the bench to slip it on again. ‘I did not fancy walking back to my hotel in stockinged feet.’

He was blond and blue-eyed with rather appealing boyish features, probably older than he looked. ‘No, your stocking would be in ribbons and so would your foot. Such a pretty foot too.’ He sat beside her, fetched a cigarette packet from his pocket and offered her one. She shook her head. He lit one for himself and sat back to smoke it. ‘Whew, it’s hot today,’ he said.

‘Yes, but I don’t mind it.’ She was wearing a lilac silk dress, loosely tied on her hips with a sash. A large brimmed straw hat shielded her face.

‘On holiday, are you?’

‘Yes, are you?’

‘No, I live here.’

‘But you are Russian.’ Although they had been speaking in French, she had recognised his accent.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Your accent.’

He laughed. ‘Since the Bolsheviks took away my family’s citizenship and France decided to recognise the Soviet Union, I am stateless. But yes, you could say I was Russian. What about you? In the same boat, are you?’

‘No, I was adopted by an Englishman and his wife, so I am English now.’

‘But you were Russian once?’

‘Yes. My father was Count Mikhail Kirilov.’

He whistled. ‘Wow. A count. What’s your name now?’

‘Lydia Stoneleigh. My father is Sir Edward Stoneleigh.’

He held out his hand. ‘How do you do, Lydia Stoneleigh. I am Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov.’

She turned to take his hand. ‘How do you do, Monsieur Andropov.’

‘Oh, please, let us have it the Russian way. Nikolay Nikolayevich, if you please. Or Kolya, if you like.’

‘How long have you been in France?’

‘Since the end of the Civil War. My father was in the White Army and was killed by the Reds.’

‘My father was in the army too. He and my mother were killed by the Bolsheviks. My brother and nurse were murdered. I was the only one who survived. I came out with Sir Edward in 1920.’

He smiled. ‘You could not have been very old.’

‘I was four.’

‘Do you remember anything of it?’

So she told him all she could remember.

‘How interesting,’ he said when she finished. ‘Our lives have run almost parallel, though I am two years older than you are.’

‘Yet you have retained your accent.’

‘That is because I have lived among exiled Russians all my life and we continue to speak Russian. I should think you have forgotten it.’

‘No, I kept it up and studied Russian and Russian history at college. I am thinking of becoming a translator.’

‘They are ten a penny in Paris. So many Russians who need to earn a living are doing that as an easy option. It is better than waiting at table in some sleazy restaurant, or cleaning floors, or portering on the railways.’

‘Is that what you do? Translating, I mean.’

‘No. I am a poet.’

‘And do you make money at it?’

He laughed in an embarrassed way. ‘I get by.’

‘I must be going back. Mama will be wondering where I have got to.’ She stood up and held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Nikolay Nikolayevich. It was nice to have met you.’

He stood up beside her, slightly taller than she was. ‘I’ll walk you back to your hotel. We can talk some more as we go.’

She knew she ought to discourage him, but she wanted to learn more about the Russians who had been forced to leave their mother country and how they had survived. She had always known she had been lucky, but as he talked, slipping into Russian, she realised just how lucky. Some of her countrymen had been destitute when they arrived in the West, and because there were so many of them, they were not welcomed. The native Parisians, as many English people had been, were suspicious of them, believing there were Bolshevik spies among them. He was still talking when they reached the hotel.

She turned to shake hands with him again. He took it and squeezed her fingers with a gentle pressure that shocked and excited her. ‘Do you go to the park often?’ he asked.

‘Sometimes in the afternoon when my mother is having a nap. She is not strong. Papa is a diplomat and is combining our holiday with meetings at the embassy.’

‘Then go again tomorrow. I will be there.’

It was after their third meeting that she plucked up courage to tell her parents about him. They were horrified. ‘But darling, you don’t know a thing about him,’ Margaret said. ‘He could be anyone. You do not know he is telling the truth. He might be a Bolshevik spy.’

‘But he isn’t,’ she said. ‘His father was killed just as mine was. And I could not refuse to speak to him when he had rescued my shoe, could I?’

‘I think we had better meet him,’ Edward said. ‘Bring him back to tea tomorrow.’

And so Kolya came to tea. He behaved impeccably, answered all Edward’s questions openly and without hesitation, and at the end of the visit bowed stiffly to them all and asked if he might take Lydia to the ballet the next evening.

‘I think we will all go,’ Edward said, unwilling to let her go unchaperoned.

It was only after he had left and Lydia had gone up to her room to change for dinner that Edward told his wife he was not at all happy about this turn of events. ‘I must check up on him,’ he said. ‘I have no idea how he makes a living but I am prepared to bet it isn’t writing poetry.’

‘You cannot fault his manners,’ she said.

‘Manners can be learnt and I have no doubt he is clever enough to realise what we would expect of any young man making friends with our daughter. She would be quite a trophy for him, wouldn’t she?’

‘She is going to meet young men, Edward, you cannot stop that. And she is very sensible.’

‘I hope so. I had hoped Alex…’

She laughed. ‘Oh, Edward, you cannot make something happen if it is not destined.’

‘No, I know.’

In the event it was Edward who paid for the tickets for the ballet and the supper afterwards. Kolya, in white tie and tails, behaved with just the right amount of diffidence and assurance. Lydia, who had wanted to impress him, wore her cream silk with the train taken off, and the Kirilov Star. She did not notice him staring at it, nor the stiffness in Edward’s conversation. At the end of the evening, they delivered him back to his lodgings in La Ruche, a collection of small apartments and studios arranged round an octagonal wine hall where many Russian émigrés made their home. She only saw him once more before they returned to England.

‘I wish you were staying longer,’ he said when they met in a small bistro near his home. ‘I am only just beginning to get to know you.’

‘I know. I am sorry too, but all good things must come to an end. Papa has to work and I have to find a job.’

‘You have to work? Surely not. Sir Edward is loaded. I should think those rocks you had round your neck last night would keep you in comfort for years.’

‘I could never sell that. It is a Kirilov heirloom.’

‘Oh. Sir Edward didn’t give it to you, then?’

‘No, I brought it out of Russia sewn in my petticoat. We all had jewels sewn into our clothes. That was the reason my parents were executed, because they were trying to get assets out of the country, or so I was told.’

He did not comment, but kissed her, firmly and expertly, setting up a quivering in her body that she had never experienced before. She had been kissed by boyfriends in an experimental way while at Cambridge, but had never reacted like that. It was frightening and exciting at the same time. ‘Will you write to me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want this to be goodbye.’

‘Yes, if you like.’

They returned home next day and a couple of weeks later Edward secured a post for Lydia as a translator at the Foreign Office. She was at the very bottom of the hierarchy and nothing she was given to translate was in any way secret, simply translating articles in Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, and others like it. Edward warned her not to speak about her work, however mundane it seemed to be.

She lived at their Balfour Place apartment just off Mount Street, looking after herself. The housekeeper had left and Edward had not thought it necessary to hire another; he rarely came to London since he had retired. When not at work, she enjoyed a busy social life. At Cambridge she had joined several groups and societies and had made many friends, some whose heads were filled with ideological nonsense, but they were good fun and she had kept in touch with them, meeting those who had gravitated to the capital for visits to the theatre or the ballet, or simply for coffee in one of the cafés. She enjoyed the cut and thrust of their debate.

There was plenty to debate about: the progress of the Spanish Civil War; Japan’s attack on China; the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Germany, where they were made welcome by Hitler. It did not go down well with the British public at a time when everyone was worrying about a war with Germany. Lydia worried about that because she knew Alex was in Germany.

He did not join them at Upstone Hall that Christmas, but sent her a huge card and a lovely multicoloured evening shawl in a soft gauze. She missed him, as did Edward and Margaret, who had come to look on him as one of the family. They went to church, sang carols, exchanged presents, ate and drank too much. The day after Boxing Day Lydia returned to London and her job.

She had hardly got in the door and taken off her coat when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it to find Kolya standing on the landing with a suitcase at his feet. ‘Kolya, what on earth are you doing here?’ she asked in surprise.

‘That’s a fine greeting, when I have thrown caution to the winds to come and see you,’ he said, pretending to be aggrieved. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

‘Of course I am. But why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

‘It was a sudden decision, one of those spur-of-the-moment things.’ He picked up his case and followed her into the apartment where he stood looking round him. ‘Wow! This beats La Ruche into a cocked hat. Is it yours?’

‘My father’s.’

‘Is he here now?’

‘No, he’s at Upstone Hall. He’s retired so he doesn’t come to town so often now.’

He seemed to relax visibly, put his case down and took off his overcoat, shaking off a few flakes of snow on the carpet. She took it from him to hang it up. ‘Sheer luxury,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’

She had never taken much notice of the flat but now she saw it with his eyes. The thick carpets, heavy curtains, fine furniture and beautiful ornaments screamed wealth. ‘On the contrary, I do know,’ she said. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘I had a sandwich at Dover. Terrible crossing it was. And then to find you not at home was the last straw. The janitor said you were expected back this evening, so I’ve been sitting in the café round the corner waiting for you to put in an appearance.’

‘Serves you right for not letting me know.’ She led the way into the kitchen. ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up.’

‘No servants?’

‘Not here. There is no need. I am perfectly capable of producing a simple meal. Or we could go out to eat.’

‘No, let’s stay in.’

So she made them omelettes and opened a bottle of wine and they sat over it talking into the small hours, when it became too late for him to find a hotel. She made a bed up for him in the spare room. Whether that was what he had in mind, she did not allow herself to conjecture.

Kolya had made no arrangements about where he was going to stay, something she realised was typical of him. He seemed not to consider what the morrow might bring and took it for granted she would continue to house him. It was part of his charm and she was charmed. She had no idea what he did when she was at work, nor how he supported himself. Sometimes he was in funds and would take her out for a meal and a show and buy her costly presents, at other times he professed to be broke and borrowed off her. She supposed it was all to do with selling his poetry and, as money had never been an issue in her life, she did not mind it.

He had a great sense of fun and laughed a lot and swore he loved her to distraction, though she would not allow him to do anything more than kiss her. Even that was enough to set her pulse racing. She had been brought up to believe sex was for after you were married and had always held off any too amorous advances by the young men she knew. It had not been difficult because none had roused her to anything like passion. Her feelings for Kolya were different and entirely new to her and she was not sure how to deal with them. She wondered if she might be falling in love with him. She certainly said nothing to her parents and Kolya always managed to be absent on the few occasions when Sir Edward paid a visit. Her friends, to whom she introduced him, assumed they were living together. She had a feeling that it might end up that way, or he would tire of her continual refusal to let him make love to her and take himself off. Would she overcome her scruples to keep him or let him go? As the question had not yet arisen she let it lie.

The Civil War still raged in Spain and many of her friends were discussing joining the mercenaries, but Kolya, who had become part of the group, was against going himself. ‘Their cause is not our cause,’ he said, referring to himself and Lydia. ‘Our cause is in Russia.’

Stalin’s purge of those who opposed him in a great wave of show trials was reported in the papers Lydia translated. They were accused of being members of counter-revolutionary groups, or of acts designed to overthrow, undermine or weaken the authority of the workers’ and peasants’ soviets. She was shocked by the numbers, but as they had all confessed, she had no way of knowing how guilty they really were. She discussed it with Kolya, one warm evening in June when they were sitting on the balcony listening to a concert on the wireless. Below them the hum of traffic and the distant barking of a dog served as a backdrop.

‘Whether they are guilty or not is neither here nor there,’ he said. ‘It’s Stalin’s way of eliminating opposition. People who were once in favour are now not to be tolerated.’

‘Does it mean that those who executed my parents are themselves being executed?’

‘Possibly, but how can you be sure they were executed?’ he countered. ‘Have you ever been given proof?’

‘No, but Papa asked a Russian friend to make enquiries and he had access to information other people didn’t and he told us they had been shot.’

‘He might have been misinformed.’

She had never thought of that. ‘But if my parents had not died, they would have tried to trace me.’

‘How do you know they did not? They might be alive and believing you dead. Have you ever considered that?’

‘No.’ She was shocked. ‘Do you think it’s possible?’

‘The situation in 1920 was so confused it easily could be. After all, there are still stories going round that some of the tsar’s family survived, and if them, why not yours? They might have been sent to prison and not executed, and in that case they might have served their term and been released.’

She was thoughtful. Was that the reason for the slight uneasiness with her life? Was that why she had a feeling of incompleteness, as if she ought to be doing something, a kind of sin of omission? Was Kolya putting into words something that had been simmering in the back of her mind for years? ‘How can I find out for sure? Would the Russian authorities tell me?’

‘I doubt it. And if the count and countess are living incognito somewhere, they would not thank you for drawing attention to them, would they?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘So where would they go, if they were free?’

‘I don’t know. Probably Kirilhor. It was the last place we were all together, but it was such a long time ago and they would have been told what happened to me and Andrei.’

‘Not necessarily. Ivan Ivanovich might not have made it back to Kirilhor and he was the only one in Russia who knew you had escaped.’

‘I never thought of that.’

‘Had it ever occurred to you, sweetheart, that Sir Edward might have lied to you, taken advantage of the situation to get him a child, knowing his wife could never have one?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said hotly. ‘If they’d wanted to adopt a child, they could have had an English child through a proper adoption society. Why take a little Russian waif who was so shocked she could not speak?’

‘All the better. She wouldn’t have kicked up a fuss when he took her, especially if he told her he was taking her to be reunited with her parents.’

‘Kolya, that is a shocking thing to say.’ She was indignant, but she did remember everyone at the time – Ivan Ivanovich, Tonya’s father, Alex’s father and Sir Edward – saying just that. ‘Papa is an honourable man, he would never do such a thing.’

‘Papa! Papa!’ he mocked. ‘You have truly been indoctrinated, haven’t you? Sir Edward is not your father. Alive or dead, your father is in Russia and the only way to find out what happened to him is to go to Russia yourself.’

