The Kirilov Star

Chapter Twelve

‘Mum, stop fussing. You look gorgeous.’ Tatty was sitting on her mother’s bed watching her dress.

Lydia stopped twisting herself in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom and smiled at her daughter in its reflection. If anyone looked gorgeous it was Tatty in a lilac print frock patterned all over with tiny white flowers. She had skilfully used a little make-up, blusher and eyebrow pencil and a pale-pink lipstick. Long-legged, enviably slim, full of vitality and so popular there was always a crowd of friends of both sexes visiting Upstone Hall during school holidays. Lydia supposed that one day there would be a special young man and a wedding and she didn’t know how she would feel about that. Tatty always laughed at that idea. ‘I’m not going to get married, Mum, I’ll be too busy enjoying myself.’

Lydia made no comment; she had heard it all before. ‘I can’t believe Bobby is old enough to leave school,’ she said. ‘Where have the years gone? It only seems five minutes since he was a baby.’

‘All mothers say that,’ Tatty said, standing up. ‘Just don’t say it in his hearing, that’s all. Are you ready?’

They were going to Bobby’s last end-of-year prize-giving. He was to receive two prizes and his A-level results from Mr Lockhart, the headmaster, though he already knew what they were. Three straight As in English, European history and politics. How proud she and Robert were of him! And of Tatty too. She had done well in her O levels, which just went to show, Lydia mused, what her daughter was capable of if only she would put her mind to it.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’ She slipped into her high-heeled sandals, picked up her clutch bag and took a last look in the mirror. What faced her was a middle-aged woman, whose waist was beginning ever so slightly to thicken and whose hair was growing grey, but she flattered herself she had kept the wrinkles at bay and her skin was still smooth. In the navy linen suit and ruffled white blouse she had chosen to wear she didn’t look half bad.

They found Robert in the drawing room. ‘Smashing,’ Robert said, looking Lydia up and down. He turned to Tatty. ‘As for you, young lady, you will have every young buck falling at your feet.’

‘Young buck!’ Tatty laughed. ‘No one uses words like that nowadays.’

‘Why not, if it expresses what I mean?’ He was grinning with paternal pride. ‘We ought to go, we mustn’t be late.’

They accomplished the journey in less than an hour in what had been Sir Edward’s Bentley. It was getting on in years but it still went well, kept in good repair by Andy at the garage. Lydia rarely drove it, preferring her own little car, but Robert used it to get backwards and forwards to the Merry Maid, which was moored at Ipswich.

He had a nine-to-five desk job at the Admiralty which kept him in London during the week, but he came home to Upstone Hall every Friday night. Sometimes he stayed with her until Monday morning, but sometimes he went sailing. Lydia, who had never forgotten that dreadful wartime voyage from Russia to Scotland, did not share his enthusiasm and did not go with him. Bobby and Tatty had been once or twice but they were so busy with their own friends and social engagements it did not happen often. When she asked him who was crewing for him, he said, ‘A friend I met at the Admiralty, you wouldn’t know them.’

If she wondered why she had never met this crewman, she did not voice it. And if he chose to spend his time away from her, who could blame him? It was her fault, she knew that. She had not loved him as she ought, certainly not as well as he deserved. She hadn’t exactly kept him at arm’s length, but neither had she cleaved to him, sharing his highs and lows as, in the beginning, he had tried to share hers. She was carrying too much emotional baggage and didn’t seem able to let go of it.

The school assembly hall was packed with parents and siblings come to watch their sons and brothers line up to receive their accolades, smart in their school uniforms, their hair slicked down and their ties straight. Cameras were flashing everywhere and Tatty took a picture when it was Bobby’s turn. Afterwards there was tea in the marquee put up on the green in front of the school, a word with the head and then home again.

‘Phew! I’m glad that’s over,’ Bobby said as he climbed into the back seat beside Tatty.

‘I thought it was a lovely afternoon,’ Lydia said. ‘And the head was very complimentary about your results.’

‘I worked damned hard for them,’ he said, over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t want to let Grandpa down.’

‘Grandpa’, Lydia noted, not ‘Father’, and looked sharply at Robert, but he was looking straight ahead, watching the road. Bobby could not have failed to notice that his father had rarely been at home during his childhood and even now, when he could have been at home more, he was more often sailing his yacht. Grandpa was the male adult to whom he had always turned.

As soon as they arrived home, Bobby changed out of his school uniform and into jeans and T-shirt. ‘You can send this lot to the charity shop,’ he said, bringing his flannels, blazer and white shirt down to the kitchen and dumping them on the table. ‘I shan’t need them again.’

‘There’s plenty of time for that. Take them off the table, I want to prepare dinner.’

He scooped the clothes up, took them into the laundry room next to the kitchen and dropped them on the brick floor. Lydia sighed in exasperation. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I think I’ll have a wander outside, see if anything’s changed while I’ve been gone. What time’s dinner?’

Lydia laughed. ‘Nothing’s changed. And dinner is at seven.’

‘OK. I’ll be back. I might even bring you a nice fat trout.’ And he was gone out of the back door, whistling tunelessly.

Her son loved Upstone Hall and its surrounds as much as she did. As soon as he arrived home at the end of every term, he would go out and walk round the grounds. It was a sort of proprietorial beating of the bounds. One day, she supposed, it would be his and Balfour Place would be Tatty’s. She put a chicken into the oven to roast, prepared the vegetables and then went out to find him. He was in a rowing boat on the lake. Seeing his mother, he wound in his line and rowed back to shore.

‘Have you caught anything?’ she asked.

‘Not a thing.’ He shipped the oars, jumped out of the boat and tied it up. ‘I wasn’t really paying attention.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Something on your mind? You’re not worrying about going to university, are you?’

He picked up his rod and line and walked beside her. ‘No, of course not. I was just wondering if I could have a party, you know, to celebrate the end of school. Most of my friends will be scattered all over the place next year and I thought it would make a good send-off. You’ll let me, won’t you?’

‘How many?’ she asked warily.

‘Oh, about fifty, perhaps a few more,’ he said airily. ‘There’s plenty of room, isn’t there? And we won’t make a mess.’

She laughed. ‘Fifty young men not make a mess! Impossible.’

‘Oh, go on, say yes.’

‘I’ll have to ask your father.’

‘He won’t care. He’s never here anyway.’

‘Bobby, don’t speak about him like that.’

‘It’s true. He’s obsessed with that boat.’

‘He loves the sea, Bobby, and there isn’t any sea about here, is there? I don’t begrudge him.’

‘So what about the party?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘You always used to say that when we were little, as if that would be enough to shut us up.’

She laughed, taking his arm. ‘It didn’t work, did it?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want me to mention it?’

‘Yes, please. It’ll be better coming from you.’

‘Bobby wants a party for his friends from school,’ Lydia said to Robert next morning at breakfast. Tatty and Bobby were still in bed.

Robert looked up from the newspaper he was reading. ‘Why not? That’s the usual thing, isn’t it? Do you mind?’

‘No. We used to have lovely parties here when I was young. I remember my twenty-first. Everyone came, old and young, all dressed up to the nines. It was when Papa had the Kirilov Star made into a pendant for me. We danced the night away.’

‘I am sure it was a glittering occasion,’ he said, laconically. ‘But young people nowadays don’t want that kind of do. They want music by the Beatles and dancing the rock and roll and the twist.’

She should not have said that about her party; it was before she met Robert, before she met Kolya even, but Alex had been there. And as usual Robert had detected the note of wistfulness in her voice. ‘We can manage that, can’t we?’ she said brightly. ‘He says they won’t make a mess.’

He gave a grunt of a laugh. ‘Believe that if you like.’

‘I was thinking we should leave them to it,’ she began tentatively. ‘That’s what most parents do nowadays. Bobby’s very responsible and we’ll only be in the way if we stay around. We could go to a show and stay the night at Balfour Place.’

‘No,’ he said, somewhat sharply, then moderated his tone. ‘I mean, it’s no change for me, is it? I’m there all week.’

‘Yes, silly of me. What about a run up to the Dales? We could tour around, have bed and breakfast, walk a bit.’

‘OK, you see to it.’ He folded the paper, laid it beside his plate and stood up. ‘I’ll be off now. There’s a spare part I need to get for the Merry Maid and then I’ve got to fix it. I’ll probably stay on the boat tonight.’ He had told her of that the day before, and though she had been disappointed, it came as no surprise. Their relationship was one born of mutual respect, parenthood, habit, a kind of fond contentment with no great highs and lows. It was not enough to keep him at home. He bent to kiss her. ‘See you Friday.’

She went to the door to see him drive away as she always did, then turned back indoors. Bobby was just coming downstairs wearing jeans and a sloppy jumper. ‘Dad just gone?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Did you ask him about the party?’

‘Yes. He said you could organise it yourself.’

‘Great.’

‘But I want to know who’s coming, how many, and I want it all over by two a. m.’

‘Yes, Mum.’ He was grinning from ear to ear.

‘Your father and I are going to have a weekend away and leave you to it, so no funny business.’

‘Funny business, Mum?’ he queried, adopting an air of innocence. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh, yes you do.’ She turned from him and went into the kitchen, feeling somehow unsettled. It was as if this milestone in her son’s life was a turning point in her own and yet she could not see how that could be. Tatty came down in her dressing gown, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and Lydia left them helping themselves to breakfast and went up to her room, where she sat on the edge of her unmade bed and contemplated her reflection in the mirror on her wardrobe door. She was forty-five years old, there was grey in her hair, and yet inside she felt no older than the twenty-one-year-old who had danced with Alex, ignorant of what lay ahead. How happy she had been. And how foolish.

Suddenly making up her mind, she made the bed, put a light jacket over her cotton dress and left the house. She picked up some stale bread from the kitchen and walked down to the lake, where she stood breaking it up and throwing it to the mallards. In her mind she was the four-year-old refugee again – lost, bewildered, afraid. As clearly as if it had been yesterday, she heard Alex speaking in his half-broken voice. ‘Try not to be sad.’

‘I cannot help it.’

‘No, I suppose not. But you are a great deal better off than a lot of Russian émigrés. They are finding life in England hard, not speaking English and needing to work. Be thankful.’

Be thankful. Yes, she had a lot to be thankful for. She threw the last of the crumbs and turned back to the house. There it was, four-square and solid, her home, and though the grounds were only half the size they had once been, it was still surrounded by a small park and manicured lawns. It was hers. Thanks to Sir Edward she was wealthy and need never feel cold or hunger or cruelty, though she was well aware they existed. She had always done her best to mitigate some of that, giving generously to charity, helping in more practical ways when she could, especially those refugees from the other side of the Iron Curtain who needed something to get them started in Britain and help with learning the language. Alex’s words, uttered to a traumatised four-year-old had sunk deep. Everything he had ever said to her was etched in her memory. ‘You are not alone,’ whispered while she queued at Kiev station. ‘Sweetheart, you need me, and while you need me, I shall be at your disposal.’ That in Minsk. And at that heartbreaking parting in Moscow. ‘I will come back to you, you see, and I might even have Yuri with me.’

Other memories crowded in on her, more bitter-sweet: a feeling of loneliness – no, not so much loneliness as isolation; her adopted parents, one of whom had loved her more than the other; her first day at school and at college; Kolya, whom she did not want to remember, and Bob, who had been her prop when she needed one most; Yuri lying content in her arms, a chubby, dark-haired baby with surprisingly blue eyes, who had been learning to recognise her and smile a toothless smile. She had never seen his first tooth, never watched his first tottering steps, never sent him off to school with a satchel over his shoulder. He would have finished his education by now, a young man, making his way in the world. She refused to believe he had not survived the war.

And then there was Alex in white tie and tails dancing a waltz with her at the ball to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, even then binding her to him with silken threads which neither time, nor distance, nor death itself could ever sever; Alex in that dreadful uniform, grim with responsibility, torn between love and duty; Alex the lover. That most of all. Oh, how she still missed him!

What had happened to him after she left him in Moscow? What was he doing going back to Minsk when it was being attacked by the Germans? Had he wanted to die? Where had they buried him? Who was the man she had seen standing by the yew tree in the churchyard the day of her father’s funeral? She was still plagued by questions, none of which could be answered.

She went back to the house to hear Bobby and Tatty arguing hotly because Tatty wanted to invite some of her friends to his party and he was against it. ‘You’ll have your own party when the time comes; do you think I’ll want to muscle my friends in on that?’

Lydia acted as mediator, as she always did, telling Bobby he should invite some of Tatty’s friends so that she did not feel out of it, then decided to go and look round the shops in Norwich. Doing that might banish the nostalgia.

She was halfway there when she ran out of petrol. ‘Of all the stupid things to do,’ she muttered, switching off the engine and getting out of the car to find herself in a country lane which did not even have road markings. When and why she had turned off the main road she could not remember. Neither could she remember when she had last seen a signpost.

She began to walk. It started to rain, big drops that soon soaked her light summer jacket and dress and plastered her hair to her face. ‘Serve you right,’ she muttered, stopping to look over a five-bar gate. There was a yard and a cottage and a dog that barked ferociously, but she could also see a telephone line. Taking a deep breath, she opened the gate and made her way towards the cottage, thankful, when she approached, to see the dog was chained. She had almost reached the door when it was opened and he stood in its frame.