She laughed a little shakily because he was undermining all she had grown up to believe and it was an uncomfortable feeling. ‘They’d never let me in. I am, or was, Lydia Kirillova, the daughter of a count.’ It was the first time she had thought of herself in that way for years, not since becoming Lydia Stoneleigh. Perhaps she had been too complacent about it. Perhaps she should have remembered that more often.

‘I don’t see why not. You’ve got a British name and a British passport, haven’t you?’

‘You are joking,’ she said, laughing.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. We could go as tourists. It might be fun.’

‘We?’

‘I couldn’t let you go alone and I wouldn’t mind seeing what the Bolsheviks have done to poor Mother Russia. So, what do you say?’

‘Kolya, it’s impossible. Tourists are escorted everywhere and have to have their itinerary vetted. It would be the sights of Moscow and Leningrad and then only what they want you to see.’

‘I know, but we could give our minders the slip and take a train to Kirilhor, couldn’t we?’

She stared at him. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’d no more be allowed into the country with your background than I would.’

‘I wouldn’t have that background, would I? I can invent something else. I could be a Party faithful. Some of my Paris friends have gone back and they tell me they’ve had no problems. If they invited us to stay we wouldn’t have to stick with the tour.’

She did not ask how he had made contact with them. He could have been meeting people in London. ‘How did they travel?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ she said, throwing a cushion at him.

Darkness had fallen and the evening was turning chilly. They went back inside and made cocoa before going to their separate beds. Nothing more was said about returning to Russia, but Lydia could not sleep for reliving the conversation in her mind. Russia. Kirilhor. Mama and Papa. Beautiful Mama, handsome Papa, both of whom had loved her and tried to protect her. Could they possibly be alive? Would they be grieving for a child they thought they had lost? Had Sir Edward done all he could to find out the truth? Had she been lied to? The questions went round and round in her head, unanswered, unanswerable.

Chapter Five

Three weeks later, when she arrived home from work, she was greeted by a jubilant Kolya. ‘I’ve got them,’ he said, waving a sheaf of papers at her and grinning broadly. ‘An invitation from my friend to visit and entry permits to go to Russia. It’s all here.’

‘You’re never going?’ She kicked off her shoes and went into the kitchen in stockinged feet to put a kettle on to make tea.

He followed her. ‘Yes. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you’re coming with me.’

‘Don’t be silly, Kolya. My father wouldn’t hear of me going.’

‘Then don’t tell him. You can write to him after we’ve left.’

‘I couldn’t do that.’

‘Why not? The only way to find out if he has deceived you is to go to Russia and see for yourself.’ He put the papers on the table and went up to her to take her shoulders in his hands and look earnestly into her face, his blue eyes alight with excitement, unable to comprehend that, for her, going to Russia was something so momentous she found the concept difficult to grasp. And yet something was pulling at her heart strings, something she found hard to deny. ‘You do want to go, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Oh, don’t let us have buts,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I would be under normal circumstances, but to go secretly…’

‘We aren’t going secretly. Haven’t I just said? It’s all open and above board. Besides, sweetheart, I don’t want to go without you. I need you.’

‘How can I go?’ The kettle whistled. She warmed the pot, put two teaspoons of tea leaves in it and poured the boiling water onto them. ‘I have no papers and I wouldn’t be given any.’

He grinned. ‘You have got papers. I have them here, for Lydia Stoneleigh, to accompany me.’

She stared at him. ‘How could you, Kolya? How could you assume—?’

‘I assumed nothing but I knew you would dither and dither if I asked you first, so I decided to present you with a fait accompli.’

‘But we aren’t married and it wouldn’t be right…’

‘No, but we could be.’

She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Nikolay Andropov, is that a proposal?’

‘Yes.’ He gave her shoulders a little shake. ‘Lidushka, you know I adore you, don’t you? I want to make you happy. I want to help you put the past to rest so that we can go forward together. We cannot do that if you are dragging ghosts behind you.’

Ghosts. Was that what was troubling her? She began to waver. His enthusiasm was infectious. Obstacles, in his book, were there to be swept away. If you wanted something badly enough it was attainable. How badly did she want to explore her roots? ‘But it would mean leaving my life here behind me.’

‘Not for good. We will come back. Please, Lydia, darling, sweetheart, love of my life, say you will.’

In the face of such an onslaught, how could she hold out? ‘When?’

‘You will? Oh, happy, happy me!’ He pulled her into his arms and smothered her with kisses. He would have gone further than just kissing and began fiddling with the buttons on her blouse, but she pulled away. ‘Hold on!’ she said, laughing. ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

Reluctantly he desisted. ‘Sorry. I’ll be good until we’re married, but it will have to be quick. I want to go next week.’

‘Kolya, I can’t arrange things that quickly, you know that. I have to tell my parents and Mama will want to do everything properly.’

‘You don’t have to tell them. You are twenty-two and they are not your real parents. I thought the whole idea of going to Russia was to find the couple who gave you birth.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Let’s get married in Moscow.’

He had a mesmeric quality about him she found impossible to deny, perhaps because what he was offering was something she had subconsciously wanted for years. Not marriage, she had hardly given that a thought, but the opportunity to go to Russia and find out the truth. Did she want to marry him? He was fun and made her limbs ache when he was kissing her and it was with the greatest difficulty she had managed to hold him off, not only because he was so ardent, but because of her own weakness where he was concerned. And he must love her, if he could be so patient with her. ‘All right,’ she said.

He hugged her. ‘All you have to do is pack. I must go and book seats on the train.’ And he was gone, leaving her with a pot full of tea, wondering what on earth she had done.

By the time they arrived in Moscow, in squally, chilly rain, after more than a week on a succession of trains through Germany and Poland, she was so tired and bemused all she wanted to do was sleep. Her study of pictures and maps did not prepare her for the dreariness of the place, notwithstanding that many of the buildings were new and the new arterial roads extraordinarily wide. Everywhere there were signs of change: roadworks, old buildings being pulled down, new ones built. She saw ragged children, babushkas in patterned cotton dresses and shapeless cardigans with the elbows out, butchers standing beside their trucks hacking meat from carcasses with bloody axes, fashionably dressed women and men in smart suits. She could not help noticing the huge contrast between the rich and the poor; neither seemed to notice the existence of the other.

Kolya took her to the Savoy Hotel, which was nothing like the Savoy in London. The accommodation was poor and the food worse. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘We’ll only be here a couple of days, just long enough to get married and for me to meet my friend. Then we’ll make tracks for Crimea.’

‘Aren’t I going to meet him?’

‘No, better not.’ He went to the door and looked along the corridor and, apparently satisfied, returned to her. ‘You have to be careful,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Even the walls have ears.’

‘Kolya, what’s going on?’ She was whispering now. ‘What’s this friend of yours done?’

‘He’s a kulak and Stalin is afraid of the kulaks.’

‘Why? They are only a superior kind of peasant with more money than most. I thought most of them were eliminated when the collective farms were set up.’

‘Not all, some were simply dispossessed and sent to the labour camps and some of those have returned home. My friend belongs to a secret organisation preparing a kulak uprising. It’s very powerful and growing rapidly.’

‘I never heard of them.’

He laughed. ‘They would hardly advertise their existence in Pravda, would they?’

‘No, I suppose not. You don’t belong to them, do you?’

He laughed. ‘No. I am a loyal Party man, you saw my application to travel.’

She knew the information on that had been a fabrication. ‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Only an hour or two. You wait here for me.’

She wondered afterwards why she had not asked more questions, but then it would not have made any difference; the die was cast and there was no going back. Behind her she had left a letter to her parents, explaining why she felt she had to go, reaffirming her love for them and promising to write regularly. How had she come to be so unfeeling and ungrateful?

It filled her with remorse every time she thought about it and she wished she had discussed the huge step with them first. But they would only have tried to dissuade her and she hated arguments, especially with those she loved. She could have said something to Alex but he was out of the country, and in any case, he would be bound to side with Sir Edward.

If she had imagined getting married in Moscow would involve a religious ceremony, she should have known better. Most of the cathedrals and churches had either been destroyed or turned into warehouses, and getting married meant they both had to stand in line to book a time at the Civil Registration Bureau, known to the Russians as the Palace of Weddings. Having done that, they returned two days later for the ceremony, which could hardly be called a ceremony and all it did was confirm the legal status of their union. It was far from the wedding of her dreams; instead of a white wedding gown with a long train and a veil held by orange blossom, she was dressed in a light wool skirt and jumper and a raincoat. Instead of friends and family wishing her well there was only a dour registrar. Leaving the building hand in hand with her new husband, she didn’t feel married at all, even though she had his ring on her finger. He was cock-a-hoop and bought caviar and cheap champagne which they took to their room.

‘Well, Lydia Andropova,’ he said, when she was more than half tipsy. ‘Tonight is our wedding night and I have been a patient man, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, consumed with nerves.

‘Then you will not mind if I make up for lost time.’ And with that he picked her up, deposited her on the bed and fell on her.

The next morning, sore and more than a little disillusioned, she followed him to the railway station and boarded a train for Crimea. Unlike the train in which she and her parents and brother had travelled in 1918, this one did have seats and it was possible to buy food from babushkas with baskets of fruit and bread whenever the train stopped at a wayside station. After they changed trains at Kiev, the countryside seemed to be one vast wheat field, the result of Stalin’s collectivisation policy. This was Crimea, this was where her roots were, and as they rattled through the countryside, going further and further south, she began to wonder just what was ahead of her.

By the time she found herself standing beside Kolya at the station at Petrovsk, with their cases at their feet, she was a bundle of nerves. He didn’t seem to notice. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said, picking up the cases and leading the way out of the station building into the street, where he hailed a battered Lada which was apparently a taxicab. The driver did not think it was any part of his duty to help with the luggage, so Kolya loaded it into the boot himself.

Lydia sat in the car looking about her while this was happening, trying to recognise the place. Everything seemed more run-down than her childish memory had painted it. There was a huge new apartment block next to the station, built to house the families sent from other parts of Russia to work the fields. The recent famine had decimated the local population. The church at the end of the street had lost its dome and the windows were boarded up. As they rattled along the main street, she caught sight of the school and that seemed not to have changed.

Kirilhor, when they reached it, shocked her. It looked derelict. The paint was peeling off and half the windows were broken. One end of the building seemed to be falling down. The garden which her mother had been at such pains to cultivate was overgrown. It didn’t seem habitable.

But it was. As they drew to a stop, the door was opened and several small children ran out, screaming and chasing each other. They stopped and stared when they saw the car. Lydia got out, making them stare even harder. She smiled at them. ‘Do you live here?’

They nodded shyly.

‘Where is your mama?’

They pointed to the house. ‘In the kitchen.’

‘Will you fetch her, please?’

Giggling, they ran to obey.

‘This is terrible,’ Kolya said, curling his lip in disgust. ‘I thought we were coming to a considerable dacha.’

‘So it was. Once.’

A woman in a long black skirt and a white blouse emerged from the house, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘What can I do for you, comrade?’ she asked, speaking to Kolya.

‘We are looking for anyone who knew Mikhail Mikhailovich Kirilov,’ he said.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘It would be before the Revolution,’ Lydia put in. ‘He was my father.’

‘Still can’t help you. We’ve only been here eighteen months. You had better ask Grigori Stefanovich. He might know, he’s lived here a long time.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘He’ll be back when he finishes work. Do you want to come in and wait for him?’

Lydia indicated she would and they were led through the house to the kitchen where three women were vying with each other for the use of the cooking stove. ‘This is…’ she started, then turned to Lydia. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lydia Andropova. This is my husband, Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov.’

‘And I am Sofia Borisovna.’ She pointed to the other women in turn. ‘That’s Svetlana, Grigori Stefanovich’s wife. That’s Katya Ivanova Safanova, and over there, Olga Denisovna Nahmova. They work night shift in the tractor factory.’ Lydia and Kolya greeted them and shook their hands.

‘Sit down,’ Olga said, fetching out bread and salt, the traditional courtesy offered to guests. ‘Tell us all about yourselves.’

‘We have come from England.’ It was Kolya who answered because Lydia seemed suddenly tongue-tied. She was back in her childhood. Although it was dirtier and more dilapidated, the kitchen had not changed and it was easy to recall playing under the table with Andrei while her mother stitched jewels into their clothes, to feel again the frisson of fear she had felt then and not understood. It was the last place she had seen her mother and father and, in spite of the years between, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She brushed them away impatiently and tried to listen to what Kolya was saying to the women, whose mouths were agape at his story.

‘Lydia was abducted by the Englishman,’ he was saying. ‘She was given no choice and it is only now, when she is old enough and married, that she has been able to come back to search for her parents.’

‘You don’t look as though you have suffered,’ Olga said, looking Lydia up and down and reaching out to finger the material of her coat. ‘You don’t see coats like this hereabouts.’

‘I have been well looked after,’ Lydia said, shrinking from the woman’s exploring fingers.

‘That doesn’t mean she hasn’t suffered,’ Kolya put in. ‘The mental anguish has been unbearable.’

When they had eaten the bread and drunk a glass of tea, Svetlana offered to take them to meet Grigori. They rose and followed her through the house, along a corridor to a separate wing. This was a huge improvement on the rest of the house. All the best of the old furniture had been collected up and brought to furnish what was a comparatively well-ordered apartment.

‘Please sit down,’ Svetlana said. ‘Grigori will be here soon. He’s the head of the Petrovsk Land Department. How long is it since you lived here?’

‘I was four when we left in 1920,’ Lydia told her, perching herself on a sofa. Nikolay went over to the window and stood looking out at the tangled garden.

‘That was a bad time, but there have been worse times since.’

‘How long have you lived here?’ Lydia asked her.

‘Since 1922, the end of the Civil War, soon after I married Grigori. He got promotion and was sent here and we took over this house. Ah, here he is.’ She looked up as the door opened and her husband came in. He was a big, broad man, dressed in a neat grey suit, though his shirt was collarless. ‘Grigori, we have visitors from England. This is Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov and his wife, Lydia.’

Lydia stood up and Nikolay turned from the window to greet him. They shook hands. ‘All the way from England, eh?’ he said. ‘You are a long way from home.’

‘On the contrary,’ Kolya said. ‘We are home. My wife is the daughter of Mikhail Mikhailovich Kirilov. This was his dacha. She has come back to search for her parents.’

Grigori sank into a chair and stared up at them. He looked shocked and his ruddy face turned pale. ‘The count’s daughter,’ he said, at last.

‘Yes, did you know him?’

‘He was my cousin. On my mother’s side, you understand, but it is not a relationship I boast about.’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Kolya said, with a wry smile. ‘But do you know what happened to the count?’

‘Why, in God’s name, did you come back, Lydia Mikhailovna?’ he said, angrily, ignoring Kolya’s question. ‘You are risking your life and ours as well.’

‘Lydia is a good Communist, as I am,’ Kolya said. ‘We have nothing to fear.’

Grigori laughed, though there was no humour in it. ‘The very fact that you have lived in the West is enough to condemn you – and us by association. Go back, Lydia Andropova, go back where you belong.’

‘Not until I find out what happened to my parents,’ she said.

‘I told Pyotr Simenov what happened to them when he came asking questions. Did he not tell you? He said he would.’

‘He said they had been executed for trying to take jewels out of the country.’

‘So they were, and for being counter-revolutionaries. They were shot by a firing squad.’

‘Do you know how they came to be arrested? When? Where were they at the time? Are you sure they were shot and not just imprisoned? Was there a trial? Did no one defend them?’

‘Questions, questions, questions,’ he said irritably. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘I need to know for my peace of mind. I should like to see their graves and say a prayer for them.’

‘Prayers!’ he mocked. ‘There is no religion in Russia now.’

‘Perhaps not officially. I expect people still say their prayers privately. And that is beside the point. Will you help us?’

‘The count and countess were denounced and arrested by the Cheka. They were tried by the People’s Court and found guilty. The death sentence was carried out the next day.’ It was said flatly, as if he were bored with it all.

‘Who denounced them?’

He shrugged. ‘It makes no difference. It was done.’

‘Where were they buried?’

‘Where they were executed in the Cherkassy Forest. I doubt the grave is marked.’

‘But you do know where it is?’

‘Roughly. I couldn’t be exact. If you think I’ll take you there, you are mistaken, Lydia Andropova. I haven’t the time for such sentiment. The harvest is about to begin and I am responsible for meeting the grain quotas, so I shall be very busy. I suggest you go back where you came from.’

‘We’d like to stay awhile,’ Kolya put in. ‘You can put us up for a few days, can’t you? My wife has been looking forward to this visit for years. You’d not deny her that, would you?’

Both Grigori and his wife looked at Lydia. There were tears running down her face. She did not seem aware of them. Kolya took his handkerchief and wiped them away. ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart. Grigori Stefanovich will let us stay a few days, I’m sure.’ He looked at Grigori. ‘Can I have a word with you in private?’

The big man shrugged. ‘Very well. We’ll go next door.’

Kolya followed him from the room, leaving Lydia and Svetlana facing each other. ‘Tell me what life is like in England,’ Svetlana said.

Lydia smiled wanly and obeyed. England seemed a world away and unreachable, and already she regretted leaving it. She wondered what her father would make of the letter she had sent him. He would be heartbroken and Mama angry. She had been wicked to come away in that hole-and-corner way, after all they had done for her. Now, when it was too late, she realised she should never have listened to Kolya. Alex’s father had been right and her parents were dead.

‘After the bandits shot my brother, I was all alone in the world. My brother and nurse were dead and my parents had disappeared. I was only four and so shocked I could not speak. I was taken to England by an English diplomat who adopted me. He has been very good to me…’ She choked on the words. ‘I was brought up like an English child: school, university, a job…’

‘What job did you do?’

‘Translating Russian into English.’

‘You speak Russian with an accent.’

‘Do I?’ she queried. ‘I suppose it’s because I have not needed to speak it at home.’

‘But you say this is home,’ Svetlana pointed out.

‘It was, but everything has changed. I don’t recognise the Russia I knew.’

‘That is not surprising, is it? You were no more than a baby when you left. And life is different now.’

‘I know, but some memories are very vivid. They come to me in a series of unconnected pictures. What I wanted to try and do was put them together and make sense of them. Do you think anyone in the village would remember me?’

‘Some of the old babushkas might, those who didn’t die in the famine. It killed a lot of people.’

‘But the fields are full of grain.’

‘That is needed to fulfil our quota; we are allowed very little of it, though Grigori is luckier than most because of his position, and those who work in the tractor factory are kept fed.’ It was said flatly, in a manner of acceptance.

‘Oh.’ She had read about the Ukrainian people going hungry, but the Russian papers were very cagey about how extensive the famine had been. ‘I have money to buy food, we won’t be a burden on you. As soon as Kolya has arranged for us to go to Cherkassy, we will leave.’

The men came back. Kolya was smiling broadly. ‘We can have a room in the attic which is not occupied,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to find some furniture, but there might be something useful in the part of the house that’s uninhabitable.’

‘How did the house come to be like that?’ Lydia asked.

‘It was done in the Civil War,’ Grigori said. ‘There was fierce fighting hereabouts. Come, let me show you the room.’

They followed him through the house. Every room they passed seemed to be occupied, though the occupants were absent, presumably at their work. ‘How many people live here?’ Lydia asked as they climbed the stairs. There was no carpet on the treads as there once had been.

‘Twenty families in all,’ Grigori told them. ‘Some are allocated one room, some with big families have two. It is big enough to house more if need be. If we are sent extra workers for the harvest, they will have to be housed. In that case you will have to move out.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I thank you.’

The room was one at the top of the house which had once been the bedroom of a servant. It had a small iron bedstead without a mattress, and a cupboard. There was room for little else but they scavenged a small table and two chairs from an empty room and bought a mattress, bedlinen, a few pans and some crockery from the Insnab, a shop stocking foreign goods for which Grigori, because of his privileged position, had coupons to use.

‘I don’t know what we’re doing here,’ Lydia said to Kolya after they had arranged everything and were sitting on the two chairs which had once been part of a set of Queen Anne dining chairs. ‘We have achieved nothing. I want to go home.’

‘Home?’ he queried. ‘This is home now.’

‘Kolya, you can’t mean that,’ she said, looking at him in dismay. He was smoking a cigarette he had rolled himself from makhorka, a rough, strong-smelling tobacco, and appeared completely unruffled. ‘We only came to find out what happened to my parents and we’ve done that. We could go to Cherkassy to try and find their graves and then go home.’

‘I have no intention of going back to England,’ he said. ‘I’ve work to do here.’

‘Work? What work?’

‘Never you mind.’

‘You mean you are involved with the kulak uprising?’

He tapped his nose. ‘Shsh. Walls have ears.’

‘Kolya, that’s madness, you’ll be arrested and shot. Give it up, take me home. I cannot go alone. I’d never get past all the checks.’

‘Then you had better resign yourself to staying here until I choose to move.’ His voice had a hard edge to it she had never noticed before. He was suddenly not the fun-loving, affectionate Kolya he had been and she realised, with a great jolt that sent her heart into her shoes, that she had made a terrible mistake marrying him. He did not care for her; all his loving words were so much hot air to get her to come with him, though why he needed her she did not know.

‘When will that be?’

‘When I am given orders to go elsewhere.’

Why didn’t she believe him? Why did she think he had been lying to her all along? As a member of a subversive organisation, he was in constant danger, but he was far too complacent. Either he was a fool or there was something else going on, and she did not think he was a fool. ‘Kolya, just what are you up to?’ she asked. ‘What did you tell Grigori Stefanovich? He changed his mind about letting us stay after you spoke to him.’

‘None of your business.’

‘But I am your wife. Surely I should know.’

‘Better you don’t.’ He stubbed out his cigarette in a saucer. ‘Go and see to some food for us. I’m starving.’

She took some of the potatoes, cucumber, mushrooms and sauerkraut they had bought and made her way down to the kitchen. The other women had gone and the kitchen was empty. Thankful for that, she set about cooking.

She was in the middle of it when the outside door opened and a huge man with a shock of white hair and a white beard came in carrying a pile of logs. He dropped them in a basket beside the hearth and turned towards her. ‘You’re new here.’

She smiled, a little wanly because she had been crying. ‘Yes and no. This used to be my home, years ago, before the Revolution.’

He stared. ‘Lydia Mikhailovna. Is it you?’

‘Yes.’ She brightened to think someone knew her. ‘Did you know me then?’

‘Did I know you! Why I used to carry you on my shoulders. I took you to Simferopol that time…’

‘Ivan Ivanovich!’ His hair, which had been so black, was now white, and he was thinner than he used to be, but he was still the Ivan she had known, her saviour in the dark days of the Civil War. She ran to him and grasped both his hands. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you. How are you? And Sima and the little ones?’

‘All dead,’ he said. ‘They died in the famine. I earn my bread doing odd jobs and maintenance round the house. It’s not the same, not the same at all.’ And he shook his big head and sighed. ‘What are you doing here? Did you go to England?’

‘Yes. I am Lydia Andropova now.’ She turned from him to take the pan off the stove and sat at the table to tell him all that had happened to her.

‘You should not have come,’ he said when she finished. ‘If the authorities get to hear of it, you will be arrested.’

‘My husband has proper papers for us. Did you know my parents were arrested and executed?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. It was on the day I took you to Simferopol. They were on their way to join you as arranged. They never knew about Andrei and Tonya.’

‘I’m glad of that. I was told they were denounced. Do you know who could have done that?’

‘I didn’t,’ he said sharply. ‘I would never have betrayed them.’

‘Of course not. Who else knew?’

‘Grigori Stefanovich. They went to visit him that day. They hoped he would give them travel documents.’

She was shocked. ‘You think it might be him? Why would he do such a thing? He is family.’

‘People betray their grandmothers nowadays. One boy betrayed his own father and was subsequently murdered by his grandfather for doing it. The boy is revered as a hero and the grandfather paid with his life.’

‘But what motive would Grigori have for doing that?’

‘He knew about the jewels sewn in their clothes.’ He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘I’ll wager only one or two ever reached the authorities.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Do not trust him, Lidushka. Do not trust anyone. Get out of here, it’s not safe.’

‘I can’t. My husband won’t leave.’

‘Then I pity you.’ The sound of footsteps came to them and he hurriedly turned to leave. ‘I live in the woodman’s hut in the forest,’ he murmured. ‘Come to me if you are in trouble. I will do what I can to help, but it will be little enough.’ And he was gone.

She returned to her cooking, as Kolya came into the room. ‘I wondered where you’d got to. You’ve been a long time.’

She was about to tell him about meeting Ivan but changed her mind. If he could be secretive, so could she. ‘I’m not used to this stove. It’s ready now. Do you want to eat it down here or up in our room?’

‘Down here. Then I have some business with Grigori Stefanovich.’

‘I think I’ll write to my parents and tell them what’s happened.’

‘If you must,’ he said. ‘But be careful what you say. Everything is censored nowadays. I’ll see that it’s posted.’

They ate in silence and then he went off to find Grigori and she returned to their room to write her letter. She was dreadfully sorry about the way she had left, she wrote, and begged their forgiveness. She did not know how to describe Kirilhor without finding fault with the regime, but put as bright a view on it as she could. She hoped soon to come home. When it was done she took it downstairs, looking for Kolya.

She found him in the coach house talking earnestly to Grigori. ‘I think you’re mad,’ Grigori was saying. ‘You’re on a wild goose chase. If I were you—’ He saw Lydia and stopped speaking suddenly. ‘What can I do for you, Lydia Mikhailovna?’ he said, making Kolya, who had his back to her, swivel round to face her.

‘I was looking for Kolya. He said he would send this letter for me.’

‘Better let me have it,’ Grigori said, holding out his hand. ‘I can send it from my office in the town. That usually goes safely.’

She put it into his hand and thanked him. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’

‘Not a good idea,’ Grigori said. ‘If you are seen, questions might be asked. You would almost certainly be arrested.’

‘Whatever for? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘As the daughter of an aristocrat who was found guilty of subversive activity, you would be considered guilty by association.’

‘But I was only four years old the last time I was in Russia. At least, I thought I was four, I’ve never been sure.’

‘1920,’ he said. ‘Yes, you were four that April.’

‘April?’

‘Yes. You were born on Easter Day. I remember your father telling me. Very auspicious, so the old babushkas would have us believe. I can’t remember the actual date and Russia was still using the old calendar then.’ He gave a grunt of a laugh. ‘Thirteen days out, but what does it matter? What’s more important is you being here now. I’m risking my own skin harbouring you, so you stay out of sight.’

The matter of the date of her birthday could wait. ‘I can’t stay indoors all the time, and besides, I’ve changed my name since I was last here. Kolya is safe enough, isn’t he?’

‘We can’t even be sure of that.’

She turned to Kolya. ‘What have you done? What are you up to? We should never have come. I wish I hadn’t listened to you. I want to go home to England.’

‘All in good time,’ he said complacently.

‘I’ll go alone.’ It was said out of bravado.

‘How do you propose to do that? You are married to me and I’ve got your passport, papers and money in my safe keeping and that is where it stays.’

‘If you must go out, keep to the forest,’ Grigori said. ‘And get some different clothes. You are too conspicuous in that finery.’