‘So you found me,’ he said.

She could not move, could not speak. Her heart was pounding and her legs felt like rubber. All she could do was stare at him.

He reached out, took her arm and gently pulled her inside. ‘Come in, Lidushka, you look like a drowned rat.’

His use of the diminutive of her name sent her flying back to Moscow and yet it served to wake her out of the strange dream she seemed to be having. ‘But you’re supposed to be dead.’ It came out as a croak.

‘Am I? Now, I never knew that. I don’t feel a bit dead. Feel me.’ He took her hands in both his and put them either side of his face. ‘Is that substantial enough for you?’

‘Alex! Oh my God, Alex.’ And she burst into tears.

He took her in his arms to comfort her. ‘My poor darling,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘It was a shock, wasn’t it?’

She leant back and looked up into his face. It was his face, no doubt about that, but it was thinner, the cheeks sunken, the eyes somehow darker as if they could not quite shake off the terrors he had seen. His hair was streaked with white and hadn’t been cut for some time. ‘But what happened? How did you come to be living here? Why didn’t you tell me you were alive? And so close.’

He sat her down beside the kitchen fire and, taking a towel from a clothes horse, stood over her and began rubbing her hair dry. It was an intimate thing to do, but so natural she didn’t question it. ‘Would it have helped to know?’ he asked. ‘You had made a new life for yourself. You had a new family. I was history.’

‘Alex, you were never history, you could not be.’ She pulled away to look up at him. ‘You are part of me, of what I was, of the woman I am, and, as far as I was concerned, that part died on the day Papa told me you had been killed. I mourned for you, Alex.’

‘It is gratifying to know that,’ he said wryly.

‘How can you be so calm about it?’

‘You think I am calm? How little you know.’

‘Then tell me. Tell me how you feel, tell me everything.’

He put down the towel. ‘Later perhaps. First things first. How did you come to be standing on my doorstep in the pouring rain?’

‘I ran out of petrol down the road. I was on my way to Norwich. I must have been daydreaming. I can’t remember turning off the main Norwich road, nor even why I should. It was as if fate was taking a hand.’

‘It often does. Is your car locked?’

‘Yes, I pushed it off the road and started to walk, looking for a phone box. I saw your phone line and came to ask if someone would ring a garage for me. I didn’t know I’d be confronted by a ghost.’

‘Petrol’s no problem. I’ve got a can of it in the shed. I think you’d better take those wet clothes off. I can find you something to wear while they dry. And while you’re doing that, I’ll fetch your car and rustle up some lunch.’

‘But…’

‘But what? You think you shouldn’t be here? You think you should be on your way, soaking wet? How foolish is that?’ He turned to face her. ‘And you do want to know what happened to me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’ She was shivering but whether it was from shock or her wetting she couldn’t be sure.

‘Then give me your car keys and then come with me.’

He put the keys on the table, led the way upstairs, went into his bedroom, and came out again carrying a pair of trousers, a belt and a shirt which he put into her arms, then opened another door. ‘Here’s the bathroom. There’s plenty of hot water. Take your time. Come down when you’re ready.’

She ran a bath, stripped off and lay in the warm water, unable to believe what was happening to her. Alex was alive. Alex was here. Alex, whom she had never ceased to love and never would no matter how many years passed, had held her in his arms again. Oh, the joy of it! Husband, children, home all faded into insignificance beside that stupendous fact.

She dried herself and dressed. In spite of Alex’s thinness the trousers were far too big. She pulled them into her waist with the belt and rolled the legs up above her ankles. The shirt hung loosely, its sleeves also rolled up. She smiled at her reflection and went down to join him in the kitchen.

Hearing her come in, he turned from stirring something on the stove and laughed. ‘You look very sexy like that.’

‘Do I?’

‘Not that you weren’t always sexy. The years have dealt kindly with you.’ He had laid the kitchen table with cutlery and a bowl of salad and beckoned her to take her place.

‘Thank you. I’ve been lucky.’

He put a dish of spaghetti bolognese on the table and stuck two serving spoons in it, then sat down opposite her. ‘Help yourself.’

‘This is unreal,’ she said. She had no appetite, but as he had taken the trouble to cook for her, she put a small helping on her plate. ‘I can’t believe it. There was I seeing Robert off, thinking about the party my son wants to have and wondering whether letting him organise it himself might end in disaster, forgetting to fill the car with petrol before setting off, forgetting it was Sunday and half the shops would be shut, and then taking a wrong turn on a road I know like the back of my hand and here you are. It’s as if you were waiting for me.’

‘Perhaps I was,’ he said softly.

‘Tell me what happened to you,’ she said. ‘Everything. What were you doing in Minsk? Why did everyone say you were dead?’

‘I was looking for Yuri, among other things.’

‘Oh. Papa tried to find out where he was as soon as the war ended, but it had been too long. He said orphanages often changed children’s names when they took them in, always supposing they knew Yuri’s name in the first place. He couldn’t tell them, could he?’

‘No.’ He paused. Should he or shouldn’t he tell her? He had given no undertaking to Robert not to tell her himself. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

‘Not your fault. Go on. You were in Minsk. Then what?’

He told her while the food grew cold on their plates. He told her about the heroism of the ordinary Russian soldier in spite of the incompetence of most of their superiors; he told her of the German advance and being a prisoner in a concentration camp, of his life with Else in Germany and the betrayal that led to his years in Siberia. He spared her the more gruesome details, but what he did tell her was horrific enough to shock her, and he left out his visit to Kirilhor and ended with his escape from Germany and eventual return to England.

‘All that time,’ she said. ‘All that suffering and here was I safe in my own little corner of England. The war we experienced here was nothing compared to that, nor the austerity that followed. The only thing I had to be sad about was leaving you and Yuri in Russia, and that broke my heart, and then the loss of my mother and then my father.’ She paused. ‘It was you in the churchyard, wasn’t it? On the day of Papa’s funeral.’

‘Yes, I saw the notice of his death in the newspaper and wanted to pay my respects.’

‘I thought I’d seen a ghost.’

‘I’m sorry if I upset you, especially at that sad time. I didn’t mean you to see me.’

‘Why not? Why didn’t you join us? Why just creep away?’

‘I would have been out of place. And turning up suddenly would have distracted everyone from the purpose of the day, to mourn a truly good man.’

‘You could have written.’

‘I did consider it, but as I said, I had – have – no place in your life, not anymore.’

‘Alex, how can you say that? We have found each other again…’

‘Does that make a difference?’

‘You know it does.’

‘No, I don’t know. You tell me.’

She watched him filling a percolator, spooning coffee into the top if it and putting it on the stove. Then he took two mugs from a shelf, sugar from a cupboard and milk from the fridge. His movements were deliberate, controlled. He did not seem to be nearly as churned up as she was. ‘I thought you were dead and I learnt to live with that. I had to. I married Robert…’

‘Are you saying you would not have done that if you had known I was alive?’

‘I don’t know. I thought I loved him. I did love him.’ She told him about that journey from Murmansk and how good Robert had been to her, about Bobby and Tatty and how happy she had always been at Upstone Hall, though he knew that already. She told him about Margaret’s dreadful death and Sir Edward’s stroke and how Robert had supported her through it all.

‘Nothing has changed, Lidushka,’ he said gently.

She looked into his eyes, trying to read what was in them. There was evidence of deep suffering, of a stoicism she could never emulate. ‘Do you mean you are going to see me off and retreat into your own little world again, while I go to mine, and that’s the end of it?’

He poured out two mugs of coffee, added a little milk to each and put one in front of her, pushing the sugar bowl towards her. ‘It’s what ought to happen.’

She shook her head, not only to indicate she didn’t want the sugar, but in an effort to clear her brain, to think straight. ‘I can’t, Alex, nor can I believe that’s what you want. Have your experiences made you so cold you are unable to feel anymore? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘No, it is not what I’m telling you.’ He took her hand and hauled her to her feet so that she was facing him, standing so close his warmth surrounded her like a comforting blanket. He put her hand over his heart and held it there. She felt it beating, a little erratically but nonetheless strongly. ‘Do you think that belongs to a man unable to feel?’

‘No.’

‘It was thinking of you that kept it going when other men succumbed to the conditions. When I was cold and hungry and exhausted, reduced to little more than a skeleton, that heart beat for you. It still does…’

‘Oh, Alex!’ She flung herself into his arms. ‘Tell me I’m not dreaming and I won’t wake up any moment and find myself in bed in Upstone Hall.’

‘If you are dreaming, then so am I,’ he said and kissed her gently on her closed lips. ‘And a pleasant dream it is, one I’ve had many and many a time.’

‘Then you won’t send me away, will you? Not yet.’

‘I won’t send you away.’ He kissed her forehead, then her cheeks one by one and then her lips. The pressure of his mouth on hers was exquisite torture and she clung to him, kissing him back all over his face. He could not stand against that onslaught.

He took her hand and almost ran with her up the stairs to his bed, where they made love in a frenzy of reawakened passion. It was glorious and frightening in its strength. Nothing could have stopped it. And when it was over, she slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted.

He lay beside her, his head propped on one arm and looked down at her. Their meeting and its likely consequence had an inevitability about it, for which fate, chance, destiny, call it what you will, had been responsible, not he. He had been living and working, going about his daily life half-alive, knowing there was something missing but unable to do anything about it. And when she turned up on his doorstep, he had not even been surprised. In spite of the years, she was still beautiful, still the lovely girl of twenty-one he had fallen in love with, but more than that, her maturity had brought out more of the woman. Her figure was slightly thicker, her hair was less luxuriant; there was even a grey hair or two, but she could still make love with the unbridled passion of youth. He would not have given back a moment of that for a king’s ransom.

She stirred, opened her eyes sleepily and reached out for him again. This time their lovemaking was slower, more relaxed, tender and yet still passionate. Guilt did not come into it, nor thoughts of the future. This was here and now and they were as much in love as ever they had been. His eyes had come alive again in the last few hours. He was more like the Alex she had known. But it had to end, if only because they were hungry and thirsty and it was growing dusk. He padded, naked, to the bathroom. She watched him go. How thin he was; there was hardly enough flesh on him to cover his ribs. But the muscles of his arms and thighs were strong; a man used to hard, physical work. Oh, how she loved him!

She did not think of Robert and home until they were once more in the kitchen and she was wearing her own clothes again and he had dressed in jeans and jumper. He had made fresh coffee and they sat opposite each other to drink it.

‘What now?’ she asked, holding her mug in both hands.

‘It’s up to you. Will you tell Robert?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘That’s for you to decide, but I’d say no, not unless you intend to leave him.’

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. It would break his heart. And there’s the children…’

‘Then you know the answer.’

‘I suppose so.’ There was hopelessness in her voice. ‘I hate secrets and I can’t bear the thought of deceiving him, but neither can I bear saying goodbye to you again…’

‘Then we won’t say goodbye. You know where I am now. If you need me, I am here. I’ll give you my phone number, but you don’t need to ring. Just turn up.’

They both stood up, facing each other. She looked up into his face, wondering if he might persuade her to stay, but he said nothing. ‘Too late to go to Norwich now,’ she said in an effort to bring herself back to the real world. ‘I’ll have to go another day.’

‘You know the way back?’

She didn’t think he was asking if she knew the way home, but if she could find her way to the cottage again. ‘Yes.’

He accompanied her out to her car which stood in the yard. The gate was open ready for her to drive straight out. ‘Safe journey,’ he said, as she settled in her seat and switched on the engine. It sprang into life, almost drowning his softly spoken words. ‘I love you.’

She could hardly see to drive for the tears that filled her eyes. Impatiently she rubbed them away and resolutely set course for home. In the rear-view mirror she saw him watching her go, a lonely, rather gaunt figure with one hand raised in farewell. Alex.

In the event, she and Robert did not go walking in the Dales the weekend of Bobby’s party. Robert rang on the Thursday evening to tell her something had come up at work and he had to remain in London over the weekend. She commiserated with his disappointment. ‘Another time,’ she said.

‘What will you do? Will you stay and endure the party?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll stay with an old wartime friend in East Dereham. She’s always asking me when I’m going over to see her.’ It was the first time she had lied to him and she hated herself for it. And as often happens, one lie led to another.

‘I never heard you mention a friend in East Dereham.’

‘She’s only just moved there and got in touch again. She lived abroad until recently which is why we never visited.’

‘Have a nice time, then.’

‘I will. Don’t work too hard.’

‘I won’t. I’ll be home next Friday as usual.’

‘There, that wasn’t that difficult, was it?’ Pamela asked when Robert rang off. For months she had been trying to persuade him to take her to France on the Merry Maid. ‘We hardly ever go sailing these days,’ she grumbled.

‘I have to go home sometimes. I can’t stay away every weekend. Lydia needs me.’

‘No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t want you.’

‘I didn’t say that – not exactly.’

‘That’s the way I read it.’