It wasn’t finery; back in England the clothes she wore would be considered very ordinary. She turned and went back to her attic room in despair. She longed for Sir Edward and Margaret, who loved her, her comfortable apartment, her work and her friends. When her letter arrived would Papa realise she wanted to come home and manage to do something to rescue her? Perhaps he would wash his hands of her and who could blame him? If she didn’t hear from him, she would have to find her own way back. She wished she had not trusted Kolya with her savings because she would need those when the time came. If all else failed she would have to sell the Kirilov Star.

Afraid Kolya would take the Star from her, she took it to Ivan Ivanovich and asked him to hide it for her. ‘It will be safe with me,’ he told her, his old eyes lighting up at seeing her. ‘I’ll bury it where no one will find it.’

‘Thank you. I know I can trust you.’

He seemed a little uncomfortable at that and blurted out, ‘I took the rubies Andrei had in his clothes. I was going to keep them for the count when he came back, but he never did and when my little ones were starving…’ His voice faded. ‘I only got a few roubles for them in Cherkassy and dare not demand more for fear of investigation. I beg your forgiveness.’

‘Of course I forgive you,’ she said softly. ‘I do not blame you.’

‘It was a terrible time in Ukraine,’ he said, his dark eyes glistening with tears. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. ‘The army took all the grain to feed themselves and the industrial workers in the factories. Those who tried keeping anything back were shot. We were left with nothing and lived on berries and whatever we could scavenge in the forest. The villagers left in droves to find work in the city and died on the pavements there. When there was no one to bring in the harvest, Grigori Stefanovich took over Kirilhor and filled it with strangers.’

She laid a hand on his arm. ‘I am so very sorry, Ivan Ivanovich. I wish I could help you. Kolya has taken all my money and only allows me enough kopeks to buy food.’ Grigori had relented about letting her go into town because she had sold her clothes and was now wearing a thin cotton skirt and blouse and had covered her hair with a scarf, so that she looked the same as all the other women. ‘But you go no further than Petrovsk,’ he had warned.

‘I manage,’ Ivan said. ‘But you must go as soon as you can. I don’t trust that lot up at Kirilhor.’

‘I will if I can but it won’t be easy without money or papers. I might have to sell the Star.’

Knowing she had an ally, she returned to Kirilhor feeling a little more cheerful, prepared to put up with a life she had brought upon herself, enduring Kolya’s taunts, always hungry, always watchful, always listening for the knock on the door in the middle of the night. The rumblings about war in Europe were growing louder and she would have to move soon, but it would take some planning and she would say nothing to Kolya because he would stop her. She told Kolya she had lost the star. The chain had broken and it had slipped from her neck without her realising it. He was furious and demanded to know why she had been wearing it.

‘I thought it was the best way to keep it safe,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have brought it to Russia at all, but if you remember, you said I might need it to prove my identity when or if I met my parents. I should have known Baron Simenov was telling the truth and they were dead. I don’t know why I let you persuade me…’

‘Because you were not sure, were you? There was always that niggling doubt. Admit it.’

‘I think it was more a need for confirmation.’

‘Well, now you’ve got it. But that’s beside the point. We were talking about the Star. Where were you when you last knew you had it?’

‘Walking in the forest and the garden.’

‘Then we had better go and look for it.’

The search went on for days, and when it could not be found, Kolya came to the conclusion someone had found it and was hanging onto it. It made him suspicious of everyone in the house and he instigated searches of all their belongings to no avail. The Star was lost. It did not improve Kolya’s temper. She had never seen him so angry.

Finding she was pregnant was the last straw.

It was good to be back in England, Alex thought, as a taxi took him to his London home. He was hardly in it these days. He was being employed as a sort of roving commissioner by the Foreign Office, intelligence gathering, which made him a sort of spy. It was not a label he liked, but he had been assured his work was necessary, and as he obviously spoke and read Russian, was fluent in German and had passable French, who better to do the work? Sir Edward knew what he did, but no one else did. His friends thought he was away on trade missions, which was the official reason for his absences abroad.

He had spent the last year in Germany, watching Hitler becoming ever more powerful and dictatorial, and some of the time in Russia trying to get at the truth of the purges taking place there. The NKVD, under the leadership of the ruthless Nikolai Yezhov, was waging war against so-called traitors in the Party, torturing them into confessing ridiculous crimes and betraying their friends. It had become a kind of frenzy which depleted the Comintern staff so that nothing could be done, no decision made, nor plans put forward. And it decimated the ranks of the officers in the army, from generals downwards. If there was war, they would never be able to wage it successfully. And he did not think war could be avoided in spite of the work done by Neville Chamberlain to appease Hitler and his declaration of ‘peace in our time’. It was a breathing space, no more.

He let himself in the house and dropped his case on the floor to pick up the pile of post from the table in the hall, put there by Mrs Hurst, who came in to keep an eye on the place when he was away. He rifled through the envelopes quickly to pick out what was important. There was a letter from Sir Edward, whom he had not seen since Lydia’s twenty-first birthday party. He put the rest down and wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on. While it boiled he slit open the letter and began to read.

I don’t know where you are but I assume you will come home at some time and find this, Sir Edward had written. Lydia has run off to Russia with Nikolay Andropov. I am at my wits’ end and Margaret is distraught. Ring me, if you can.

He looked at the date on the letter and realised with horror it had been written three months before. He switched off the kettle and picked up the telephone.

‘Good of you to come,’ Sir Edward said, leading the way into the drawing room of Balfour Place where they had arranged to meet. ‘Sit down, my boy. Have you eaten?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ He sat down and watched as Edward poured brandy into two large glasses. ‘Tell me what happened. Who is Nikolay Andropov?’

‘A young Russian she met in Paris when we were on holiday last year.’ He handed Alex a glass and went to a bureau to extract Lydia’s letter, which he gave to him to read. ‘As you can see from that, she had some strange idea that her parents were not dead after all and might not know she is alive too.’

‘My father was convinced they had died. Didn’t she believe him?’

‘I always thought she did, but apparently not. I am sure Andropov put the idea into her head, but what his motive was, I’ve no idea.’

‘Why would she believe him rather than us?’

‘I don’t know. He can be very charming and I suppose she was bowled over by him.’

‘She says she is going to marry him.’ Alex read on, hiding his dismay under a calm exterior, something he had learnt to do over the years. No one knew exactly what he was thinking. ‘Do you think she has?’

‘I have no way of knowing. I didn’t know she was still seeing him or I would have taken steps to put a stop to it.’

‘If she was determined, it would have been difficult to stop,’ Alex said. ‘She is twenty-two, after all.’

‘I could have bought him off.’

‘Perhaps. Do you think he is genuinely fond of her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If it were me, no amount of money would make me give her up.’

‘But it is not you. I wish to God it were. I had hoped—’ He stopped suddenly and gulped a mouthful of brandy.

‘We cannot choose our children’s life partners, Sir Edward.’ It was said evenly, though his heart was racing. Lydia, his love, was in Russia, where all foreigners were viewed with suspicion and her background would be enough to condemn her. It was a terrifying thought. But he must not let Sir Edward see his disquiet; the poor man was worried enough as it was. ‘What do you know about Andropov?’

‘Nothing but what he told us. He escaped the Civil War with his mother after his father was killed fighting with the Whites. She subsequently died and he has been on his own, living in Paris ever since. Having similar backgrounds was bound to attract them towards each other. I didn’t even know he had come to England. How could she be so secretive? You think you are doing your best for your children…’ His voice tailed off.

‘But you did. No child could have had a better father. She has grown into a lovely young woman and I am sure she loves you and appreciates all you and Lady Stoneleigh have done for her.’ He paused, clinging onto hope. ‘I suppose she really did go?’

‘I think she must have. Her letter was written months ago. I have written to her at Kirilhor over and over again, but have had no reply. Maybe she’s gone somewhere else; she wouldn’t have ignored my letters, would she?’

‘No, of course not. Maybe they have been kept from her.’

‘That’s what terrifies me. I contacted the Foreign Office, but there’s nothing they can do if she went of her own free will. I’ve also been in touch with Lord Chilston at the British Embassy in Moscow, but he can’t do much. The embassy staff are not free to travel about as much as they were and diplomatic relations are difficult.’ He smiled a little stiffly. ‘But you know all that. I even tried the headquarters of the British Communist Party, but they were not very helpful.’

‘I’ll go back,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve got to report to the Foreign Office first to be debriefed after my last trip, and it would be a good idea to have an official reason for being in Russia again so that I have proper entry papers. That might take a little time to arrange, but I’ll go the minute I can.’

‘It’s a lot to ask. Too much perhaps. I’d go myself, but Margaret is sick with worry and to have two of us in Russia would be too much for her to cope with.’

‘I know. You mustn’t think of it. Leave it to me.’

‘Bless you.’ He held up the decanter, but Alex declined a second glass. He needed a clear head. ‘Margaret will be relieved to know you are going,’ Edward went on. ‘But if you should meet her before you go, don’t say too much to her about the difficulties and dangers.’

The difficulties and dangers would be considerable, Alex knew, especially as he risked arrest on the grounds that he was his father’s son and the Bolsheviks had a tendency to assume guilt by association. But nothing on earth would prevent him from going. Lydia had always been his especial concern, ever since his mother had told him to be kind to her on the train to Yalta. He had watched her grow from a frightened toddler who had lost the power of speech, through childhood to womanhood, and had loved her all the way. He had not recognised it as love to begin with, it was simply a feeling he ought to protect her and he still felt that, but now it was more than that, the feeling had blossomed, as she had blossomed, into something far deeper and more complex. He found himself wondering how she would have reacted if she had known that. Would it have prevented her from going off with Andropov? He had never met the man but already he disliked him intensely.

‘When you find her,’ Edward went on. ‘Tell her how much she is loved and missed and persuade her to come home. I want her here, even if it means recognising Andropov as a son-in-law, much as I should dislike it.’

Sir Edward would not dislike it any more than he would, Alex decided, but for different reasons. But it would not stop him trying to rescue her from her own folly.

Chapter Six

‘Push, for goodness’ sake,’ Olga said. ‘It’ll never be born if you don’t do something to help yourself.’

Lydia grunted through the pain and tried to do as she was told. It was Good Friday, a day of suffering and mourning in the Christian calendar, but she did not think anyone in Russia commemorated the fact, unless it was secretly. She should have been eagerly looking forward to the birth of her child, buying baby clothes, shawls, nappies, a cot and a pram, deciding on names. But it hadn’t been like that. The moment she realised a baby was on the way, she knew her hope of returning to England in the foreseeable future had faded to nothing. She didn’t want this child. She had hated the lump growing inside her all through the months of pregnancy. The bump was a symbol of her folly and there was no going back, no undoing what had been done. She felt trapped.

To make matters worse, the love she thought Kolya had for her had turned out to be nothing more than a delusion. His political loyalties seemed to change with the wind and she never knew what he really thought or believed; he never confided in her and more recently hardly troubled to talk to her at all. The day, soon after they arrived, she had overheard him discussing her with Grigori had been a real shock and very frightening. She had come upon them in the coach house pulling the old carriage apart. Battered and broken it had stood gathering dust and woodworm ever since that fateful day when her parents had sent her to Yalta. Someone must have returned it; she supposed it had been Grigori. It was of no use to anyone; its wheels and shafts had already been plundered for firewood. She wondered what they were looking for and had stood in the shadows watching. They evidently had not seen her.

‘Do you think I haven’t looked there before?’ Grigori said, watching Kolya throw the cushions off the seats. They had been nibbled by mice and the stuffing was bursting out of them. He pulled them apart, throwing the wadding behind him and coughing on the dust that flew out. ‘There’s nothing there, I tell you,’ Grigori went on. ‘Everything they had on them when they were arrested was confiscated. There was only a tiny diamond and one small ruby.’

‘You can’t persuade me that was all they had. They’d have hidden the rest somewhere and they wouldn’t have given the most valuable pieces to the children. The Kirilov Star was only the tip of the iceberg. There’s more hidden here somewhere. What about the droshky?’

‘The same. It’s all been searched. More than once. Every inch of the house too. If there had been any valuables left here during the Civil War, they’d have been found years ago.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Kolya said. ‘Bits of the Romanov jewels are still turning up in odd places: down wells, in chimneys, buried in gardens. I believe it’s the same with the Kirilov treasures.’

So Kolya was on a treasure hunt. It was then she realised with a dreadful shock that he had been using her to come and look for wealth. He had no feelings for her at all, nor any loyalty except to himself. He had no interest in kulak uprisings or the Communist Party. It was all a sham. Everything about him was a sham. The realisation had made her feel sick, more sick than her pregnancy ever had.

‘I’m not happy about you being here,’ Grigori had gone on. ‘You’ve been searching for days now and found nothing. I thought you knew where to look. Doesn’t that wife of yours know what happened to it?’

‘No, she was too young to remember.’

‘You could try jogging her memory. And if that doesn’t work, the best thing you can do is get rid of her. Having her here is putting us all in danger, you included.’

Lydia had put her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out and betraying her presence. Were they considering murdering her? No, not even Kolya would stoop so low. But if they did, no one would ever know. They could bury her body in the forest and she would sink into oblivion, unmourned, not even by Sir Edward who had answered none of her letters. But who could blame him? She must be a dreadful disappointment to him and she was filled with shame.

‘I’ll try and get something out of her,’ Kolya had said. ‘If that doesn’t work, you can denounce her to the NKVD, but not until after I’m safely away.’

Lydia had crept silently away and gone back to her attic room where she sat on the bed, shaking with fright. She really was on her own.

The following day had been the beginning of day after day of interrogation by Kolya. It began slowly, with loving words and gentle hints, but when she told him she didn’t remember, he had pressed her more forcefully, and when that hadn’t worked, with shouts and threats. She had decided it might be better to pretend to remember odd little things, places the jewels might have been hidden. He would rush off searching wherever she had suggested: cupboards, drawers, nooks and crannies in the old house, outbuildings, troughs, water butts, up in the attics among the accumulated rubbish, but when he found nothing, he came back and the questions started again. She became good at acting a part, forgetting and then accidentally letting something slip, a faint memory which might be a clue. She felt relatively safe while he still thought there was something to be found, but sooner or later, he would give up and then she would be in mortal danger.