Pamela Osborne was several years younger than Lydia. During the day, she wore her long blonde hair up in a French pleat. She had blue eyes and full red lips, an enviable figure and long slim legs, made to seem longer by the excessively high heels she always wore, except when she was on the boat. Then she wore canvas deck shoes, baggy trousers and overlarge jumpers, and she tied her hair back in a youthful ponytail. He found her exciting, the more so because of the secrecy involved. Having two women loving him flattered his ego, though he was not sure, had never been sure, of Lydia’s love. The guilt came because he could not find fault with her as wife and mother, and it was her money that allowed him to lead the comfortable life he had and to buy the yacht and indulge his passion for sailing and for Pamela.

He had met her at a party given by one of his friends at the Admiralty. It was a spur-of-the-moment invitation, too late for Lydia to make arrangements to come up to London and go with him, and he had gone alone, not expecting to enjoy it. Pamela was alone too, and they began a polite conversation, each balancing a glass of gin and tonic in one hand and a plate of canapés in the other. They had discovered a mutual enthusiasm for sailing and they discussed the merits of different craft and one thing led to another, and before the evening was out, he had invited her to come sailing with him and she had accepted. It was easily arranged; Lydia would not have wanted to come even if he had asked her.

They had sailed from Ipswich, where the yacht was moored, round the coast to Mersea Island, where they had stopped for a pub meal before returning. He told himself it was all very innocent, but underneath he was aware of currents of sexual attraction and on the second occasion he had made some excuse about storms brewing and they had stayed at the pub all night. A year later, she was as good as living at Balfour Place. He felt guilty about it but he assuaged it by telling himself, and Pamela, that he was not Lydia’s first love and that she still hankered for the old one. It had been nearly six years since his meeting with Alex, and as Lydia had long since ceased to talk about Yuri, there had been no occasion when he could have said anything. Or so he told himself. And the longer he delayed the more impossible it became.

Sometimes he wondered if Lydia had guessed about Pamela. Just lately she had been acting a little strangely – subdued, almost in a dream some of the time, at other times overanimated, as if she had a lot of excess energy she needed to expend. And their lovemaking, never very passionate or frequent, had become almost non-existent. It could, of course, be her time of life. He began to wonder what would happen if his affair came out into the open. It was a question he did not like to ask himself and he pushed it out of his mind in the hope it would never happen. He did not want to give Pamela up; she fulfilled a need in him that he had not even been aware existed before he met her. Neither did he want his marriage to break up; that was like a comfortable pair of slippers, worn but still too good to throw away. And at the moment he was enjoying the best of both worlds.

Lydia found Alex feeding the pigs, who snorted and squealed and nudged each other out of the way to get at the trough. He was wearing an old pullover, with holes in the elbows and grubby jeans tucked into wellington boots. She stood a little way off, not wanting to go any closer for fear of dirtying her shoes, but drinking in the sight of him, feeding her hunger for him just by watching him doing the mundane tasks he did every day.

He emptied the bucket and turned, seeing her for the first time. ‘Lydia, I didn’t hear you arrive.’

‘You did say “just turn up”. You meant it, didn’t you?’

‘Of course I did.’ He put the bucket down and came towards her. ‘I’m filthy.’

‘I don’t care.’ She reached up and pulled his head down to kiss him.

He stood with his arms held out sideways so he didn’t dirty her jacket. ‘Go indoors,’ he said when she stopped to draw breath. ‘I’ll finish up out here and then I’ll be with you.’

She went back to the car, fetched her overnight bag and went in by the kitchen door. The dog left his basket by the hearth and came towards her, wagging his tail. She stooped to fondle it. ‘You might look ferocious, but you’re not much good as a guard dog, are you?’ she said.

The remains of Alex’s breakfast stood on the table: a box of cornflakes, a pot of cold coffee, a mug, a plate and a bowl, milk in a bottle, a packet of sugar, a toast rack with one cold piece of toast in it. She took off her jacket, cleared it away and washed up. He came in just as she finished. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘I’ll go and clean up and then I’ll be with you. Put the percolator on again, we’ll have fresh coffee.’ It was then he noticed her bag on a chair. ‘You’ve come to stay?’

‘Just for tonight. If you’ll have me.’

‘Have you? My God, do you need to ask?’ He left the room and she heard him galloping up the stairs and moving about above her. She picked up her bag and followed him. He was crossing the landing to the bathroom, wearing only his underpants. She dropped her bag and stopped him. ‘Since you seem stripped for action…’ she murmured, pressing herself close to him and nuzzling her lips along his collar bone to his throat.

‘Lidushka, have you no shame?’ he asked, laughing.

‘None at all where you are concerned.’

He walked backwards into his bedroom, taking her with him, and fell back on the bed with her on top of him.

‘Now,’ he said some time later, as they lay naked side by side. ‘Tell me what brought you here today. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Has something happened?’

‘You happened. Oh, Alex, I don’t know how I’ve endured the last three weeks, thinking about you all the time, unable to sleep and then dreaming in the daytime, trying to act normally and not being able to…’

‘Has Robert guessed?’

‘I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. We were supposed to be going away for the weekend to keep out of the way of Bobby’s party, but Robert said he had to work. He’s never done that on a weekend before. He has a nine-to-five desk job which I know he hates, so it surprised me. I said I was going to stay with an old friend from wartime who has recently moved to East Dereham from abroad.’

‘Why East Dereham? It’s only half a dozen miles from here.’

‘I know, but I’m not a very good liar, so I thought it best to stick to the truth as far as I could. You are a wartime friend and you have moved here from abroad, and if anyone who knows me saw and recognised my car, it wouldn’t cause comment.’

He laughed. ‘You devious little minx!’

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Mind? How could I mind when you are all I want, all I’ve ever wanted. I wish I had you all the time.’

‘Don’t let’s think of that,’ she said, stirring in his arms to take his hand and kiss the palm. ‘Let’s just enjoy the weekend. I’ll help you feed the animals and we can go for long walks and eat and sleep and wake up in the morning side by side.’

‘The last time we did that was in Moscow,’ he said. ‘So much water under the bridge since then, so much to regret, so many memories…’

She put her fingers over his lips. ‘No, no more of that. I don’t want to be sad. Let’s get up and have that coffee and decide what we’re going to do.’

They bathed and dressed and drank coffee, sitting over it talking, remembering times in the past they had been together, relating events that had happened when they were apart. He told her about how he had set up the smallholding with his back pay. Then he showed her round. She inspected the pigsties, the chicken runs, the vegetables growing in long straight rows, all neatly hoed free of weeds. ‘You are tidier outdoors than in,’ she said as they returned to the kitchen.

‘I suppose I am, but this brings in money and the house doesn’t. And there’s only me.’

‘It’s very different from being a diplomat.’

‘That’s why I did it. I needed peace and quiet to recoup.’

‘You are still too thin.’

He laughed. ‘You should have seen me when I first came out of the gulag – skin and bone I was. Now, at least I’m strong and healthy.’

‘And as handsome as ever,’ she said, smiling.

He ignored that. ‘What would you like to do now?’

‘Let’s go for a walk.’

He stood up. ‘A walk it is. Old Patch could do with a run and I know a good pub where we can eat.’

The heath was covered with heather and bracken and scrubby little trees. A kestrel hovered overhead and then swooped on its prey, a rabbit bobbed up out of a hole and seeing them disappeared down it again. A handful of people walked in the opposite direction and they said good morning and went on, coming out onto another country lane which led to a village and a pub. It was crowded with people out enjoying a Saturday evening meal. They found seats in the corner and ordered fish and chips and peas. The food, if a little uninspiring, was substantial and well cooked. Returning to the cottage, tired and content, they made cocoa and went to bed, though it was still only just dusk.

But the next day had to be faced, and after a morning in which he did the chores outdoors and she tidied the house and made soup for lunch, they sat silently contemplating their imminent parting. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ she said, when it could not be put off any longer.

‘I wish it too. Having you here has made it into a home. It was never that before, simply somewhere to eat and sleep.’

‘Alex, you know I can’t leave Robert, don’t you?’ The words were torn out of her.

‘Yes.’

‘If you can’t accept that, I mustn’t come again.’ As she said it, she knew how hard it would be to keep away, but she would have to try for Robert’s sake, for the children’s sake and for her own peace of mind. And for Alex too. Because she wasn’t being fair to him.

He understood her so well, could read her mind and knew exactly the torment she was going through. ‘You must do what you think is right,’ he said. ‘But never doubt, I will always be here, to come to the rescue if you need me…’

‘Like a knight in shining armour,’ she added with a cracked laugh.

‘The armour is a little tarnished now,’ he said. ‘But it is still available.’ There was silence for a moment, then he said, ‘Lydia, you know I said I had been looking for Yuri in Minsk?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t find him there.’

‘I realised that. You would have told me if you had.’

‘Oh, Lydia, I am so sorry. I should have, I really should. You have every right to know.’

‘Know what? Tell me, tell me at once. He’s not… not dead, is he?’

‘No, far from it. After I came back from the gulag, I went to Kirilhor. I was simply looking for somewhere to lie low until I could get home and I thought of Ivan Ivanovich. I had no idea Yuri would be there.’

‘He’s back at Kirilhor?’ That was the last place she expected him to be.

‘He was six years ago. He would have finished his education and found a job by now, though I doubt he’d move far from Olga Denisovna.’

‘Olga!’

‘Yes.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She didn’t die. She was still in hospital in Minsk when the Germans invaded Russia. She was evacuated to Moscow with all the other patients and recovered, though badly knocked about. She spent the rest of the war years keeping her head down, working as a cleaner at the hospital. After the war she went looking for Yuri. She was luckier than you. She found him in an orphanage and claimed him as her son. He has grown up believing himself to be Yuri Nahmov.’

Her heart sank. ‘So he doesn’t know about me?’

‘No. He thinks Olga Nahmova is his mother.’

‘How could she do that – how could she?’

‘She sustained head injuries in the explosion and it may be she actually thinks he is her son.’

‘But you told him differently.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was in no mood to hear it. He’s been brought up to be a good Communist, Lidushka. He hates the Capitalist West and when I mentioned your father, the count – without telling him about the relationship – he was vitriolic in his hate and Olga came at me with a knife. I decided, reluctantly, to leave well alone.’

Tears were raining down her face. ‘Oh, Alex. If you kept quiet all this time, why tell me now?’

He wiped the tears away with his handkerchief. ‘You wish I hadn’t?’

‘No. And it’s done now, isn’t it?’ She attempted a smile.

‘Yes. I debated long and hard about whether to say anything when you were here before, wondering if you had really given him up…’

‘No, I hadn’t, not altogether. I couldn’t.’

‘I realise that now.’

‘I can’t go to him, can I?’

‘No, sweetheart, you can’t go to him. But take comfort from the fact that he is a big strong lad and very intelligent. You can be proud of him.’

She was silent for a long time. He reached out and put his work-worn hand over her soft one. ‘Perhaps I should not have told you.’

‘Yes, you should. I needed to know. Now I shall be able to imagine him growing up and making his way in the world, Communist or no Communist.’

‘Communism won’t last,’ he said. ‘Not like it was in Stalin’s day. Already there are signs of change. The uprisings in Hungary prove that. It will happen again elsewhere and the Russians won’t be able to keep putting them down.’

‘I hope you are right.’ She paused. ‘I must go home.’

‘I know.’

‘I shan’t say anything of this to Robert. He doesn’t like me talking about Russia and always cuts me off when I start on what he calls “one of my nostalgic trips”. I suppose it’s because it’s part of my life he can’t share.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘In any case, he’d want to know how I found out and I can’t tell him that, can I?’

‘I suppose not.’

And so she left him, left him to his pigs and his chickens and his untidy kitchen and went back to Upstone Hall, large, comfortable, well kept, even though it took her a week to tidy up after Bobby’s party.

Chapter Thirteen

Lydia was back in Kirilhor, silently and desperately struggling with Olga for possession of Yuri. The woman would not let her have him. In the tussle the baby fell to the floor with a sickening crump. Horrified, Lydia looked down through her empty arms and realised he was dead. His head was at an unnatural angle, his limbs all floppy and yet his blue eyes were open and reproached her. The shock of it woke her and for a moment she thought she was still in Russia.

She felt the dried-on tears she had shed in her sleep and looked about her at the familiar room with its warm carpet and pretty curtains. Her sheets were white, not the dirty grey of those at Kirilhor, and instead of scratchy blankets, those on her bed were soft. She was safe at Upstone Hall. Yuri wasn’t dead; he was alive, Alex had told her so.

She passed the back of her hand across her eyes in an effort to bring herself back to the present. Yuri wasn’t dead; her nightmare was false. He was alive and well and for that she should be thankful. She had written to him at Kirilhor soon after her last visit to Alex, explaining why and how she had left him in Russia and how she loved him and thought of him constantly, but her letters had come back unopened and covered in official stamps. It had been a terrible disappointment that wracked her with misery for days. It was not fair on her family to be constantly brooding and wishing, and so she had pulled herself together and hidden the letters away, hidden her pain along with them. But it didn’t stop the nightmares.

She had forgotten what had woken her and was startled by a knock on the door and Tatty poking her head round it. Seeing her mother still in bed, she came into the room. ‘Mum, are you all right? It’s gone eight o’clock.’ She was tall and slim, dressed in tailored black slacks and a pink cashmere jumper. Her dark hair was cut in a fashionable bob, with the nape of the neck shaped and the front hair flicked forward.