When she told him she was pregnant he had laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. She had no idea where he was now; she had been left to the ministrations of Olga because they dare not call in a doctor or a midwife for fear of being arrested. A surge of pain filled her body and she pushed for all she was worth, anxious to rid herself of this lump which had caused her so much grief.

‘It’s coming,’ Olga cried triumphantly. ‘I can see the head. One more push and you will have your baby.’

It took more than one, but suddenly it slid out into Olga’s waiting hands. Lydia sank back in exhaustion and shut her eyes, but the wail of an infant made her open them again. Olga was wiping mucous from the baby’s face. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said, wrapping him in a towel and putting him into Lydia’s arms. ‘Here, hold him while I see to the afterbirth.’

Lydia wasn’t sure she wanted to look at him, but his thin wailing touched a chord she could not deny and she found herself gazing down at a little screwed-up face, bright pink and squalling, as if he had not wanted to come into this contentious world and wished he had never left the dark warmth of her womb. This was her son whom they had decided, after much debate, to call Yuri. Suddenly, it did not matter who had fathered him, he was hers, hers to love, to cherish and protect. Her hate fled as she held him to her breast, helping him to find the nipple. The sharp pain of it as he pulled was exquisite pleasure and she wept with love and tenderness.

Olga took him away to wash him and dress him in the garments they had managed to buy from the Isnab. Lydia watched, wanting to do it herself, but feeling too weak. She didn’t like the way Olga took charge of him, crooning to him and talking softly to him as she wrapped him in the shawl she had knitted from the pulled-out wool of old jumpers she had bought in the market. Grigori allowed her to shop in Petrovsk now she was dressed in the same way as all the other women. But she had been warned not to talk about herself. This was not considered strange; people simply did not speak freely about themselves for fear of saying something which might be construed by their listeners as subversive, something for which they could be denounced, arrested and imprisoned.

‘My little Yurochka,’ Olga murmured. ‘Your papa is going to be so proud of you. Another little one to grow up to be a good little Communist, eh, golubchick?’

Lydia was about to protest at that, but decided against it. It would cause dissent, something she had been careful to avoid over the months of her pregnancy, and it did not matter, considering she would take him out of Russia at the first opportunity. She decided that if she pretended to settle down, to be content, they would allow her more freedom and Kolya would give her more money. Food and fuel and the everyday things they needed were so exorbitantly expensive, she had been able to save very little from what he had given her. It would be a great wrench but she would have to sell the Kirilov Star. It could not be done in Petrovsk, which was too small a community, but in Kiev there would be places where things like that were bought and sold, so her first step must be to save enough for the train fare to Kiev. And she must steal her passport and papers from Kolya. But first she would have to regain her strength and make sure Yuri was healthy, and not, by a single word or deed, let anyone know what she was planning.

Her love for her son grew day by day and her dearest wish was to get him safely to England. If she were no longer welcome at Balfour Place or Upstone Hall, she would have to find some way of supporting herself and him. She did not like the way Olga tried to take over looking after him, changing his nappy and tickling him to make him chuckle. And Kolya encouraged her, laughing when Lydia protested. ‘You should be glad Olga is so fond of the child. She could denounce us both if she chose. And it helps you, doesn’t it? You are hopeless when it comes to managing.’ This was said because she always told him she was no good at bargaining and had to pay more for goods than she really had, in order to squirrel a few kopeks away. Even so, saving enough to leave was taking longer than she had hoped. Her milk soon dried up and she had to buy milk for Yuri, which meant walking some distance to a collective farm, standing in line for hours and then paying through the nose for it.

The day Kolya found her little hoard in a purse in her underwear drawer was the most miserable of her life and she was left drowning in despair, quite apart from the humiliation of the slap he gave her which left a red mark on her cheek. ‘What do you think you were going to do with it?’ he demanded, throwing the contents of the purse across the bed in fury.

‘I saved it for emergencies,’ she said, praying he would believe her and let her keep it. ‘I don’t like being without any money at all.’

He laughed. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do. You’ve never had to go without a thing. Rich, bourgeoise, cosseted all your life, now it’s time to learn what it’s like to be poor.’

He didn’t give it back, but put it in his pocket, deaf to her entreaties that Yuri’s milk cost so much. And from then on, he kept her even more short of money and gave Olga the task of buying Yuri’s milk. Lydia became a kind of drudge for the rest of the household, and though she silently raged against it, she decided submissiveness was the only way she would be given the freedom she needed to move about.

In order to have time with her son, she would carry him into the forest when Olga was at work at the factory, and walk about where it was cool, a welcome relief from the heat of the sun. ‘I’ll have us out of here, my darling, but we have to be patient,’ she murmured over and over again.

Sometimes she would go and sit with Ivan in his crude hut and make plans for her escape. But Ivan, who knew the way the Soviet system worked, advised caution. If she were arrested, they would take her son from her, and she would be sent to a prison camp in Siberia for years, that is if they didn’t decide to execute her. ‘They don’t need much of an excuse to do that,’ he said.

‘Do you think there’ll be a war?’ she asked. There had been talk among the residents of Kirilhor and reports in the newspapers Grigori brought into the house. Hitler was spreading his tentacles. German troops had occupied Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, which became German protectorates, and marched into Austria, which had been declared part of the Reich. Slovakia, too, had been put under German protection. Countries and principalities all over Europe were making non-aggression pacts in the hope of averting disaster. The USSR had proposed a defensive alliance with Britain which would make them strange allies, but might help those Britons living and working in Russia. Lydia hoped so.

Ivan shrugged. ‘Who knows? It might be wise to go while you can, but be careful. Tell no one. I wish I could help you, but I have nothing, no money, no land, no family…’

‘Come with me, then.’

‘No. This is my home, I have no other, but it is different for you. You stopped belonging here in 1920.’ He sighed. ‘How long ago that was, and yet how close in our memories.’

‘Yes, I shall never forget,’ she said, standing up to go back to the house. ‘I think I must steal the money. It is the only way.’

She was in for another shock when she returned home and climbed the stairs to her room. Kolya and Olga were in bed together, both as naked as the day they were born. She gave a strangled cry and fled downstairs and out of the house, wanting to run, anywhere away from that haunted place. She looked wildly about her, uncertain which way to go, and ran into the old stables. It had been years since there had been horses there, but the place still smelt of the animals and there were a few wisps of straw and hay about and odd bits of harness. Here she crouched in a corner, hugging her child to her and weeping all over his colourful shawl.

Kolya found her there and, pulling her to her feet, dragged her back to the kitchen. Here Olga took Yuri from her and set about giving him the milky gruel he was being weaned on. Lydia’s fury was so great it dried her tears and she set about pummelling Kolya with her fists. ‘I knew you were a liar,’ she shouted between thumps. ‘But I never realised you were also an adulterer. I hate you! I hate you!’

He laughed, grabbing her hands and holding them to her sides. ‘Good, because I can’t say I have any use for your affection. Terrible disappointment you’ve turned out to be.’

‘Because I lost the Star and cannot tell you the hiding place of the jewels! Well, I’m sorry about that, but you should ask Grigori Stefanovich what happened to them. I bet he knows. Give me back my money and my papers and let me go home.’ She was calmer now; the storm had passed and left her cold. Very cold.

‘You can go wherever you like,’ he said, ‘but if you think I’m going to help you, you are mistaken. I’ve got plans of my own.’

‘To go back to England?’

‘No, to Minsk. Olga has been given a job in a munitions factory. I’m going with her.’

She slumped into a chair and stared up at him. ‘You are going to abandon me without any means of support?’

‘You can work, can’t you?’

‘But what about Yuri?’

‘What about him?’

‘How can I work when I have to look after him?’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage. When we go, I’ll leave your passport and enough money to get you to Odessa. You can throw yourself on the mercy of the British consul there, though if war is declared, he isn’t likely to have much time for a runaway.’

‘When are you going?’

He shrugged. ‘When Olga’s travel papers come through.’

Wearily she rose and went to take her things from their room. She would not sleep there again. She took her belongings to the old part of the house where the windows were missing and the plaster was falling off the ceilings and walls, where rats and mice scurried, huge spiders built their webs and where the birds nested in the remains of the chimneys. There were even weeds growing up between the tiles on the floor. She made several trips, piling her belongings in a corner, went back for Yuri’s crib and then poked about for something to use as a mattress for herself. A sack and some straw was all she could find.

When she had added that to the rest, she went back to the kitchen to fetch Yuri. Kolya and Olga had gone and so had the baby. She searched frantically for them in the house, running into every room that hadn’t been locked by its occupants. She rushed outside and ran into all the outbuildings but there was no sign of them. They were having a game with her and it made her angry. Returning indoors, she met Svetlana who had just come back from shopping. ‘Have you seen Kolya and Olga?’ she asked her.

‘Yes, I met them in Petrovsk, going to catch a train they said. Olga’s got promotion to a factory in Minsk.’

‘Did they have Yuri with them?’

‘Yes. I thought it was strange but they said you had given him to them—’

Lydia heard no more; she had fallen to the ground in a faint.

When she recovered she was lying on the tiled floor and Svetlana was squatting beside her, fanning her with a newspaper. ‘You gave me a fright.’

It was a moment or two before Lydia’s brain cleared and she remembered. She sat up. ‘How long ago since you saw them? What time does the train go? Was Yuri crying?’

‘He wasn’t crying, why should he? He knows Olga Denisovna as well as he knows you. And the train has gone. I heard its whistle as I was walking home.’

Lydia struggled to her feet. ‘I must go after them. What time is the next train?’

‘There isn’t another until tomorrow, not one that goes to Kiev and connects with a train going north.’

‘No. Oh no. It can’t be. It can’t be.’ She sank to the floor again, but Svetlana hauled her up and, putting her arm about her, led her to the kitchen where she sat her down at the table and put a kettle on the stove. ‘A glass of tea, isn’t that the English cure-all?’

‘It won’t cure this, will it?’ She put her arms about herself and rocked to and fro. ‘Yuri, Yuri, my baby. They have stolen him. Why? Why?’

‘I should think because Olga cannot have children of her own.’ Svetlana busied herself brewing tea, while Lydia watched, her mind on a train steaming north. ‘She was married once, you know, but when her husband found she could not have children, he divorced her. It has been her shame ever since.’

‘I didn’t know that, but it’s no excuse for taking Yuri from me. He is all I have, my whole life. I have to go after them and get him back.’ She stood up and began pacing the room. Was this her punishment for not wanting him? But she hadn’t known then what it was like to be a mother, had she? Now she would willingly have died for him.

‘It won’t be easy. Even if you catch them up, Yuri is Kolya’s son and he won’t give him up.’

‘Do you think I’m going to stand by and do nothing? What sort of mother would that make me? I’m going after them. Kolya promised to leave me my passport and a little money.’ She ran from the room and up the stairs to the room she had shared with Kolya. Lying on the crumpled bed was an envelope. She snatched it up. It held her passport and a few roubles but no travel permit. She didn’t want to stay in that room a moment longer than necessary and returned to the kitchen. Svetlana put a glass of tea on the table in front of her. ‘Sit down and drink that. I put some vodka in it. When Grigori comes home, we’ll ask him what he can do to help.’

She was still shaking with a mixture of fear and fury when Grigori came in about eight o’clock. The summer had been hot and dry and the wheat harvest was better than it had been the year before, and it looked as though they might meet their quota with a little to spare. He was dusty and tired and had little advice to offer. It was not in his power to arrange travel documents, he said, but he did know the name of the factory to which Olga had been posted. ‘You won’t get anywhere near it,’ he added.

‘I’ve got to try. I can’t let them get away with kidnapping my son.’

‘He is Nikolay Nikolayevich’s son too, you know. He will claim him, and as he is a good Party man and you are who you are, they will give him custody.’

She hadn’t thought of that. ‘I don’t care. I’ll get on the train and hope for the best. Perhaps in Kiev I can obtain the necessary permits.’

‘I’ll give you the name of the man to ask for.’ He was evidently as anxious to be rid of her as she was to go.

‘Thank you.’

The train left at five-thirty the next morning. Afraid she would oversleep and miss it, she packed a few belongings in a bag and went to Ivan’s izba where she told him of the latest developments and asked him to fetch the Star; she would need every penny she could raise on it. He was shocked but not surprised by what had happened, but refrained from saying ‘I told you so’. ‘Stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure you wake in time to catch the train.’

But she would not, because if it was discovered he had helped her, he would be in trouble himself and it was best he went on with his quiet life and let her go. They embraced, both of them in tears, and then she left him and walked to the station to spend the night in the waiting room.

It was midday when Alex left the train at Petrovsk and made his way out of the station. The situation in Europe and the demands of the Foreign Office meant that he had taken far longer than he had hoped to get there. He had been sent to the embassy in Moscow first to act as an interpreter during the negotiations between Britain and the Soviet Union, but even while the talks were going on, he heard rumours that the Soviets were negotiating a non-aggression pact with Germany. He had been ordered to find out all he could and orders like that could not, should not, be disobeyed. He had put on a Red Army uniform and spent some time infiltrating the military command which was extraordinarily disorganised, but all he had learnt was rumour and counter-rumour, while he grew more and more frustrated and impatient to be going to Kirilhor. When at last he was able to ascertain the truth, that even while negotiating with Britain, the Soviets had signed a pact with Germany, he was free to go to Ukraine. Praying that Lydia was still at Kirilhor, he boarded a train, sporting an untidy beard and wearing a Red Army major’s uniform, to all intents and purposes Alexei Petrovich Simenov going on leave.