‘Is it? Good heavens, I must have overslept. I’ll be properly awake in a minute.’

Tatty looked closely at her mother’s face. ‘You’ve been crying.’

‘No, dreaming.’

‘More like a nightmare, by the look of you.’

‘Perhaps. It’s gone now.’ She attempted a laugh, which was difficult since her dream still haunted her.

‘I’m at a loose end and thought we could go shopping in Norwich. I need some things to take to Girton and I want to buy Claudia and Reggie a wedding present.’ Now the children were grown up and no longer needed her, Claudia had at last agreed to marry her bus driver. ‘What do you say?’ Tatty went on. ‘You haven’t got anything else arranged, have you?’

Tatty was always going off here, there and everywhere with her friends, but they were close, mother and daughter, and they enjoyed going shopping together. ‘Give me a minute and I’ll be ready.’

She struggled off the bed and went to have a shower. When she returned, Tatty was sitting on her bed, waiting for her. ‘What were you dreaming about, Mum? It wasn’t Dad, was it?’

‘Why do you say that?’ she asked sharply.

‘He’s away an awful lot. He went off again early this morning, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but he loves sailing and I don’t. He’ll be home next weekend for the wedding.’ In the absence of any close family, Robert had agreed to give the bride away. Tatty was to be bridesmaid.

‘I’m not a child, you know. I’ve got eyes and ears.’

Lydia smiled. No, her daughter was a beautiful young woman, far too observant sometimes. She was off to Girton in October and then both her children would have left the nest. She sat down beside her on the bed. ‘Tatty, I’m not worried about your father, I promise you.’

‘Then what?’

‘It was something on the news last night,’ she said, prevaricating. ‘Some poor young man has been killed trying to get over the Berlin Wall. To me, that dreadful wall symbolises the great chasm between East and West, a gulf of hate and misunderstanding nothing can bridge, and it set me thinking about my time in Russia just before the war and I suppose that’s what triggered the dream.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Perhaps if she talked about it, she could dispel the feeling of guilt, because it was guilt which gave her the nightmares. ‘It was a terrible time. No one knew what was going to happen and when the Germans invaded there was panic everywhere. The Russians had been relying on their non-aggression pact with Germany and were taken by surprise. Alex saw it coming and so did most of the Brits in Russia at the time, but of course, no one listened to them. People disappeared, simply disappeared into thin air, and there was no way of tracing them…’ She stopped. ‘I shouldn’t be remembering that, should I? I can’t seem to stop myself and I feel so guilty…’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I left Yuri behind. I abandoned him.’

‘From what you’ve told me, Mum, you had no choice.’

‘Sometimes I ask myself if I should have been stronger and not let Alex persuade me to leave.’

Tatty knew about Alex; he had figured in her tale of leaving Russia at the beginning of the war, before she met Robert, but she had called him a family friend, which indeed he was. He had been frequently at Upstone Hall as a young man and several photographs in the family album featured him but, like everyone else, Tatty believed he had been killed at the beginning of the war. ‘Then your life would have been very different. You would not have married Dad and Bobby and I would not have been born. You don’t regret that, do you?’

‘No, of course not. Not for a minute. Don’t ever think it. It’s simply that I would like Yuri to know how it was and to understand…’

‘Perhaps he does.’

‘It’s not only that I left him, it’s that I didn’t want him. When I realised I was pregnant I hated the thought of having a child, especially Kolya’s. It seemed to be the end of everything. I couldn’t come home and I was so unhappy. The bigger I got the more I hated that lump in my body. I wanted him to be born dead…’

‘Mum!’ Tatty was shocked. ‘You never said that before.’

‘You were too young to be told and, in any case, the minute he was born and I held him in my arms, I loved him. I loved him all the more for not wanting him in the first place. When Kolya and Olga Nahmova took him I was out of my mind. And then Alex turned up, sent by Grandpa to find me. We searched for Yuri together until he made me give up and come home. I always hoped we would find him, but even when he was traced, he didn’t want to know. It was my punishment, I suppose.’

‘I didn’t know he had been traced.’

She had almost given herself away. ‘It was Olga Nahmova found him. They told me she was dying of her wounds, but she didn’t die. She recovered and went looking for him. She was his mother. Why should he want anything to do with me?’

‘Mum, you mustn’t think like that. I’m sure if he understood what happened, he’d want to be in touch.’

‘Perhaps, but it wouldn’t be easy, you know. There are so many restrictions.’ She paused, unsure where the conversation was leading her. ‘Come on, I’m longing for a cup of tea, then we’ll be off to Norwich.’

To Lydia’s relief Tatty did not ask how she knew Olga had found him; she could not divulge that without betraying her visits to Alex and she could not do that. They went downstairs together and Lydia managed to put it from her mind until they were driving past the turn for Northacre Green when she nearly gave way again. Keeping away from Alex was the hardest thing she had done since leaving Yuri in Russia and it was no easier after two years, but she had to do it. She could never have gone on seeing him, returning home so elated or so dejected that someone was sure to notice. It was not in her nature to dissemble, to add more untruths to those already told. She would not have been able to function as a wife and mother if her heart and soul and every thought was geared towards the next trip to Northacre Green and how she was going to manage it. She hoped – no, she knew – Alex understood that.

It didn’t mean he was not constantly in her thoughts. She would imagine him in his scruffy pullover, feeding pigs and chickens, hoeing between the rows of vegetables, striding across the heath to the pub, cooking for himself and eating at the kitchen table. And she would re-enact in her head every detail of their lovemaking, his hands caressing her, his lips all over her body, his murmured words of love. It was erotic and dangerous for her peace of mind. Pulling herself together, she drove on.

In Norwich, she drew into the car park behind the castle and they made their way to Bonds, where Tatty bought clothes and new toiletries to take to college, after which they spent some time wandering about the different departments, discussing what gift Tatty should buy for Claudia and Reggie. ‘It will be strange in the house without Claudia,’ Tatty said. ‘She’s been there my whole life. I can’t imagine her married.’

‘I can’t either, but Reggie is a nice man and he’s been patient a long time. What were you thinking of buying them?’ Robert and Lydia had promised, as their gift, to pay for the reception at Upstone Hall. Claudia had a host of friends in the village and there would be about a hundred guests.

‘I don’t know. Not crockery or cutlery or a toast rack.’ She pulled a face. ‘Horribly unoriginal. I thought something for their garden. Reggie was telling me he was looking forward to making something of that.’

‘What about a garden bench?’

‘Good idea. Let’s have a cup of tea and a cream cake and then go to the garden centre and order it.’

Lydia was tired but content when they returned to Upstone Hall about six o’clock. Her bad dream, though not forgotten, had been pushed to the back of her mind.

The church was packed for the wedding when Lydia and Tatty arrived, Tatty in lilac silk and a tiara of real rosebuds, Lydia in a petrol-blue dress with full sleeves and a floating panel. A picture hat with a white full-blown rose on the front of the brim served to shade eyes which sometimes betrayed too much of what she was thinking and feeling. Bobby was already there, acting as usher and showing people to their places. Lydia made her way into the church, leaving Tatty to wait in the porch for Robert and Claudia in the bridal car. Outside the bells rang joyfully and inside the organist played softly.

The congregation turned as the bride entered and came slowly down the aisle on Robert’s arm. Age meant nothing; she was radiant and the smile her bridegroom gave her was evidence of his devotion. They joined hands and turned to face the Reverend Mr Harrington.

‘Dearly beloved…’ he began.

Lydia, listening to the moving ceremony, prayed that Claudia would be happy married to her Reginald, that whatever highs and lows they had would be minor ones, easily overcome.

It was a wish echoed by Robert in his speech at the reception. Reggie’s reply had been carefully prepared and, though he made one or two attempts at a joke, it was on the whole a serious speech in keeping with his character. ‘He’s too stiff,’ Robert whispered to Lydia. ‘You’d think all that wine would have relaxed him.’

‘He’s nervous,’ she whispered back. ‘And at least he’s sincere.’

Everyone was clapping and they joined in. After the last of the speeches, there was dancing for everyone. When the bride and groom set off on their honeymoon in Scotland, the older guests said their goodbyes and left the younger generation to go on celebrating in their own noisy fashion.

‘Not like our wedding, was it?’ Robert said, when they were alone once more, surrounded by the debris. It was gone midnight.

‘It was wartime.’

‘Yes, but I meant we didn’t have a bean, or at least, I didn’t…’

‘Neither did I. I had a job, same as you. And it wasn’t our fault if the war kept us apart.’

‘It wasn’t only the war that did that,’ he said quietly. ‘There was never just the two of us, was there? There was always a third person standing between us.’

She was shocked and turned to face him. ‘Oh, Robert, I’m so sorry. I tried, I really tried.’

‘I know you did and that made it even harder to bear.’

‘Is that why you re-enlisted?’

‘One of the reasons. The other was that the sea is in my blood and Upstone is landlocked. I couldn’t bear not to be able to see it. And you wouldn’t leave Sir Edward and move to the coast. And now the place is yours.’

‘We’ve messed up really badly, haven’t we?’ she said after several moments of silent contemplation.

‘No, not really badly. We’ve been content in our way and we’ve got two wonderful children.’

‘But it’s not enough. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘It always has been.’

‘What an indictment of a marriage! What do you want to do about it?’ Her breathing was ragged as she waited for his answer.

‘Nothing. Anything else would break the children’s hearts and I couldn’t do that.’

‘Nor I.’

They were silent. Lydia’s head was spinning. Why had he brought the subject of their marriage up like that, especially as he seemed not to want to do anything about it? Was he telling her he knew about Alex being alive and living not twenty miles away? Or was he preparing her for his own announcement?

‘I’ll leave the clearing up until the morning,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m too tired to tackle it tonight.’

She was in their bedroom in the middle of taking off her finery when he joined her. ‘Let’s forget I spoke,’ he said, hanging his grey silk tie over the mirror and unbuttoning his shirt. ‘It was out of order. Seeing Claudia married and too much champagne made me maudlin.’

She did not answer.

Tatty was in the loft, searching for a suitcase to convey her belongings to Girton. It was a nostalgic trip. Toys, tennis rackets, dolls with arms and eyes missing, a doll’s house, an inflatable boat they had used on the lake until it sprung a leak. She remembered how she and Bob had been tipped into the water, but it was summer and they were wearing bathing costumes and could swim like fish, so they had towed it back to the shore. Fancy her mother keeping that! It was cracked and rotten. There were a couple of tents too, some old armchairs and a large cracked mirror. She went and stood in front of it and smiled at her distorted reflection. Was that how the past appeared to her mother: cracked and distorted? How many of her mother’s memories were clear? Had age distorted them as the mirror distorted all it reflected?

She bent down and lifted the lid of a tin trunk and then she was in another world. It was filled with things her mother had saved from their childhood. Baby clothes, some blue, some pink, some pale lemon and cream. Tiny little four-inch shoes with soft soles, mittens for tiny hands, little embroidered pillowcases, exquisite shawls, carefully knitted and crocheted, all lovingly wrapped in tissue and cotton. She took them out gently and held them up one at a time. Had Mum meant to pass them on? For a moment, she held one of the shawls against her cheek and felt its softness and felt her mother’s love for her and her brother which, in all the years, had never wavered.

Slowly she wrapped everything up again and laid it lovingly back in the trunk. As she began to close the lid she saw the lining was bulging and pulled it down. Out fell a large brown envelope. She sat on the floor and emptied it into her lap. It was a treasure trove. A pile of unopened letters fell out, all addressed in her mother’s neat handwriting to Yuri Nikolayevich Nahmov at an address she could not read. The envelopes were covered in Russian scrawl which she assumed said something like ‘return to sender’. The Russian date stamp on them covered a period from April to August 1961, only two years before. Yuri would have been twenty-two, she calculated, just coming into his stride as an adult. Had he sent them back himself or some unknown official?

‘Oh, Mum, how that must have broken your heart,’ she murmured, as tears filled her eyes. She could imagine her mother’s misery and disappointment at getting the letters back and her reluctance to destroy them, but at the same time she had not wanted to upset anyone else in the family and had hidden them away.

She set the letters aside, unwilling to open any of them, and turned to the rest of the contents, a few badly focused snapshots and some scraps of paper, one a certificate of Yuri’s birth and the other a certificate recording the union of Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov and Lydia Stoneleigh, stamped by someone in Moscow. There was also an official-looking letter in Russian on which her mother had written: ‘Notification that Kolya is dead and I am a widow.’

She picked up the first of the snapshots. Her mother, looking incredibly young, was hanging on the arm of a young man, smiling into the camera. So this was Kolya. She studied his features. He was young too, not tall, but slightly taller than his bride and round-faced, looking very pleased with himself. How had he died? Had her mother mourned his death? There was so much she did not know. Another picture was of three adults, Kolya, Lydia and another woman, curvaceous and slightly older than Lydia. Kolya had an arm about each of them. There was another of her mother nursing a baby, wrapped in a shawl. This, she had no doubt, was her half-brother. It was difficult to tell his colouring in a black and white photograph, but he appeared dark-haired. He was asleep so she couldn’t see his eyes. The next was an old sepia picture of an aristocratic lady in a long evening dress. She was wearing a heavy necklace and long earrings and on her head a tiara on the front of which sparkled the Kirilov Star. And another of her mother with a handsome young man. Her mother was wearing a lovely evening dress and looking young and starry-eyed and she was wearing the Star as a necklace. Judging by other photographs she had seen, the man was Alex Peters. It must have been taken before her parents met and married. Why had this one been hidden away? Had her mother loved Alex? How had she felt when he died? What had Dad made of it? How much of it did he know? How much did anyone really know about other people? All had their secrets, even her most open and above-board mother.

It was a revelation; first her mother’s confidences about how she had felt about her baby, the full extent of which Tatty had never realised, and then to find these letters and pictures. Poor Mum! She could imagine her return to Upstone after that trip to Russia, the tears, the guilt and sorrow, the settling down again to life in England, knowing her baby was in Russia at a time when the Germans were sweeping all before them. She must have suffered unbelievable anguish. Carefully, she returned everything to the trunk and found another case for her purpose.

Bobby, in his second year at Peterhouse, drove himself back to Cambridge, his little sports car so loaded with clothes, books and sports equipment there was no room for Tatty. Robert and Lydia took her in the Bentley, settled her in her room and made a long list of things she was going to need which she had forgotten, and then drove home to an empty house: no Claudia, no Bobby, no Tatty. It was eerie and unsettling.

In the next couple of days, Lydia did her best to act normally, but she was beginning to wonder what normal was. Her conversations with Robert were stilted and confined to practicalities. He spent a lot of time in the garden, talking to Percy, and doing odd jobs about the house, his demeanour one of forced cheerfulness. Lydia wanted to talk to him about what he had said, but every time the opportunity arose, she simply could not find the right words. And so nothing was said which might have eased the tension.

In the middle of the week, as if he could stand it no more, he told her he was going to sail round to Plymouth. After he had gone she went into the kitchen to make lunch for herself. The house was empty and silent: no voices, no laughter, no clatter, no overloud pop music which Robert deplored. Nothing. For the first time in her life, she felt alone. She kept herself busy for the rest of the day, slept badly that night and rose next morning to more of the same. She had hoped Robert would ring her the next day and be his usual cheerful self but the telephone remained silent. By lunchtime the following day, she realised he must be well on his way and would not ring until he returned to Ipswich. Unable to stay in the house, she picked up her bag and car keys and left, not knowing where she was going. She drove to Swaffham and went to the cinema. Driving home afterwards, she was sorely tempted to drive straight to Northacre Green, and might have done if she had not seen Claudia in the village and stopped to talk to her.

‘You must feel a bit flat now the fledglings have flown the nest,’ Claudia said, after they exchanged greetings.

‘Yes. I’ve just been to the pictures and was hating the idea of returning to an empty house.’

‘Isn’t Captain Conway at home?’

‘No, he’s gone to Ipswich.’

‘Oh, sailing.’

‘Yes. You know how he loves anything to do with the sea, and he was feeling at a low ebb after the children left.’

‘Come and have tea with me. We can have a good old chinwag. You can tell Claudia all your troubles. Reggie has gone to a meeting of the Upstone Horticultural Society.’

Lydia laughed. ‘I haven’t got any troubles.’

‘Then you must be the only one who hasn’t. Come anyway.’ She took Lydia’s arm and guided her along the street to one of the houses on the new housing estate.

Lydia could always talk to Claudia, who had been her comfort from the very beginning and had remained her comfort through thick and thin. But even she did not know Alex was alive and that she had seen him. Nor would she tell her, even though she knew she could trust her. The secret was a burden she did not want to put upon her friend who would be aghast that she had betrayed Robert. Nor could she tell her what Robert had said about their marriage. Instead they chatted about the wedding and taking Tatty to Girton, and the changes Reggie was making to their garden. ‘He’s digging a fish pond,’ Claudia said. ‘It’s going to have a fountain and a waterfall and a little stream.’ She laughed. ‘Just like Upstone Hall’s, only in miniature.’

It was late when Lydia finally went home and let herself in the house. Even though the building was two hundred years old, she had never thought of it as spooky before, but tonight it seemed as though there were ghosts in every corner. She switched on all the lights and was in the kitchen putting the percolator on to make a cup of coffee when the telephone rang. Wondering who could be ringing at that time of night, she went to answer it.

‘Mrs Conway?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Upstone Constabulary.’

Lydia’s thoughts jumped to Bobby and that sports car of his which he drove too fast. Had he had an accident? Or Tatty. Her daughter had never been away from home for any length of time before. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, unable to keep the panic from her voice.

‘I’m afraid your husband has been in an accident. Is it convenient to call on you?’

Robert, not the children, but that was still bad. ‘Of course, but can’t you tell me about it on the phone?’

‘Better not. We’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

Lydia put the phone down, shaking so much she couldn’t get it on the cradle at the first attempt. She sat on the bottom step of the stairs and waited. It seemed like the longest ten minutes of her life while her thoughts went incoherently round and round. The ringing of the doorbell startled her. She rose to answer it.

A uniformed policeman and a policewoman stood on the step. ‘Mrs Conway?’

She nodded without speaking and opened the door wider to admit them.

‘I’m Constable David Jackson, this is WPC Penny Brown,’ the young man said, as she led the way into the drawing room. ‘Earlier this evening we had a call from the Devon police. Your husband’s yacht has foundered off the South Devon coast and he is missing.’

‘Missing?’ she repeated in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. ‘What happened?’

The policewoman, who looked no older than Tatty, took her arm and led her to the sofa. ‘Sit down, Mrs Conway.’

Lydia dropped down onto the sofa with the young woman beside her. ‘We don’t know the details,’ she said. ‘The yacht has been found badly damaged on the rocks at Prawle Point. Your husband was not on board.’

‘He may yet be found safe and well,’ PC Jackson added.

‘But how can it have happened?’ Lydia asked. ‘He is an experienced seaman and knows that coast like the back of his hand. However rough the sea, he knows what to do and it wasn’t rough today, was it?’ She was talking for the sake of talking, but her mind was only half on what she was saying.

‘We don’t know what happened, Mrs Conway. We were given no details, simply told to come and inform you. It was better than learning it from a telephone call. We were asked to emphasise that it is early days and there is no reason at this time to surmise that your husband has perished.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What can we do for you?’ Penny asked. ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’

Lydia jumped up. ‘Goodness, the coffee percolator! I put it on before you rang.’ She dashed into the kitchen to rescue it, followed by Penny.

The pot had almost boiled dry and the coffee was undrinkable. Lydia put the kettle on to make a pot of tea. ‘I must go down there,’ she said. ‘I can’t sit around here waiting.’

‘How will you go?’

‘I’ll drive.’

‘It’s a long way. Have you got someone to go with you?’

‘Yes,’ she said, thinking of Claudia. ‘I must get in touch with my son and daughter. But not tonight. Tomorrow, when I know more. Robert may have turned up by then. They are both up at Cambridge.’

‘I should not delay telling them any longer than that,’ Penny said. ‘It might be on the TV news and they might see it or be told of it.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll do it before I leave.’

The tea was made and the mugs carried into the drawing room, where they sat drinking in awkward silence. Lydia tried hard to concentrate on what she needed to do: ring Tatty and Bob, and that was going to be difficult. Should she tell them to come home or stay where they were? But she wouldn’t be at home herself, better tell them to wait until she had more positive news. Then she must ring Claudia, probably get her out of bed, and ask her to keep her company, pack a bag, cancel the milk, leave a note for Percy about the hanging baskets and tell Mrs Harrington she wouldn’t be able to do the church flowers. From practicalities, her mind inevitably strayed to that last strange conversation she had had with Robert. Did that have any bearing on what had happened? ‘Forget it,’ he had said, but she couldn’t, could she?

Had he been hinting that their marriage was at an end? Surely nothing more sinister? Why had the boat foundered? Had he left it before that, or had he been injured and washed overboard by the impact? Had he been sailing alone? Where was he?

The two constables left at last, after she had assured them she was all right and not about to collapse or throw a fit. And then she rang her children. She tried to sound calm and optimistic, telling them not to worry, their father was bound to turn up. She promised to ring from Devon and tell them the latest news and where she could be contacted.

She repeated her questions to Detective Inspector Travis at Salcombe Police Station the following morning. She and Claudia had taken it in turns to drive and had arrived in the Devon seaside town at nine, hot, tired and hungry. They booked into a hotel and ordered breakfast, but Lydia found she could not eat. Her insides were stirred into a froth, wondering what she might learn, and she could not wait to find out. At the police station, she was told there was no news of Captain Conway. The Merry Maid had been recovered and would be examined.

‘Can I see it?’

‘There’s nothing to see, Mrs Conway, except a boat with a big hole in its hull and you would not be allowed on board until the forensic team have completed their examination. The young lady’s body has been taken to the mortuary.’

‘Young lady’s body?’ she echoed.

‘Yes. She was found in the cabin with a head wound. There will have to be a post-mortem naturally, and we cannot rule out foul play at this stage.’

‘Are you suggesting my husband might have…’

‘That’s impossible,’ Claudia put in indignantly. ‘The captain was the mildest of men. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘Do you know who she is?’ Lydia asked, ignoring her friend’s outburst.

‘No, we hoped you would know.’

‘Unless I see her I can’t say, can I? My husband had lots of different people to crew for him.’

‘Lydia, you can’t,’ Claudia protested. ‘Don’t put yourself through it. It doesn’t matter, does it?’

‘Of course it matters. I want to know who she is.’

The inspector agreed to take her to the mortuary to see if she could identify the unknown woman. ‘She was in shorts and T-shirt, with no means of identification on her,’ he said. ‘We would have expected her to have a bag with a purse, cards and keys, things like that, but nothing was found on the initial search. It might have been washed overboard. We are searching the coastline for that and…’ He stopped to open the door and usher Lydia in, followed by Claudia, who had no intention of being left outside.

The young woman was not known to Lydia. She shook her head and they went back to the police station. ‘Where was the boat found?’ she asked as she prepared to leave, having told the inspector where she was staying.

‘Just off Prawle Point. You might learn a little more at the coastguard station there.’

Lydia was functioning on adrenalin and would not listen to Claudia’s suggestion she ought to go back to the hotel and catch up on lost sleep. ‘I’ll go when I know,’ she said, irritable with tiredness. Claudia gave in and followed her back to the car. They drove to the car park, as close to the point as they could, and scrambled over the rocks to the lookout station, on the cliffs high above the beach. They were met by one of the officers. Lydia identified herself and subjected him to the same barrage of questions.

‘They have hauled the boat out of the water for examination,’ he said. ‘There’s a huge hole in its side where it hit the rocks.’ He pointed at the jagged coastline as he spoke.

‘I can’t understand my husband letting that happen,’ Lydia said. From that vantage point they could see the Merry Maid, on its side on the beach, swarming with men in protective gear and life jackets. ‘My husband was in the navy all through the war and he’s been sailing ever since. He knows this coastline as well as anyone and he certainly knows how to read a chart. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Perhaps our examination will reveal the answer,’ he soothed.

‘And why wasn’t he on board? Knowing him, I am sure he would have stayed to try and avoid the rocks.’

‘It is possible he had already gone overboard before the boat hit the rocks,’ he said. ‘Are you familiar with the boat, Mrs Conway?’

‘I’ve been on board a few times but I’ve never sailed in her. I’m a dreadful sailor. It’s why my husband had to find others to crew for him. Sometimes our son or daughter would go with him, but since they have grown up and found their own interests…’ Her voice tailed off.

‘Why don’t you and your friend go and find something to eat?’ he suggested. ‘We can find you if we have any news. The Pigs Nose serves reasonable pub grub.’

They went to the strangely named public house and sat over a ploughman’s lunch for which neither had any appetite and then returned. There was no news. If Robert had been able to swim ashore, he would have done it long before now, she thought. The alternative was too dreadful to contemplate.

‘If…’ Lydia gulped. ‘If it’s a body you are looking for, how long will it be before it’s washed up?’

‘It depends on wind and tide. We have people watching the most likely places.’ He didn’t say that it might never resurface, but she knew it. People did disappear without trace. Had it been intentional? A way of escape from a situation which had become unbearable? But surely he was too honourable to do that to her and the children.

There was nothing they could do and they returned to the hotel where Lydia telephoned Tatty. ‘I’ll get leave and come down,’ Tatty said.

‘No, darling, there’s nothing you can do and I don’t know where I’ll be. I’ll ring you again later.’ She did not want her daughter to join her, didn’t want her knowing about that unknown woman, though she supposed it would come out eventually. It could, of course, be an entirely innocent relationship, captain and crew, nothing more. Why did she find it so difficult to believe that?

Bob was easier to persuade. He was completely confident of his father’s skill and knowledge of the coast. ‘If he was washed overboard, he would swim away from the rocks,’ he said. ‘He’s probably landed in some cove further up the coast, miles from a telephone. Ring me back as soon as you know something. If you need me to come home, of course I’ll come at once and bring Tatty with me.’