There was a plain brick building calling itself a hotel and he booked in there and had a meal before venturing out onto the street and asking the way to Kirilhor. His uniform was enough to ensure cooperation and deter questions about why he wanted to know, though he was conscious of the curiosity of those he asked. He smiled; no doubt there would be gossip, but as long as his disguise held, he was safe, although he was wary of walking directly up to the dacha in case Lydia saw him and gave the game away. He had to find some way of seeing her alone. He turned off the road and onto a path through the forest which he guessed would bring him out to the back of the house.

What if she was happy as she was? What if his arrival was unwelcome? He could not forcibly take her away if she did not want to come. His head was full of questions and it was not until the sound of an axe striking wood impinged on his consciousness that he took note of where he was. There was a crude hut in a clearing and a big man with a shock of pure white hair was chopping firewood. He stopped to look at Alex as he approached. ‘Good day, Comrade Major,’ he said.

‘Good day, to you. Am I going in the right direction for Kirilhor?’

‘Yes, this path will take you there.’

‘How many people are living there now?’

Ivan shrugged. ‘Several families. I cannot tell how many.’ He paused. ‘Do I know you, Major? Have we met?’

‘I don’t think so. I have never been here before.’

‘Strange. I never forget a face. But it was a long time ago.’ He shook his white head as if to clear it. ‘It must have been someone who looks like you.’

‘Possibly. Tell me your name.’ Alex could see the man was reluctant and added, ‘You have nothing to fear.’

‘Ivan Ivanovich. It is a very common name, Major.’

‘Yes, but perhaps not in connection with Kirilhor. I believe you met my father, Baron Pyotr Simenov. He was here in 1921, making enquiries about the Kirilovs. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, now I remember. He asked about the count and countess and the little girl.’

‘Lydia Mikhailovna,’ Alex said. ‘Have you seen her recently?’

‘No. I thought she went to England.’

Alex had, over the years since working in intelligence, learnt to tell when someone was lying and the big man’s mumbled reply and inability to look him in the face were evidence enough. He smiled. ‘I believe you have seen her, Ivan Ivanovich. I wish her no harm, quite the contrary. I have come from England to take her home, if she wants to come. She is very dear to me and has been ever since I met her the day after you left her in Simferopol.’

Only the son of the baron could know that. Ivan’s wariness disappeared. ‘You are too late,’ he said. ‘She left to go to Kiev on the early train this morning. Oh, if only you had been a day sooner. I fear she will be in trouble with the authorities…’

‘Why? Is she not with her husband?’

‘That vile worm!’ Ivan spat in the sawdust at his feet. ‘He left her for Olga Denisovna and took the baby with him. She was going after them, but she had money only to take her as far as Kiev.’

‘Baby?’ He hadn’t thought of her having a child and it caused him a few pangs of jealousy, before he took hold of himself. Lydia had married the man; so what did he expect?

‘Yes, she had a child, a boy called Yuri. They, that is Nikolay Andropov and his mistress, took the child. Poor Lydia was distraught. She was determined to go after them.’

‘When is the next train?’

‘Later this afternoon.’ He stuck the axe in the next log. ‘Come inside, Major. I can offer you tea and a little bread, while you wait. I don’t advise you to go to Kirilhor.’

‘Thank you.’ Alex followed him into the dismal little hovel. Both had to duck their heads under the lintel. Alex watched as Ivan set about poking more wood into the burzhuika and putting a kettle on it. ‘Tell me all you know,’ he said. And Ivan did.

Alex was appalled at what Lydia had had to endure and vowed not to leave Russia until he found her. One side of him rejoiced to think that there was no love lost between her and Kolya, that the marriage had been a failure. But there was a baby to consider. Getting Lydia out with her child would not be easy. He would have to call in every favour he had ever done. And how could he square it with his work as an intelligence agent, for which he was paid by the British government?

‘Where was she hoping to go after Kiev?’ he asked.

‘Minsk. That was where the woman, Olga Nahmova, was going. I’m afraid my little Lidushka is walking into trouble.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ Alex said grimly. ‘You do not need to mention I have been here.’

Ivan laughed. ‘I am not likely to do that. I have never set eyes on you.’

Alex found her standing in line at the railway station in Kiev, waiting to buy a ticket. She had a small case at her feet. Her clothes were shabby, her hair unkempt and she was so thin she was hardly recognisable as the lovely girl he knew. Her face was pale and drawn and her eyes bleak with misery. She had not seen him and he wondered if she would recognise him with his beard and uniform. He walked up behind her and bent to put his mouth to her ear. ‘Lidushka,’ he whispered. ‘I am here. You are not alone.’

She whipped round with a cry of such joy it lit her face, and threw herself into his arms. ‘Alex! Alex! Oh, thank God! Thank God!’ And then she burst into tears.

He held her close, for a few moments, feeling the boniness of her and cursing himself for not arriving sooner.

‘Come,’ he said, wiping her eyes with his handkerchief. ‘We must find somewhere to talk.’

‘But I have to go to Minsk.’

‘I know. I’ll take you.’

‘I thought I was hearing things, that it was a ghost saying my name. Oh, how did you get here? How did you know where to find me? Kolya’s gone off with Olga Denisovna and they’ve got Yuri. I have to find them…’

‘We will.’ He took her to a hotel and ordered food for them both. And while she ate, he questioned her about her life since coming to Russia. She was so glad to see him and so bewildered, she could hardly speak coherently, but he managed to follow her. ‘I had to sell the Kirilov Star, to pay the train fare,’ she said. ‘The man who bought it said it was not of the highest quality and would only give me a few roubles. I daren’t argue with him…’

‘He lied,’ he said. ‘Show me the place.’

As soon as she had finished eating and drinking her fill, she took him to the jeweller’s where she had sold the Star. He left her outside while he went in and demanded its return, telling the man he would be in trouble for buying stolen goods if he refused to hand it over. He offered more than Lydia had been given as compensation and returned to her with it in his pocket. ‘Now, back to the station,’ he said, taking her arm.

‘Are you coming with me?’

‘Sweetheart, you need me, and while you need me, I shall be at your disposal.’

‘It’s all my fault and I shouldn’t involve you.’

‘It is my privilege. There is no need to apologise.’

She was still desperately worried about Yuri, but with Alex at her side, she became more cheerful. And now she had time to notice what he was wearing. ‘Alex, what are you doing in that uniform? Are you in the Red Army?’

‘No, of course not.’ He spoke very quietly so only she could hear, though everyone passing them seemed intent on their own business. ‘But it saves me having to answer a lot of awkward questions and it opens doors.’

‘You could be in dreadful trouble if anyone finds out.’

‘They won’t. Don’t worry.’

He was right about opening doors. They went to the head of the queue and in no time had tickets to take them to Moscow. ‘You are my prisoner,’ he told her as they boarded the train. ‘I am taking you to Moscow to be interrogated for not having the right papers, so do not look too happy to be with me.’

‘I can’t help it,’ she said, not questioning why they should go to Moscow instead of directly to Minsk. ‘I am happy. No, not happy, because we still have to find Yuri, but as happy as I could be under the circumstances. Oh, you don’t know the relief it is to have someone to talk to, someone who isn’t going to swear at me and slap me. And all because he thought there were more jewels to be found. I am sure Grigori had whatever were left, though he pretended to search for them as well.’

‘I am surprised he did not take the Star from you.’

‘He wanted to but I said I’d lost it. I gave it to Ivan Ivanovich to look after.’

‘Why did you take it out of England?’

‘I thought I might need it to prove my identity if I met my parents. What a fool I was. Do you think Papa will ever forgive me?’

‘Of course he will. It was he who asked me to find you and bring you back. He said he wanted you home, no matter what.’

‘I wrote to him several times, but he never answered.’

‘He wrote to you at Kirilhor.’

‘I never received a single letter. They must have kept them from me. Oh, how I wish I had never come here. It was wicked of me.’

‘You are not wicked, sweetheart. Led astray.’ He paused. ‘What are you going to do about your husband, when we find him?’

‘Divorce him. I want nothing more to do with him. I only want my son.’

He was immeasurably relieved. ‘Then let us see if we can find him,’ he said, ushering her onto the crowded train and sitting beside her, whispering in her ear. ‘Remember to play your part. You are my prisoner.’

As the train began to move and pick up speed, the events of the last few days and her lack of sleep, together with her implicit faith in Alex, combined to send her to sleep. He smiled as her head nodded and then settled on his shoulder. Let her sleep. They were not out of the woods yet and he must be careful, very, very careful. And when they did catch up with that devil, Nikolay Andropov, he still had to decide how to wrest the baby from him. Money would be the answer; it seemed to be what had been driving the man all along.

In Moscow he booked them into the Metropol Hotel and then left her to rest while he went to see about their onward journey. ‘Try and be patient,’ he said before he went. ‘I’ll be back before you know it. Don’t, on any account, leave this room.’

How could she be patient when her child was missing? She was desperately anxious to continue and having to stop was frustrating, but she knew Alex was right when he said they must keep within the Soviet rules and regulations as far as possible. Resting was out of the question, and as soon as she was alone, she began pacing the small room, back and forth, back and forth, thinking of Yuri, wondering if he was being well treated and Olga had been able to obtain baby food for him, praying he would know her when he saw her. Would they give him up without an argument? Or would she have to fight for him? Thank God for Alex.

She stood looking out of the window onto the busy street. Cars, lorries, military vehicles, horses and carts went up and down. Young women in light cotton dresses hurried along with shopping baskets on their arms, a babushka with a scarf tied over her head was endeavouring to sell small items from a tray she had round her neck. There were soldiers in breeches, businessmen in light tussore suits, peasants in belted tunics, students and children. She wondered if any of them were as lost, bewildered and miserable as she was.

Alex was gone a long time. By the time she heard the special knock on the door they had arranged, she was in a fever of anxiety. ‘Thank God!’ she said, pulling him into the room. ‘I was beginning to think something had happened to you.’

‘I had a lot of calls to make and a lot of queueing. I went to the embassy and told Lord Chilston your child had been kidnapped. He was all sympathy and promised to do what he could with the Russian authorities, though he is due to return to London soon and I don’t know who his replacement will be.’

‘I can’t wait for diplomatic wheels to grind, Alex, I must find Yuri before they spirit him away somewhere where I can’t reach him. You did tell him that, didn’t you?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, of course. Now, we will have something to eat and a good night’s sleep and go on tomorrow.’

‘No, Alex, no. I want to go now.’ She grabbed his arms and looked into his face, seeing the lines of worry and concern for the first time and realising how much she was putting on him. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve no right to ask you to help me. I brought this trouble on myself and ought to resolve it myself. I’ll go on alone.’

‘No, Lidushka. You will not even get out of Moscow alone, so don’t try it. You need me and my uniform and my papers, and Olga and Andropov won’t disappear.’ He took her hands from his arms and held on to them. ‘Olga is going to take up a job she has been directed to. It is more than her life’s worth not to go, so we shall find her. Rushing off into the night will not make any difference. And you need to eat and rest, you are nearly dead on your feet.’

Reluctantly she admitted he was right and they went out to find a restaurant where she picked at her food with no appetite. Nor did she have much conversation; her head was too full of Yuri. He took her back to her room. ‘Stay with me,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I don’t want to be alone.’

He watched her undress and get into bed, then he slipped off his own clothes and got in beside her, putting his arms about her and drawing her towards him. He wanted very much to make love to her and he did not think she would object, but he desisted. Now was not the time and place. He kissed her forehead. ‘Sleep tight, my darling,’ he murmured. Whether she heard him or not, he did not know; safe in his arms, she had fallen asleep.

When Lydia woke, the place beside her was empty and the only evidence that Alex had ever been there was a dent in the pillow. She sat up in alarm. Where was he? Had he left her? Even as her heart began to race in panic, he appeared in his underclothes with a towel about his neck. ‘There’s a bathroom along the corridor,’ he said. ‘The water is only lukewarm, but better than nothing.’

The sun was streaming in the window. It was going to be another scorching day, not the sort of day to be travelling on crowded trains. She rose and kissed his cheek. ‘A lukewarm bath sounds like the height of luxury to me. I shan’t be long.’

‘While you dress, I’ll go down and order breakfast.’

It arrived while she was towelling her hair and they sat down to eat. She had not unpacked the night before and it was the work of a moment to put her toilet things into her bag and declare herself ready to go on.

He picked up their cases and she followed him from the room.

The train, which was full of noisy troops, rattled through the countryside; hills, forests, small towns flashed past and all the time Lydia was praying. ‘Please let him be there, please let me get him back.’ It became a litany in time with the rhythm of the wheels. And then, just short of their destination, the train came to a sudden stop which jolted everyone out of their seats. Alex stood up and put his head out of the door. ‘The line is blocked up ahead,’ he said. ‘Stay here. I’m going to see what’s going on.’

He jumped down onto the track and made his way up the line, together with the colonel in command of the troops. ‘It looks like an explosion,’ he said, as they walked. ‘Do you think the war has started?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alex said. ‘But I heard that Germany and Russia have signed a non-aggression pact.’

‘So they have, to divide Poland between them. We’re off to the front. I’m surprised you didn’t know that, Major.’

‘I did, of course,’ Alex said. ‘But we are some way from the border and they surely won’t start an offensive until all the troops are in position.’

They had reached the site of the explosion which was centred on the station itself and had taken place a few hours before. ‘A bomb was left in the luggage room,’ a railway official told them. ‘The station building is a wreck but we have to concentrate on clearing the line. We could do with some help from your men.’

‘I’ll arrange it,’ the colonel said and returned to the train.

‘Were there any casualties?’ Alex asked the railwayman.

‘Some. Ten dead. They are laid out in the station yard. The wounded have been taken to hospital in Minsk. Twenty of those, women and children too, all waiting for trains.’

‘Who did it?’

The man shrugged. ‘Who knows? Probably a Jew. There are plenty of those in Minsk who don’t like the idea of Russia making friends with Hitler.’

The troops arrived and began helping to clear the line of rubble. The rails beneath it were only slightly damaged, Alex noted. Once the line was clear they would be able to continue their journey. He wandered off to inspect the damage to the station, which was considerable, and from there went out to the station yard. Why he decided to look at the bodies, he did not know. He lifted the tarpaulin that covered their faces. Some had terrible injuries but others were unmarked. There was even a baby, lying beside its mother. He was about to replace the covering when Lydia joined him. ‘I wondered where you’d got to. Oh—’ She put her hand to her mouth and stared at the dead man lying almost at her feet. ‘Oh, my God, it’s Kolya.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’ She rushed up and down the line of bodies, bending over each. Alex held his breath as she reached the woman and the baby, but she passed them with barely a glance. ‘They’re not here! Olga and Yuri are not here!’ She looked wildly about her. ‘Are there any more?’

Alex counted them. ‘No more dead. The wounded have been taken to hospital in Minsk.’

‘How soon can we go on?’

‘As soon as the line is cleared.’

‘Is there any other way? A bus or something?’

‘Nothing that will be any quicker.’ He put his arms about her to try and calm her. ‘Don’t despair, Lidushka. He might not be hurt at all. If Olga was hurt, they would have sent him with her, wouldn’t they? We shall find him.’

How could he understand her obsession with her child? He was not a mother. Nor even a father. She shook him off and ran out to see how quickly the line was being cleared, and paced backwards and forwards between the blocked section of line and the stationary train. He could do nothing but walk beside her, uttering banalities which he knew were no comfort at all.

It was nearly midnight when they were told to return to their seats and the train moved off very slowly over the damaged bit of track, before picking up speed. Lydia was so keyed up and anxious, Alex began to fear for her sanity. She had been through so much and, though he kept reassuring her, he knew there were still enormous obstacles to be overcome before she could be reunited with her baby. If it were not for the child, he could have had her safely out of the country and on her way back to England by now.

They arrived in Minsk just as dawn was lightening the sky behind them and then there was another long delay as everyone’s papers were examined. Germany had invaded Poland, they were told, and Britain and France had declared war. It meant security was tighter than ever. Lydia was shaking with nerves as the queue in front of them diminished and they moved nearer the table where an official was examining papers and interrogating everyone.

‘Leave it to me,’ Alex whispered.

His own papers, though forged, were passed without comment. ‘Lydia Andropova lost her papers in the explosion along the line,’ he told the officer. ‘Her husband was killed and her sister-in-law was wounded. They had her baby with them. I am taking her to the hospital to see them. She is out of her mind with worry. I beg you to let us pass. I will be responsible for her.’

The man pretended not to notice the roubles Alex had laid on the table almost under his hand and looked up at Lydia who was white-faced and shivering uncontrollably; obviously in great distress. He returned Alex’s papers and waved them on.

They took a taxi to the main hospital where they were told to wait. Lydia sat beside Alex on the hard bench, holding tight to his hand, waiting in torment. The place was crowded. She could hear children crying in the distance and wondered if one of them might be Yuri. It was all she could do not to run along the corridor to trace the source of the crying. At last a big woman in a dark-blue uniform and a white cap came to them and Lydia sprang up to meet her.

‘You were enquiring about Olga Denisovna Nahmova,’ she said.

‘Yes, can we see her?’

‘It won’t do any good; she is dying and not expected to recover consciousness.’

‘The baby,’ Lydia moaned, hanging onto Alex’s arm to stop herself falling to the floor. ‘What happened to the baby?’

‘Taken to an orphanage.’

‘Which one? Where?’

The woman shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. He wasn’t hurt, though he was bawling loudly enough to wake the dead. Hungry, I expect. I couldn’t feed him, so he was handed over to the authorities to deal with.’

Alex decided to intervene before Lydia said something rash and alienated the woman completely. ‘Have you no idea where the baby might have been taken?’

‘There are two orphanages in Minsk. He could be in either. I’ll write the addresses down for you.’

But Yuri Nikolayevich Andropov wasn’t at either of them. ‘Ewo nyeto,’ they were told at each one. ‘Not here.’

‘Can I look at the children?’ Lydia asked. ‘He may have been admitted under a different name.’

The woman shrugged and conducted her to the nursery where dozens of small babies were lying in rows of cots. Some of them were asleep, some crying, all were painfully thin. The stench of urine-soaked nappies and stale milk caught in their throats. If Lydia had not been so absorbed in looking for Yuri among them, she would have been filled with pity for these little scraps of lost humanity. But Yuri was not among them.

‘Why do you think he may have another name?’ Alex asked, as they left.

‘Because everyone would assume he belonged to Olga and she would not have told them any different, even supposing she was conscious enough to do so. Her name was Nahmova and that would be on her papers.’

She would not, could not, stop and insisted on walking about the city, a city obviously preparing for war, searching, searching, looking at every baby being carried or pushed in a pram, much to the annoyance of the child’s mother. She was exhausted, but still she dragged herself along. When she could no longer put one foot in front of the other and night was drawing in, Alex took her to the best hotel he could find and sent for a doctor.

‘She needs rest,’ the man told Alex after he had examined her. ‘I will give her something to make her sleep. As for the child, I suggest you try the children’s allocation centre. It’s on the edge of the forest just out of town. They decide what is to be done with parentless children.’

Alex thanked him and paid him, then went back to Lydia and sat by her bed until she slept. Then he lay down beside her and drew her towards him, nestling her back into his stomach.

He lay awake for hours, listening to her breathing, heard the little cries she made occasionally in her sleep and soothed her with murmured words of love, hoping her subconscious absorbed them. Tomorrow they would try the allocation centre, but even if Yuri were there, how could they convince the authorities that Lydia was his mother? It would almost certainly have been assumed Olga was. He was too tired himself to plan that far ahead. It was almost dawn when he drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Seven

The allocation centre knew nothing of a baby survivor of the station explosion under any name. Undeterred, Lydia continued scouring every orphanage within miles, every charitable home for lost and parentless children and all in vain. Yuri had vanished. Her misery, frustration and anger filled her to such an extent she could think of nothing else. She cried a lot, snapped at Alex when he tried to talk reasonably to her, was sorry for it afterwards and wept on his shoulder. He was unfailingly patient with her. Dear, faithful Alex, who loved her. He demonstrated it in everything he did for her, holding her in her tantrums and her bouts of despair, gently persuading her to eat, suggesting new avenues of search which all turned out to be abortive, making sure she kept clear of the NKVD and fielding enquiries being made about her.

More and more troops arrived in Minsk as German troops swept over Poland. Britain issued an ultimatum to Germany to withdraw, which was ignored, resulting in a declaration of war. The Poles put up a spirited resistance but, assailed on all sides, they were forced to admit defeat and by early October Poland had been divided up between Germany and Russia. It put an end to Alex’s plans to take Lydia and Yuri out of the country overland.

‘I think we should go back to Moscow,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve contacts there. If Yuri has been evacuated east with all the other orphan children, there must be records somewhere. We would do better to look for him that way. It is better than this aimless searching we have been doing.’

She didn’t want to go and it took all his persuasive powers, but what he said made sense and in the end she agreed.

He took her to the Metropol that first night back, but hotels cost money and he had used much of what he had brought with him in retrieving the Kirilov Star; if they were to spend more than a few days in the city, they needed something a little cheaper. He found them a tiny one-roomed apartment in a large building which had been converted into a kommunalka, a house for communal living looked after by a dvornik, a sort of doorman-cum-odd-job man, who watched everyone coming and going and reported irregularities to the police. Lydia was always polite when she could not avoid him, but most of the time kept out of his way.

Some of the rooms housed large families, or even two families, who were expected to make their beds wherever they could: under the stairs, in cupboards, on the living room floor. Because of Alex’s rank which, luckily, no one questioned, they had a room to themselves and a proper bed, though they had to share the kitchen with nine other families, who each had their own small space containing a cooker and a few pots and pans. The bathroom was even worse; there was a pitted bath with a dirty tidemark round the middle which could not be cleaned, though Lydia tried, a basin and a lavatory pan which stank. The water was rarely hot enough for a proper bath. The whole building reeked of boiled cabbage and drying laundry.

In those squalid surroundings, she and Alex made love for the first time. Nothing that had gone before was anything like the soaring emotions he aroused in her. She was at once uninhibited and shy, giving way to the utmost sensual pleasure, exploring his body and making him groan with pleasure and then stopping for him to return the compliment, until she could stand it no more and begged him to enter her, now, at once. But it was not only the sex, it was the way they fitted together, like two spoons in a drawer, liking the same things – food, music, animals – laughing at the same jokes, decrying cruelty and injustice. She realised, with something of the surprise of discovering a long-lost treasure, that she loved Alex, not as a big brother, but as a woman loves a man, with her whole heart and soul. She wondered how she could have been so blind not to have realised it before.

‘I love you, Sasha,’ she said, snuggling up to him in the narrow, lumpy bed. Downstairs someone was playing a tune on a scratchy gramophone and someone else was knocking a nail into a wall. ‘I think I always have.’

‘And I love you too, sweetheart, and I don’t think it, I know it. I always have and always will, however long or short my life.’

‘Don’t say that, Alex, please don’t.’

‘Say what? That I love you?’

‘Not that, say that as often as you like, I love hearing it. I meant about life being short. It frightens me.’

‘Then we shall both have to live to a ripe old age.’ It was said light-heartedly but both knew the precarious position they were in. If only they could find Yuri. If only he could be restored to her, she would be so happy and they could leave.

The search for him continued at a slower pace. She was resigned to the fact that it was going to take time and tried to be patient, writing long letters to Sir Edward and receiving some in reply, which made her feel more cheerful. Winter came and the snow hardened in the streets, bringing out the sleighs and sleds. People went about huddled in so many clothes it was sometimes difficult to recognise who was beneath the layers.

Alex was often involved with other matters which took him away from her for days at a time. He never said what he was doing but it was nothing to do with the search for Yuri or he would have told her about it. Something was going on, something dangerous; she could feel it in her bones. And worry for Alex’s safety did battle with her overriding need to find her baby.

She could not bear to be left alone in the apartment and would spend her time trudging about the city in her felt boots. Her previous stays had been so short she had seen nothing of it, but now, especially on days when Alex left her, she saw the city as it really was. It was a mixture of old and new, the ornate and the downright shabby, wide boulevards and narrow alleys, huge characterless apartment blocks like the one in which she and Alex lived, churches and monasteries which were being used for a number of purposes unconnected with religion. Then there was Red Square and the Kremlin with its great red walls which housed the government offices; palaces and churches whose domes had once been crowned with golden crosses – now only one could be seen, atop the beautiful St Basil’s Cathedral, somehow saved from destruction; the Arbat, once the abode of the wealthy, whose mansions had been converted to communal living; and street markets and GUM, the department store.

But sightseeing was not what was in her mind as she roamed the city, looking for children’s hospitals and orphanages where she produced a snapshot of Yuri which elicited nothing more than a shake of the head and the familiar ‘Ewo nyeto’. In case of war, children were being evacuated to the east and she stood and watched the snaking lines of them, looking lost and bewildered, waiting to be taken away in trucks. But there was no Yuri, though she annoyed the children’s caretakers by peering closely at the babies being carried by the older children.

When she wasn’t doing that she was shopping, which meant queueing for hours on end for potatoes, bread, onions, lard and perhaps a few sausages; anything with which to make a meal. There was a great deal of panic buying and prices doubled day after day as supplies became scarcer. Sugar, flour, tinned goods, dried peas, cooking oil and fuel all disappeared off the shelves as war seemed inevitable. It was all the talk in the queues, though there were still some who believed the non-aggression pact would hold. Russia, they said, was too big and too powerful to be attacked.

Alex did not like her wandering about on her own and was afraid she would be picked up for interrogation. Everyone was getting more and more jittery and looking for traitors everywhere. And women were being directed to help build defences. He didn’t want that to happen to her. ‘Darling, you must go back to England, it’s not safe for you here,’ he told her, when winter turned to spring, the snow disappeared and a little sunlight entered their room through the tiny window. ‘I don’t trust Hitler to honour the non-aggression pact. He’s driven our forces out of France and is cock-a-hoop. Now he’s free to turn his attention towards the east. He wants the whole of Poland, not half of it. Russia isn’t going to stand for that and there’ll be all-out war.’

‘I can’t go, Alex, you know I can’t. There’s Yuri…’

‘I’m afraid you must. I cannot always be with you and I shan’t have a moment’s peace knowing you are here alone. I promise I will continue to search for Yuri. The minute I know anything I will let you know and find a way of bringing him to you.’

‘You mean you aren’t coming too?’ She couldn’t believe that he would calmly send her away.

‘I can’t. There is work for me to do here.’

‘What work? Are you a spy?’

He smiled a little grimly. ‘Don’t ask, Lidushka, please. I’ll arrange for someone I trust to escort you safely home.’

‘But London has been all but destroyed by German bombs, it says so in the papers. I wouldn’t be any safer there.’

‘The papers exaggerate. Besides, London isn’t Upstone. You should be safe enough there. As soon as I’m free to come, I’ll follow.’

She wept and wept, which wrung his heart, but he would not give in. He almost dragged her, silent and numb with misery, to the British Embassy, an imposing building on the bank of the river overlooking the Kremlin, where he gave her into the care of Lieutenant Robert Conway, a naval attaché who was being recalled. Robert’s father, Henry, had been a great friend of Sir Edward’s and Lydia had met him once or twice in happier times. Tall, fair-haired and unfailingly cheerful, he was going home to active service.

Once the arrangements had been made, Robert left them alone to say goodbye. They stood facing each other, unable to put into words what the parting meant to them. Alex opened his arms and she flung herself into them. ‘Alex, Alex, I can’t bear it. Let me stay.’