She rang off and went up to her room where she fell onto the bed. She did not expect to sleep, but sheer exhaustion saw to it that she did, but even that was disturbed by a nightmare. She was in the sea and so were Robert and their children, all struggling to keep afloat. She could see the yacht bobbing up and down on the waves on its side and Robert was trying to herd them all towards it. But though they swam as hard as they could, the vessel seemed as far away as ever. It was the children she was worried about. They were only small and flagging badly. Robert left her to save them. She felt the water closing over her and woke up with a start, gasping for breath. She had become tangled up in the bedclothes.

Sitting up, she switched on the bedside light. It was five o’clock in the morning. There was no sense in trying to go back to sleep. Every time she shut her eyes, she could see and feel the oily waves closing over her. She put the light out and went to sit by the open window. Dawn was breaking. Everywhere was bathed in a pink light. Not a breath of wind stirred the tree in the hotel garden with its picnic tables and benches, looking forlorn now that summer was gone.

‘Robert,’ she murmured, watching the sun come up over the rooftops. ‘Where are you? I want to say I’m truly sorry I couldn’t be the wife you wanted. But did you have to take such a nubile, young crew member on board?’ She got up stiffly from the hard chair, showered and dressed, then went along the corridor to knock on Claudia’s door. ‘Are you awake?’

They stayed in the area three days and still there was no sign of Robert. One question was answered. She was told the steering gear had broken on the Merry Maid and that was probably why Robert had not been able to steer away from the rocks with a strong wind and current carrying the yacht towards them. He might even have slipped into the water to try and see if he could mend it, leaving his crewmate on board. He could have been swept away and there was nothing the young lady could do to save the vessel. She had died from a blow to the head when the boat struck and knocked her against the bulwark. Traces of blood on the woodwork seemed to bear this out. Foul play had been discounted.

‘Have you found out who she was?’

‘Yes, we found her bag in one of the lockers under a sleeping bag. It was sodden, of course. Her name is Pamela Osborne. We have contacted her parents and there will be an inquest. I have no doubt the verdict will be accidental death. We cannot, of course, assume the captain’s demise.’

‘I understand.’

And so they waited. Mr and Mrs Osborne were coming down for the inquest of their daughter and Lydia did not want to meet them. ‘I’m going back to London,’ she told Claudia. ‘There may be some clues in the flat.’

The clues were everywhere: toiletries in the bathroom, clothes in the wardrobes, a copy of Vogue on the occasional table, high-heeled shoes kicked off under the kitchen table. Whoever she was, Pamela Osborne had been perfectly at home. Lydia felt sick. And Claudia was indignant.

‘The bugger!’ she said. ‘Who’d have believed it?’

Lydia refrained from saying ‘I would’.

‘Let’s go home,’ she said, resisting the temptation to sweep it all away, and leaving everything as it was. If Robert came back safe and well, she did not want him to think she had been snooping. But how to deal with it if he did?

Robert’s body was washed up two days later, found by early-morning swimmers in a sandy cove a few miles along the coast. Lydia made the long trip back to Devon to identify it. By now the media had hold of the story and there was no hushing up the fact that he had not been alone on the boat and they were making the most of it. ‘What happened on the Merry Maid?’ one headline asked. This was followed by a salacious story about Pamela Osborne, who had often been seen in Robert’s company, both in London and in Ipswich where the boat was usually moored. She was a model who had had several other alliances. Robert’s naval career, his marriage to Lydia and the fact that she was a considerable heiress were all picked over and analysed. They asked Lydia for interviews, which she declined. Even so, there were pictures of her going into the inquest in Salcombe’s coroner’s court accompanied by her son and daughter. It was a dreadful time. In the glare of the spotlight, they could not even grieve properly.

The inquest did not last long. Boating experts testified that the steering gear had been faulty before the impact and that the injuries to Robert’s head were commensurate with his having been hit by the rudder as the boat veered in the current. It was assumed he had entered the water to try and mend the steering. A doctor testified that he thought the deceased had been knocked unconscious by the blow but not killed. His lungs were full of water and death was due to drowning. A verdict of accidental death was recorded.

It was over. Lydia felt numb, though she managed a smile of reassurance for Bob and Tatty when they asked anxiously if she were all right. They left the courtroom to be faced with a barrage of cameras and reporters. Questions were fired at them from all directions. Lydia had asked their solicitor to be present and he made a statement saying the family were relieved by the verdict and hoped they would now be allowed some privacy to grieve. Then they hurried to their car and Bob drove them home in the Bentley to arrange the funeral. Robert’s body would be conveyed home later in the day.

No one had much to say on the journey. Bob exchanged a few low words now and again with Claudia who had insisted on coming and was sitting beside him. Tatty, in the back, was valiantly trying to hold back her tears. Lydia, holding her hand, sat immersed in tumbled thoughts; past, present and future all competed for her attention. It seemed an age since she had first gone to Devon, an age in which she had waited, throwing questions, demanding answers from the police and coastguard while she waited for news, not knowing when it would come or even if it would come at all. Everything went through her tortured mind: the manner of their first meeting, their marriage, having the children, through all of which Robert had supported her. It hadn’t all been bad, most of it had been good. It really hadn’t started to go wrong until after her father’s death. Had he been the one holding it together? Or was it when she realised Alex was alive? Had Robert known that? Or was it when Robert met Pamela? How long ago was that? How serious was their relationship? She would never know now.

After the watershed of the funeral what would she do with her life? She would have probate and the will to sort out and she would have to go to the flat and send Pamela’s things to Mr and Mrs Osborne. And then what? Go on doing what she had been doing for years: look after the house and garden, go to Women’s Institute meetings, serve on the committee for Upstone’s annual fete, continue as a governor of the infant school, support her favourite charities with coffee mornings, and work one day a week in the Oxfam shop. All that had once been fulfilling and had rarely involved Robert, so what was different?

Inevitably her thoughts turned to Alex. She had received a very short letter of condolence from him after he had read the news in the papers. It was formally worded, as if he were afraid it would be read by others. She longed for him, longed for him in a way a child turns to a parent for comfort when hurt, knowing it would never be refused. But she could not go to him. She had not been able to go to him again while Robert was alive, still less could she go now he was dead. It made her betrayal seem infinitely worse.

The funeral at Upstone church was well attended. Most of the congregation were Upstone people and naval and yachting friends who had known Robert, but there was a scattering of people who had read about the death and inquest in the papers and were curious to see how the widow handled herself.

Lydia conducted herself with quiet dignity. She was calm, almost numb, as she went through the ritual of the service and the interment. The last time something like it had happened was for her father’s funeral and there had been a ghost present. She glanced towards the yew. There was no one there. Turning back to the grave, she laid a single white rose from the Upstone Hall gardens on the coffin as it was lowered. ‘Goodbye, Robert,’ she murmured. ‘You were the best of husbands. Rest in peace and love.’ It was what she had written on the card on her wreath.

She stood as others filed past, several of them stooping to pick up a handful of soil and sprinkle it on the coffin, and then, half supporting, half being supported by Tatty, she walked back to the car.

Alex had decided it was best to stay away, although, as a friend of Robert’s, it would not have been out of place for him to go. He feared upsetting Lydia even more than she must be upset already. He had read the gossip and his heart went out to her. He would have liked nothing better than to go and help her endure it, but knew it would be inappropriate and the media would have a field day. He threw himself into a frenzy of work, cleaning out the pig pens until they were almost as pristine as the bathroom in the house. He built two new hen coops and hoed the rows between the vegetables. The Brussels sprouts were ready for picking and he would have to get in some casual labour to help with that.

When he could not find anything more to do, he set off across the heath with his dog at his heels and sat for an hour or two in the pub. He had brought Lydia here on that last weekend. They had been happy in their way, though speaking of the future had been taboo. How long before he saw her again? Could he go to her at some time when everything had settled down, or must he wait until she came to him? Waiting would be almost unbearable, but going to Upstone only to be turned away would be worse.

The landlord called time. He got up and went home, followed by the faithful Patch.

Chapter Fourteen

Lydia was helping the staff at Upstone Infant School to decorate the Christmas tree. Missing her children more than she could say, she had volunteered to help in any capacity the headmaster might choose to use her. With children around her, she always felt more cheerful. Life did go on, after all.

The tree had been donated by the local nursery and it had taken two strong men to bring it in and erect it in the corner of the assembly hall. It almost reached the ceiling and there was only enough space for the traditional fairy on the top. A box of coloured baubles and a string of lights had been brought out of their hiding place from last year. ‘We’ll have to buy new ones soon,’ the headmaster said. ‘These are beginning to look rather shabby. Still, with the lights shining on them they won’t look too bad.’

Rosie Jarvis, who was a dinner lady and whose main job was serving meals and washing up, was hauling a bundle of tangled red, green and gold streamers out of another box. ‘Shall I put these up, Mr Groves?’

‘Yes, if you like, but you’ll need the steps and Mrs Conway is using them. Wait until she’s finished.’

It was raining, cold sleety rain, and there was no playtime outside today, so they were working surrounded by children, some of whom were offering gratuitous advice, others dancing round in excitement. When the tree had been decorated to everyone’s satisfaction, including fake parcels about its base, the lights were switched on amid cheers. Mr Groves blew his whistle and the children, ranging in age from five to eleven, were immediately silent. He ordered them to set out the chairs for the parents who would be coming for the carol concert and then find their places. For a few minutes it seemed chaotic, but chairs miraculously appeared in neat rows facing the stage. A little more scrambling and all the children were up on the stage, standing in three rows, tallest at the back, the little ones at the front.

Lydia took her seat on the side of the first row as the parents filed in and the concert began. Even the boys looked angelic, though one of them had his socks about his ankles and his school tie awry. He was about eight, she supposed, blond and rosy-cheeked. Seeing her watching him, he gave her a cheeky grin. She smiled back and from then it seemed he was singing Away in a Manger especially for her.

The carol telling of the baby born in a cattle shed reminded her of Yuri, though it had not been a cattle shed but a room in an attic. Had he been born in England, he would have had a proper crib and everything an infant might need: the finest baby clothes, pram, toys, medical attention whenever it became necessary. And she would have been well-nourished enough to feed him properly. He had had nothing like that at Kirilhor, where hunger and the search for food had dominated their lives to the exclusion of almost everything else.

When the singing was over, the children helped to serve their mothers with tea and cakes which the mothers themselves had contributed. They had also been instructed to smile and answer the grown-ups’ questions politely. The little boy came to Lydia holding out a plate of cakes which looked as if they might slide off onto the floor at any minute. Lydia straightened it up for him and helped herself to a pink-iced fairy cake. ‘Thank you, young man. I enjoyed the singing.’

‘We’ve been practising for ages and ages.’

‘And you would rather have been out playing, I’ve no doubt.’

‘Yes. I’m going to be a famous footballer when I grow up.’

‘I hope you are.’ She smiled. ‘You are quite a big boy already. How old are you?’

‘Eight and three-quarters.’

‘We mustn’t forget the quarters,’ she said. ‘What do you want for Christmas?’

‘A new bike. And some football boots.’

‘You’ll have to be good to get those.’

‘I know.’ It was said with a heavy sigh. ‘I’ve got to go now.’ He moved off to offer the cakes to someone else.

Lydia watched him go. Another Christmas, another year passing, and she still longed for the child she had lost. She had Tatty and Bob, and she loved them dearly, but that did not stop her wondering what had become of her firstborn. Twenty-four years it had been, and the only memory she had of him was of a toothless baby who was not as heavy as he should have been.

This would be the first Christmas without Robert, and Lydia didn’t know how she was going to cope. Bobby and Tatty would be home and she had to make it good for them. And she had to stop thinking about Alex. It was easier decided than done. She imagined him at his smallholding, going about his daily tasks, taking the dog across the heath. Did he still think of her, or had he given her up as a lost cause? She couldn’t go to him. It was too soon, much too soon. How could she tell Bobby and Tatty there was another man in her life, a man who had been there from the beginning and had never truly gone away? She had stayed away from Northacre Green, though the temptation to go to him was at times so overpowering she had to find something to do to keep her away: a meeting to attend, or someone ill in the village who needed a visit, a carol concert in the village school.

In all the noise and jollity going on around her, she felt her misery again and tears pricking her eyelids. Was anywhere proof against her melancholy?

Making her excuses, she left the school to walk home. She would make a cup of tea and do the jigsaw she had started on the day before. It was a big one, a thousand pieces it said on the box. It depicted a farmyard with a tractor, chickens and a dog lying outside its kennel. There were trees in the background and cobbles in the foreground and the sun was casting a dappled shade over all. It was going to be difficult, but that was the whole point of it. It would keep her occupied and keep her mind off Alex. Perhaps she should do as Tatty had often suggested and write her life story, not for publication, but simply to channel her thoughts into a more positive direction. But doing that involved Alex. Everything involved Alex.

The rain had stopped, though the wind was icy cold, coming as it was straight off the North Sea. She had known cold far worse in Russia and she did not mind it. She considered herself completely British, had done so almost all her life, and yet the pull of her roots was strong. She could not quite forget the land of her birth, perhaps because Yuri was there. She imagined him growing up, leaving school, finding himself a job. Why, he might even be married!