He hugged her and kissed her. ‘No, sweetheart, I can’t. It is for your own good. I will come back to you, you see, and I might even have Yuri with me.’

Empty words, she knew, but she took comfort from them. The alternative, that she would never see him or her son again, just didn’t bear thinking about. Gently he put her from him and left the room without looking back.

Lydia was so steeped in misery on that journey home, she remembered it as a series of unconnected images. Robert was always cheerful and kind, taking her elbow to guide her, encouraging her to eat when she thought food would choke her, talking to her gently when she needed conversation, remaining silent when she did not want to talk.

They travelled north to Murmansk where a Royal Navy ship was waiting to take on British citizens who wanted to leave: engineers and businessmen, families who had been resident in Russia for many years, some who had arrived after 1917, wanting to help build a perfect state. It hadn’t happened and now their loyalties to the country of their birth had been revived.

The great distances between places in Russia made journeys tediously long, but every mile they travelled had been taking her a mile further from Alex, and as the train sped between Moscow and Novgorod, she wished it would slow down, or better still, stop and take her back. Novgorod was an ancient city whose cathedrals, churches and monasteries seemed to have escaped the Bolshevik destruction, but whether that was an illusion she did not know. They didn’t stop long enough to find out.

One night there in a very indifferent hotel, and they were on their way again. Forests of oak, ash, birch and conifers hemmed them in and blotted out the landscape as they travelled north. Lydia found her eyelids growing heavy and succumbed to sleep, her head on Robert’s shoulder. She stirred when they slowed down at Petrozavodsk where Robert left her to buy food and drink for them at the station. She ate it with little appetite.

By the time the train chugged to a halt in Murmansk she felt tired, dirty and sweaty. The port, once nothing more than a fishing village, was navigable throughout the winter owing to a quirk of the Gulf Stream, and so the last tsar had made it into a naval base for his Northern Fleet. They went straight from the railhead to the harbour and hurried on board just as the ship was sailing.

The weather was atrocious, with squally ice-cold rain and mountainous seas. Like many of the passengers she was sick and stayed in her bunk, but had recovered sufficiently to go on deck the day they were attacked in the North Sea by a lone German bomber. As its bombs landed unbelievably close, sending up huge columns of water, Lydia thought her last hour had come, but in her state of misery viewed the prospect with a kind of indifference. The ship’s guns were firing all the time, causing a great din, but eventually the bomber veered off, leaving the ship’s crew to assess the damage, which was thankfully slight, and they continued to Scotland where they berthed in Leith, cold and fearful and glad to be on dry land again.

Here they were questioned about who they were, why they were coming to Britain, and if they had relatives who would take them in. Lydia’s connection with Sir Edward and the fact that she was escorted by Robert stood her in good stead and she was allowed to continue her journey, though others were detained. From Leith they went to Edinburgh and from there to London by train, and then on to Upstone Hall and she was home. Home at last. Without her son and without the man she loved.

A few days later she was summoned to the Foreign Office for debriefing. Because British officials living in Russia were chaperoned wherever they went and only saw what the Soviet government wanted them to see, they did not get the full picture and were not able to talk to the people. They relied on spies to inform them – spies like Alex, because she had realised that was what he had been doing in Russia besides looking after her and getting her out safely. What a terrible burden she had placed on him.

She was questioned long and hard about why she had gone to Russia in the first place and asked to describe in minute detail everything she had seen: army movements, guns, factories, what the people were thinking, wearing and eating. She did not think she had been able to tell them much, but they accepted what she said, perhaps because she was open about it and also on account of her being Sir Edward’s daughter.

At the end of the interrogation, she was asked to sign the Official Secrets Act and offered the job of translating and summarising reports coming out of Russia. To do this she was required to enlist, which she did, becoming a lieutenant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the army, known as the ATS. After training she was posted to London and allowed to live at Balfour Place with her father. He had come out of retirement to work at the Foreign Office and stayed at Balfour Place during the week, going home to Upstone Hall at weekends.

It was a very different London from the one Lydia had left. Everything was blacked out after dark; not a chink of light was allowed to escape to guide the German bombers. Doors were protected by walls of sandbags and windows criss-crossed with brown paper tape. There were air-raid shelters everywhere and anti-aircraft gun emplacements in the parks. At first the Luftwaffe had gone for the aerodromes, hoping to win the war in the air, but when that failed they had turned on London. Sitting in the cellar of the apartment block with the other residents, eating sandwiches and drinking tea from flasks, Lydia could hear the drone of aircraft and the answering boom of the ack-ack guns, then the crump of an exploding bomb and the bells of fire engines. The people in the shelter reacted in different ways; some were silent, others tried singing and joking, some women calmly went on knitting.

On her way to work the morning after one of these raids, Lydia would see half-destroyed buildings, some still smoking, their contents crushed or scattered in the street, people walking about in a daze, tripping over coils of hosepipe, trying to avoid the broken glass, unable to believe their homes or businesses had gone. The casualties were frightening, but the buses and trains still ran, the theatres still opened, the shops continued to serve their customers, though their stock was much depleted. Food, coal and clothes were rationed. And yet the birds still sang in the plane trees and the ducks still swam in the Serpentine. Contrary to what she had read in Russia, London was far from destroyed.

It was a world away from Russia. And yet she maintained her contact with it through her work. Alex had been right; the Polish territory the Russians had gained in their pact with Germany was lost in a matter of weeks and, in June 1941, they moved over the border into Russia proper. Lydia’s fears for Alex and her son increased a hundredfold and she prayed constantly both might be kept safe. She read every bit of news that came her way, official and unofficial. None of it was cheering. A policy of terror was being pursued by the German troops who considered the Russians, like the Jews, to be subhuman and killed them with extreme brutality, even stringing some of them up on gallows by the roadside. They were apparently making no provision for prisoners, who were left to fend for themselves without shelter, food or medicine. The situation was not helped by Stalin’s scorched-earth policy; nothing was to be left that the Germans could use – guns, ammunition, food, fuel or shelter – which punished the local population as well as the enemy. Minsk, which had been extensively bombed in the early days of the campaign, was soon surrounded, trapping thousands of Soviet troops, some of whom melted into the surrounding forests and formed partisan bands to harass the conquerors.

‘I can’t help thinking of Yuri and wondering where he is,’ she said to Sir Edward, one Sunday in July as they strolled in Hyde Park in the sunshine. Huge barrage balloons swayed lazily overhead, creating moving blobs of shadow on the grass, but the Luftwaffe no longer came over every night, being more concerned with the Eastern Front.

‘I am sure all children will have been evacuated to the east long ago.’

‘I hope so.’

He laid a hand on her arm. ‘You mustn’t torture yourself over it, Lydia. You did all you could and so did Alex. Have you heard from him?’

‘No, not a word, not even through official channels. He was in Red Army uniform when I left him and I worry about him too.’

‘Try not to. He knows what he’s doing.’

But how could she not worry, especially when the German army seemed unstoppable, sweeping towards Moscow? The only way she could cope was by working, hoping that what she did might shorten the war and bring nearer their reunion. In her mind she coupled them together, Alex and Yuri, the two people she loved above all others.

She worried about Robert too. He was serving with the convoys taking war supplies to Russia and, apart from the weather and treacherous seas, they endured attack after attack from U-boats and German bombers, both during the voyage and in harbour at Murmansk while they were unloading. Whenever he came back from a voyage, he telephoned her to tell her he was safe. They wrote each other long letters, which had to be censored, so they were careful what they said, but the affection was obvious and that affection was gradually becoming more profound, but she did not try to analyse her feelings. It was enough that he cared.

They met as often as they could, sometimes going to a show or a dance. On one occasion they went to the first night of Noel Coward’s play, Blithe Spirit, at the Piccadilly Theatre. It was a comedy starring the indomitable Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati, a dotty medium who conjured up the spirit of a husband’s first wife and caused mayhem with the second. There was not a single reference to the war and, for an hour or two, they forgot their troubles and laughed.

Taking her home to Balfour Place afterwards, Robert stopped in the hallway and kissed her. She was taken by surprise, but did not protest. She supposed she had been half expecting it and it was not unpleasant or even unwelcome. In fact it roused her far more than she would have expected. He stood back and surveyed her with his head on one side, smiling. ‘What, no outrage?’

‘No, Robert, no outrage.’

‘But you’re not really ready for it, are you?’

‘For a kiss? Or something more?’

‘You tell me.’ He wasn’t smiling now.

‘A kiss yes, something more, no. I’m sorry, Rob. I still hope, you see…’

‘I understand. But we can still be friends, can’t we?’

‘Of course. I should be very sad if we couldn’t.’

‘Good, because I am a patient man.’

She knew that already and she knew she would try his patience sorely in the weeks to come.

Minsk fell to the Germans a week later and they had their sights set on the ancient city of Smolensk, on their way to Moscow. According to reports Lydia read, a pall of yellow smoke, caused by burning villages and the dust stirred up by the tanks, hung over everything. A few photographs came in the diplomatic bag which illustrated poignantly what was happening to the populace. One was of two little children, one aged about three and one a little older, standing in the ruins of Smolensk, crying. Another was of some refugees, trudging along a road away from the fighting. In the foreground a shawl-clad woman carried a little boy about the same age as Yuri. She studied the child, wondering if it could be her son. It was difficult to conjure up his face, and in any case her memory was of a four-month-old baby, and though she tried, she did not seem able to add the two years in her mind’s eye. Her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t see to work.

The nightly blitz on London, the industrial cities of the north and the major ports around the coast stopped while Hitler concentrated on bombing Leningrad into submission. The Royal Air Force, which had been England’s saviour during the Blitz, was able to take a breather and bomb Germany to exact some retribution. But the convoys of vital shipping were still being lost to German U-boats in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the North Sea. And as another winter approached, the North Sea run became even more hazardous, with rough seas and sub-zero temperatures. Leningrad was under siege and Moscow threatened. All foreign embassies in Russia were being evacuated eastwards, which meant even less news reached the West, and rumours flourished until it was difficult to know what to believe.

But winter was Russia’s ally, not the invaders’. The cold affected everything: tanks and trucks would not start, vehicles and guns were frozen in and could not be moved until the ice had been tackled with pickaxes. According to reports reaching London, the Germans had been so sure of their swift success they had not even supplied their troops with winter clothing. Comparisons were being made with Napoleon’s march on Moscow a hundred and thirty years before; the winter had defeated him and it would defeat Hitler. At home in London, Lydia realised how lucky she had been and how much she owed to the absent Alex. He had been a constant presence in the background of her life all through her growing up, but it was only in Russia, when he had appeared just when she needed him most, that she realised how much she loved him, when it was almost too late. She longed for him to return to her.

Her daily scrutiny of all the reports arriving on her desk for his name became a ritual before she began translating, but it was never there. Surely if he were alive, he would have found some way of letting her know? She worked diligently, putting in long hours, using it as a kind of anaesthetic to numb the pain of being without her son and the man she loved.

It was Sir Edward who broke the news to her. She had arrived home a little before him and was in the kitchen preparing an evening meal for them both when he came in. He hung up his hat, coat and scarf and dropped his briefcase on the hall table as he always did. She heard the clunk of it and then his footsteps coming along the polished parquet floor towards the kitchen. ‘You’re just in time,’ she said without looking round. ‘I’ve made a casserole.’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘There’s something I have to tell you first. Come and sit down.’

She turned as he sank into a chair at the kitchen table, and noticed how tired and drawn he looked. He was working long hours and at his age it was taking its toll. She sat opposite him, the table between them. His hesitation was alarming her. ‘Papa, what is it?’

He reached out and put his hands over hers on the table. ‘It’s Alex. He’s…’ He stumbled, then collected himself. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ She stared at him. ‘He can’t be.’ But even as she denied it, she realised she had been half expecting it, but refusing to acknowledge it, as if by even thinking of such a possibility she would bring it about. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘He was in Minsk when it was overrun by the Germans. He had apparently been acting with immense courage during the battle, single-handedly disabling a gun which had been shelling a convent being used to house children orphaned by the war, but it cost him his life. The action was reported by a senior officer in the Red Army who had witnessed it and recommended Major Alexei Petrovich Simenov for a posthumous medal. And then it came to light there was no such person serving in the Red Army, and enquiries revealed who he really was. Unfortunately the government in London has had to deny he was anything to do with them and he was acting off his own bat.’

She hardly heard what he said. She was back in Russia, in that squalid room in Moscow, loving and being loved by Alex. An Alex who was no more. He had declared he would always love her however long or short his life. Had he known how short it would be? Had he said he would rejoin her and bring Yuri to her, simply to get her safely away? He had saved her life, but lost his own. She sat looking at her father’s hands covering hers and could not take it in. ‘I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it.’

‘I know. I didn’t want to believe it either. I looked on him as a son, especially after his parents died. I had hoped you and he might…’ He stopped and took his handkerchief from his pocket, pretending to blow his nose. It was enough to set her off and she put her head into her arms on the table and wept, huge gulping sobs. He stood up and went round behind her and laid a hand on her shaking shoulders. He did not speak. There was nothing he could say that would in any way mitigate her misery. They stayed that way for a long time, not speaking, a little tableau that epitomised the war and all it was doing to ordinary men and women.

She lifted her head at last and sat up. ‘I suppose I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it was the end when we said goodbye in Moscow. I have been living on hope, but now hope is gone, not only for Alex, but for Yuri too. There’s no one left to look for him, you see, and it’s been too long…’

‘I know.’ It was said quietly. It was the easiest thing in the world for people to disappear in Russia, especially children who were more often than not given new names when they arrived in the orphanages.

‘But when the war is over, perhaps we can try again…’ He did not know how to go on giving her more hope when it would be better for her to accept her loss.

She stood up, dry-eyed now, as if every single ounce of moisture had been sucked out of her, as if she were the withered shell of the person she had been. ‘We had better have our dinner before it’s all dried up.’

But neither could eat.