‘Lydia, where are you off to in such a hurry?’ Claudia’s voice brought her to a standstill. ‘Running to catch a train, are you?’

Lydia laughed. ‘No, trying to keep out the cold. How are you? How’s Reggie?’

‘We’re fine. I’ve just got off the bus. Christmas shopping.’ She held up two loaded carrier bags. ‘How about you?’

‘OK. I’ve just been to the carol concert at the school. I went every year when the children were there.’

‘I know.’ She looked closely into Lydia’s face. The wind had whipped the colour into her cheeks but, as usual, her eyes gave her away. ‘Come home with me. Warm yourself up and let’s have a chat.’

‘Chat? What about?’

‘This and that.’ She took Lydia’s arm and Lydia went without protest.

‘Now,’ Claudia said, when they were in her small sitting room nursing cups of tea. ‘Tell me how you’ve really been getting on. And remember it’s me, Claudia, you’re talking to.’

Lydia laughed. ‘I hate the empty nest, especially now Robert’s gone.’

‘Bobby and Tatty will be back for the holiday, won’t they?’

‘Of course. And I mean to make it as happy a time as I can under the circumstances.’

‘You will. You always have. But there’s more, isn’t there?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You’re not brooding over that girl, are you? What’s her name? Pamela Osborne.’

‘No. I don’t think about her at all. And it was no more than I deserved.’

‘Whatever nonsense is that?’

Lydia gulped a mouthful of hot tea. It would be so good to tell someone. ‘You remember Alex?’

‘Of course I remember Alex. You’re going to tell me he’s alive, aren’t you?’

Lydia stared at her in astonishment. ‘How did you know?’

‘I saw him. On the day of your father’s funeral. That’s why you fainted, wasn’t it?’

Lydia nodded. ‘I didn’t know you’d seen him too. I thought he was a ghost.’

‘I take it you’ve seen him again.’

‘Yes. Twice.’ She went on to explain the circumstances. ‘I kept away,’ she finished. ‘I had to. It wasn’t fair on Robert.’

‘Robert’s gone, Lydia. And you are being foolish. I know how you feel about Alex. I’ve always known.’

‘How many other people knew?’

‘Sir Edward, I should think, perhaps Robert, but that’s about it. Why would anyone else know? It makes no difference. What is important is what do you intend to do about it?’

‘Nothing. What can I do? The children—’

‘They are not children anymore, Lydia, and they are busy leading their own lives. Given the chance I bet they’d understand.’

‘It’s too soon.’

‘For goodness’ sake, go to him,’ Claudia said. ‘You are free, Robert’s gone and he had been playing you false, so you go to Alex. You deserve some happiness after all you’ve been through.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘No. You’ll get in your car and go now.’ She stood up and took the cup and saucer from her. ‘You don’t have to tell Bobby and Tatty yet.’

What Claudia was advising was so close to her own desires, she wavered. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, would it? Just to go to him, see how he was, let him know that if he still wanted her, she might, sometime in the future… Somehow she found herself out on the pavement and Claudia was waving her goodbye from the door. She dithered more than once on the way home, but her car was standing in the drive and it was full of petrol. She got in and drove to Northacre Green, eager and yet half-afraid.

Twice on the way she pulled into a lay-by and sat undecided whether to go on. It was not her feelings she doubted, but her sense of right and wrong, her scruples. She had betrayed Robert; would going on betray Bobby and Tatty? How could she do this to them so soon after their father’s tragic death? Going on would be making a commitment. It would change everything; she would not, could not keep it a secret. Where would it lead? To strife with her children? Was she ready for that? She almost turned back, but then she remembered what it was like to be in Alex’s arms and the enticement of that was too much to resist. She drove on.

The gate to the smallholding was wide open. She turned in, stopped the engine and sat a minute to still her fastbeating heart. Supposing he was out, should she wait or go home? Supposing he no longer cared. It had been so long… The door of the cottage opened and he stood on the threshold, waiting for her, as he had always waited for her, and simply opened his arms. She scrambled from the car and ran into them and was enfolded.

The sheer ecstasy of their reunion told her all she wanted to know. The years rolled away and they were young again, making love, talking non-stop, laughing at each other’s jokes, drinking wine and tea and making love all over again. Only later, when they had both calmed down and they were sitting at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee, did he tell her about the letter. ‘Do you believe in fate, Lidushka?’ he asked.

She laughed. ‘You mean, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will”?’ She paused to consider. ‘Yes, I suppose I must, after all that’s happened to us. Why do you ask?’

‘Because when you arrived, I was debating whether to write to you or come over and see you, and here you are, saving me from having to make the decision.’

‘Why were you thinking it today especially?’

‘Oh, don’t think I haven’t had that same debate every day since I learnt of Robert’s death. But today there was a special reason. Do you remember me speaking of my friend, Leonid Orlov?’

‘Yes, he helped you when you came out of Siberia.’

‘I received a letter from him today. Goodness’ knows how he managed it but it came via the diplomatic bag. It’s amazing the number of pies he’s got his fingers in. It enclosed a letter for you from Yuri.’

‘Yuri!’

‘Yes. It’s sitting up there.’ He nodded towards the mantelpiece where an envelope was propped against the clock.

She jumped to her feet and snatched it up. He watched as she slit it open and read it, quickly the first time, then more slowly. ‘Olga’s dead,’ she said. ‘She confessed the truth before she died. He says he found it hard to believe, but he wants me to write to him. He wants the story from me. Oh, Alex!’ Tears blinded her and she could not read anymore. She groped for his hand and he took it and squeezed it.

He remained silent while she recovered herself and read the letter again. ‘Why did it come through your friend?’

‘Leo has kept an eye on Yuri, watched over his development and made sure he fulfilled his potential. It was to Leo Yuri turned after Olga made her revelation, and I suppose he confirmed the truth of what she had said. I imagine he was one angry young man.’

‘I would be angry too, except that I’m too happy. Oh, Alex, I must write to him at once.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather go and see him?’

She stared at him. ‘Alex, you can’t mean it.’

‘Leo thinks it’s possible. You have to be invited through official channels but Leo says he can manage that. Things are a lot easier since Stalin’s death. Relations with the West are thawing, thanks to Khrushchev, who has opened up international trade and cultural contacts never allowed before. There is to be a trade conference at the beginning of February in Kiev and Leo says he can invite me onto that as an agriculturist, with Foreign Office approval at this end. I think I can wangle that. Leo suggests I put you down as my personal assistant.’

‘But I know nothing about being a PA.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I don’t know much about agriculture. Are you on?’

‘But won’t you be arrested?’

‘I don’t see why I should be. I’m Alex Peters, it says so on my British passport. And you are Lydia Conway, also a British subject. Of course, we shall be given a minder, set to watch what we are up to, but we should be able to give him or her the slip with Leo’s help, so what do you say?’

‘Oh, Alex, need you ask? But Bobby and Tatty…’

‘They’ll be back at college by then.’

‘I know, but I’d have to tell them why I’m going and that means…’

‘Telling them about me,’ he finished for her.

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t you?’ He was searching her face and she feared to hurt him.

‘They know about you because your pictures are in the family album. They were told you were a family friend who had died in the war. I wish I had realised then how much I really loved you, I would never have married Kolya.’

‘Then your life would have been very different. You would not have had Yuri.’

‘That’s what Tatty said once, when I said I should not have let you persuade me to leave Russia; she said then I would not have married her father and she and Bobby would never have been born. I cannot regret that, Alex.’

‘Of course not.’ He paused. ‘We were talking about introducing me to your children.’

It was what had been worrying her all along. Could she? How would they react? ‘They loved their father…’

‘Of course they did, but they are grown-up now and making their own way. I doubt if they’ll live at home again and you are entitled to make a new life for yourself.’

He was right, but it still felt like a betrayal. But if she and Alex were to have a future together without secrecy, then it had to be done. ‘Would you like to spend Christmas with us?’ she said. ‘As a family friend who was thought to be dead but has suddenly turned up again, I mean.’

He grinned. ‘Family friend is a start, I suppose.’ He knew Lydia would not marry him in anything like a hurry. He would have to court her slowly, taking her out, joining in family occasions as she thought fit, getting to know Bobby and Tatty, treading on eggshells. But he would wear her down in the end.

‘You know I can’t tell them anything else. Not yet. Come in time to go to church with us on Christmas morning at ten-thirty. I’ll prepare the ground.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this.’

He stood up and took the coffee cups to the sink and ran water into them. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

They walked and ate and then she said she ought to go home. He helped her on with her coat, wrapping it about her from behind so that she was almost in his arms. ‘Don’t go.’ His voice murmuring in her ear was so close his warm breath made her shiver and sent seductive messages to the very core of her, demanding to be answered. ‘You haven’t got anything to go home for, have you?’

She squirmed round to face him. ‘There’s all sorts of things…’

‘But none that can’t wait, surely?’

So she stayed, and the next morning she drove back to Upstone Hall, a very different woman from the one who had left it. She was rejuvenated, gloriously and ecstatically happy, except for one thing. Telling Bobby and Tatty there would be a guest for Christmas, unsure how they would react.

And then, when it came to it, she found it easier than she expected. Both Bobby and Tatty wanted to invite a friend and there would be six of them. Bobby had a girlfriend called Eva and Tatty’s boyfriend was Andrew. Lydia could not help it, she laughed until the tears ran down her face.

‘Mum, what’s the matter?’ Tatty asked.

‘Nothing. It’s strange the way things happen. I wasn’t sure how you would feel about adding to our threesome…’

‘And we were thinking the same,’ Bobby said. ‘We knew Christmas wouldn’t be the same without Dad and so we thought it ought to be totally different.’

‘How clever and thoughtful of you both.’

‘How did you find out that Alex hadn’t died?’ Tatty asked.

‘He was your father’s friend as well as mine and Grandpa’s, you know. He saw the announcement of his funeral and wrote to offer condolences. I answered and that was it. He had a terrible time during the war and afterwards, but no doubt he’ll tell you that himself. But the amazing thing is that he’s found Yuri for me. I’ve had a letter from him.’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Tatty said, remembering the pile of letters and pictures in the attic which she had never divulged seeing. Some things were becoming clearer. ‘How fantastic!’

In the event, there were eight people gathered for Christmas dinner, which was eaten at one o’clock after everyone had been to church: Lydia, Alex, Bob and Eva, Tatty and Andrew, Claudia and Reggie. It was noisy and argumentative in a cheerful way. Lydia, listening to them, smiled to herself. They hadn’t done too badly, this little family of hers. Bob and Eva were so obviously in love, she didn’t think it would be long before they became engaged. She didn’t think Tatty’s heart was engaged but that was a good thing; she was still very young. She liked Andrew, though. He was a little older than Bobby, self-assured and undoubtedly well off, not to mention good-looking. As for Alex, dearest Alex, he was putting on a tremendous act, making her feel guilty that she asked it of him. But Bobby and Tatty liked him, she could tell, and from that fragile beginning, she hoped they might come to accept him as their mother’s lover.

After Christmas dinner, they all took their drinks into the drawing room where the tree stood glittering with lights and baubles, as it had done every year throughout Lydia’s childhood and her children’s too. ‘I’ll be Father Christmas,’ Tatty said.

There were presents for everyone. Books seemed to be favourite, chosen with care to match the interests of the receiver. There were silly puzzles, gloves, scarves, liqueur chocolates, ornaments and pictures. Tatty had bought her mother an evening shawl. It was gossamer-fine in a multitude of colours merging one into the other like a rainbow. ‘Oh, darling, how pretty this is. Thank you.’

‘You can wear it when you go dancing with Alex.’

Lydia glanced at Alex and met his answering smile. Tatty, the sensitive one, had already guessed and she didn’t mind. ‘How do you know I’m going dancing with Alex?’ she asked.

‘Well, you always used to, didn’t you?’

‘Well, yes, but that was when I was very young.’

‘You’re never too old to dance, Mum.’

‘No.’ Alex laughed. ‘It’s a date, Lydia. We go dancing.’ He fetched another parcel from the back of the tree and put it into Lydia’s lap before returning to his seat beside her.

She undid the ribbon and unwrapped it. It contained a framed copy of the entry in Leonid’s book: the picture of her father and grandmother posing with the tsar and tsarina and the notes about the Kirilov Star. She stared at it, lost in wonder. ‘Alex, where did you find this?’

‘It was in a book Leo had. He had it copied for me and included it with the letter from Yuri. I had it framed.’

‘Wow!’ Bobby said, from over her shoulder. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Translate,’ Tatty demanded.

‘You do it,’ Lydia said to Alex.

He did it easily when she might have stumbled, not only because her Russian was rusty but because she was so choked with emotion. When he finished he put it back into her hands.

‘Oh, Alex, how thoughtful of you.’ She reached up and kissed his cheek. Christmas had turned out to be better than ever she could have hoped.

In the first week of February, they flew to Moscow, touching down at Vnukovo Airport late in the evening, and queued up in the vast marble terminus to have their passports and entry documents checked. That done, they were met by their host, who had been standing on the other side of the hall waiting for them to be released into his care. Leonid Pavlovich Orlov was a thickset man wearing a thick tweed coat, a fur hat and knee-length boots. He greeted Alex effusively, hugging him and kissing him on both cheeks. ‘Alexei, my friend, you are welcome once again,’ he said in English, then turned to Lydia. ‘And this must be Lydia. Welcome to Russia, Lydia.’

‘Thank you.’ Lydia held out her right hand. He grasped it, but instead of shaking it, used it to pull her to him in a bear hug which took her by surprise.

‘Welcome! Welcome!’ he said again, releasing her. ‘Now, come. Katya is preparing a feast for us.’ He picked up her case and led the way to a huge limousine which was parked at the kerb. Its driver got out and took their cases to stow them in the boot, while Leonid opened the door for Lydia. She climbed in, followed by Alex. Leo got in beside the driver and the big car drew slowly away from the kerb.

Once away from the airport they were soon driving at what Lydia considered a breakneck speed through a dark landscape covered in snow.

Moscow, when they reached it half an hour later, was ill-lit and she was able to see little more than the road ahead, which was clogged with traffic, and the footpaths either side, flanked by shops and buildings, some old, many new. The pools of light from the street lamps illuminated pedestrians: men in thick padded coats, felt boots and astrakhan hats with ear flaps. Some women were in fur coats and matching hats, others were less ostentatiously clad, some distinctly ragged. A beggar sat against a doorway, a placard round his neck; a young woman hurried along carrying a baby on her back wrapped in a shawl; soldiers in grey uniforms and jackboots stood on corners. Young and old, they barely afforded the big car a glance. Nothing had changed and yet everything had.

‘Here we are,’ Leonid said, as they drew to a stop outside a tall ornate building.

Leonid occupied an apartment on the top floor. It was luxurious by Russian standards, though Lydia deplored the decor. It was noisy with clashing colour; there were ornaments all over the place, thick cloths covered the tables on which stood vases of artificial flowers. That was understandable, she decided, it was the middle of winter, after all. It was also overheated and she was glad to be relieved of her fur coat and hat.

Katya Orlova was a rotund woman with a small round head and hardly any neck. Her cheeks were rosy, perhaps from bending over the stove, and her hair was dyed very black. She obviously had a soft spot for Alex because she pulled him to her plump bosom and kissed him effusively, followed by rapid speech in Russian which Alex answered, laughing and disengaging himself to bring Lydia forward. ‘This is Lydia Conway. Lydia, Katya Orlova.’

Katya shook hands with Lydia, bidding her welcome and hoping she would enjoy her stay and take a good report back to England.

‘Thank you.’

‘Speak English,’ Leo commanded his wife. Then to Lydia, ‘Katya speaks good English. We both do. Alexei taught us when we were in Siberia.’

‘Yes, he told me. You speak it very well.’

‘Thank you. Now, I will show you round the apartment and where you will sleep, while Katya finishes the cooking.’

The apartment took up the whole floor of the building. As she followed him round, Lydia found herself wondering about the sleeping arrangements. Had their host assumed she and Alex were living together? Was that accepted in Russia?

She was answered when Leo threw open a door. ‘Lydia, you will sleep here,’ he said. ‘My friend, Alexei, will have the room next to this.’ He laughed and thumped Alex on the back. ‘You will be close, eh? The bathroom is at the end of the corridor. You will wish to wash and change. Your cases are in your rooms. Come back to us when you are ready.’ And with that he turned and left them.

They stood facing each other. Alex laughed. ‘He is not the soul of tact, is he? But he means well.’ He stepped into her room, pulled her in and shut the door. ‘Alone at last.’

Lydia laughed. ‘Alex, don’t be silly.’

‘I’m not. We’ve been together all day and I haven’t kissed you once.’ And he proceeded to make up for lost time.

She squirmed away from him, somehow uncomfortable making love under someone else’s roof. ‘I must wash and change. I feel grubby and unkempt, and we mustn’t keep our hosts waiting for their supper.’

He sighed. ‘OK. I’ll leave you. Don’t take too long in the bathroom or I’ll come and join you.’ He blew her a kiss and departed.

She had brought only two dresses suitable for evening wear: a soft dove-grey crêpe and a blue silk. Less than an hour later, refreshed and dressed in the blue silk and with her hair neatly rolled into a pleat, she rejoined her host. Alex was already with him. He stopped speaking in mid-sentence to turn towards her and whistle appreciatively, raising his glass of vodka to her in salute before taking a mouthful. The men in Russia drank vodka whatever time of day it was and seemed to be able to put away vast quantities of it with little effect.

The thick cloth on the table had been covered with white damask and laid with cutlery and soup bowls for four. Katya came in carrying a huge pan of steaming soup and set it on the table. Leonid beckoned Lydia to take her place. The soup was delicious. Lydia asked what was in it. ‘It is solyanka,’ Katya said. ‘It is made from chicken and ham with potatoes, pickled cucumber, onions and tomato, olives, lemon and soured cream. You like it?’

‘Very much.’ It would have made a meal in itself, but that was followed by a gargantuan main course of meatballs in a rich sauce with heaps of vegetables, all washed down with an oversweet wine. She was not allowed to stop there. Katya disappeared and returned with a plate of pancakes and insisted Lydia had at least one. It was filled with berries and honey and topped with soured cream. Having eaten it, she put her cutlery down feeling ready to burst.

There had been little conversation over the meal, as if eating was more important than talk and they could not do both at once, but as they sat over the remains, finishing off the wine, reticence was overcome. Lydia thanked them for the meal and laughingly said she would become very fat if she stayed with them very long, which they took as a compliment. ‘I am grateful to you for being such generous hosts,’ she added. ‘You know why I have come to Russia again?’

‘Yes, Alexei has told us. He told us all about you. We feel we know you already.’

‘And I you, and I must thank you for the copy of the picture and article you sent to England. It meant a lot to me.’

‘You are welcome.’

‘But I am anxious to know about Yuri.’

‘Of course you are. He had a poor childhood, but he did well on his own merit. He attended Moscow State Technical University and was an outstanding student. After graduating he went to work in my electronics factory in Kiev.’

‘That was good of you.’

‘Not at all. I promised Alexei when we parted that I would do what I could for him, in the name of friendship, you understand, but also because Russia needs brilliant engineers. He has done very well. His mother can be proud of him.’

‘Oh, I am. When shall I see him?’

‘I have arranged for him to be given some leave. You are to meet him at Kirilhor the day after tomorrow.’

‘Kirilhor!’

He grinned. ‘I thought you might like to see it again.’

‘Oh, I shall, but how…?’

‘We fly to Kiev tomorrow and must attend the first session of the conference for appearance’s sake,’ he explained. ‘Then I will keep your minder busy so you can slip away and catch the train to Petrovsk. I have some Russian clothes for you. You will be less conspicuous in those.’ It was said with an appreciative look at her evening dress.

‘You seem to have thought of everything and I am truly grateful,’ Lydia said. She rose to her feet. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I think I shall go to bed.’

Both men rose and kissed her cheek. She hugged Katya and was gone, to lay in bed too excited to sleep. She was going to see Yuri and it was Alex who had brought it about. Dearest, devoted Alex…

Petrovsk had changed little since Lydia had last been there. The paint on the wooden houses was still flaking, the windows were still cracked, the hotel even more sleazy. The church and the school had not changed, not even their paint by the look of it. The tarmac on the roads was cracked and broken and full of potholes.

It did not fill Lydia with confidence and she expected Kirilhor to be even more of a ruin than it had been when she last saw it; instead she found a substantial house, its roof the dark green of the forest, its wooden walls painted white, its many windows reflecting the low sun of a winter morning. Its garden was well kept, its gravel drive free of weeds. ‘It’s been restored,’ she murmured in surprise. ‘Are you sure Yuri is here?’

He smiled. ‘We might find out if we knock on the door.’ He took her arm because she seemed to be holding back. ‘Come on, sweetheart, what is there to be afraid of?’

The door was opened by Yuri himself, who had been warned by Leo to expect them. Lydia stood and drank in the sight of him. If she felt like throwing herself into his arms, she was constrained, not only by shyness but by his expression. It was wooden. ‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked.

‘My mother.’ It was said without inflexion, a mere statement of fact engendering no emotion.

This was not what Lydia had expected. But what had she expected? Hugs and kisses? Wasn’t that asking too much? She looked despairingly at Alex, who reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently.

‘You had better come in.’ Yuri led the way into the drawing room. The dilapidated room she remembered had been nothing like this. It was well furnished with two huge well-padded sofas – not like the one she remembered whose stuffing had been coming out – bookcases and ornaments. Here they were introduced to Sophie, whom Yuri had recently married. Sophie shyly bade them welcome and then left them to prepare a meal.

There was an uncomfortable silence after she had left. ‘Why didn’t you answer my letters?’ Lydia asked, because that question was in the forefront of her mind. ‘I only wanted to know you were safe and happy.’

‘I had no letters. And I did not know you existed until last year. My mother – I mean Olga Nahmova naturally – told me when she was dying.’

‘That must have been a shock.’

‘It was. I wished she had not told me. It was her conscience troubling her and she wanted to confess before she died. I don’t know who I hated most at that time: Olga for not being my mother and keeping it from me, or you, Lydia Andropova, for abandoning me and condemning me to the orphanage.’

‘I didn’t abandon you. You were taken from me. I searched for you, Alex will bear me out, but we could not find you and then the war came to Russia and everything was chaotic.’

‘I made her leave,’ Alex said. ‘It was too dangerous for her to stay. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. She was heartbroken about it. Surely you want to know this or why did you change your mind about seeing her?’

‘Curiosity.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Comrade Orlov persuaded me it could do no harm.’

Lydia fumbled in her handbag and produced the brown envelope which she emptied onto the table. ‘These are my letters, all returned to me.’

He sat and looked at them as if mesmerised, making no move to pick them up. ‘Shall we leave you to read them?’ she asked. ‘You will want to do that in private.’

‘Yes, yes; have a walk round the grounds. Sophie will call you when the meal is ready.’

They left the house by the front door and walked round to the back, past a fir tree which had recently been cut down. The garden was not extensive, being close to the forest, and there was little to see – everything was covered in snow, except the paths, which had been cleared.

‘I can’t believe I’ve actually seen him and spoken to him,’ Lydia said as they walked hand in hand. ‘If he didn’t know about his connection with the Kirilov family, how does he come to be living in the family home? Does he know he was born here? There are so many questions I want to ask.’

‘I’ve no doubt he’ll have questions for you too.’ He paused. ‘Now he’s found, what do you expect to happen? What do you want to happen?’

‘I don’t know. I’m still too confused. It would be wonderful if he could come to England, but I don’t suppose that’s feasible, although we could still write to each other, keep in touch. Perhaps, one day, things will improve between East and West and travelling will be easier.’

They stopped when they were confronted by what Lydia afterwards described as Father Time, a bent old man with a long white beard and a weather-beaten face. He lifted a gnarled hand. ‘Lydia Kirillova,’ he said in a quaking voice. ‘Is it you?’

‘Yes. It’s me.’ She took his hand and kissed his cheek. ‘I am so glad to see you, Ivan Ivanovich. I never thought to find you still here.’

‘Where else would I be? I’ve served this estate all my life. I shall be here the day I die. The Reds, the Whites, Bolsheviks, war and famine have come and gone and still I survive. Yuri Nahmov is good to me.’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘Of course I know who he is. He is your son, grandson of Count Kirilov, though that counts for nothing these days.’

‘He says he didn’t know himself. Why didn’t you tell him?’

‘Some things are dangerous to know. Better to be ignorant. But I watched over him. When Olga Nahmova brought him back here after the war ended, I watched him growing up. Now he watches over me. He’s a good boy.’

‘No longer a boy,’ Alex said. ‘He’s matured since I last spoke to him, mellowed, you might say.’

‘He’s had a lot to contend with. Olga Denisovna wasn’t easy to deal with. Her brain had been affected.’

‘The dacha looks lovely,’ Lydia said. ‘Who owns it now?’

‘Leonid Orlov. He lets Yuri stay here when he wants.’

Lydia turned to Alex in surprise. ‘Did you know this?’

‘No, I didn’t, but it’s typical of Leo.’

Lydia was blinking back tears as they bade the old man dosvidaniya and returned to the house.

Yuri had carefully arranged the opened letters in chronological order and had just finished reading the last one. He looked up as they entered. ‘I never knew,’ he said, his voice rough with emotion. ‘I never knew.’

It was not until after they had eaten the meal Sophie had prepared that he felt ready to talk to Lydia about his life.

‘My earliest memory is of being in an orphanage in Solikamsk when I was about three or four. There were thousands of children there, all with shaved heads. We had a hard time of it. I remember always feeling hungry, but if we stole food we were severely punished. I still have the scars on my back.’

‘I am so sorry,’ Lydia murmured, which to her was inadequate.

He went on as if she had not spoken. ‘Hunger, or rather fear of hunger, is something that never really leaves you. Even toddlers learnt to hoard food. When the war ended and the Germans left Ukraine, I was sent to another orphanage in Verkhnedneprovsk. It was a little better than before, but not much, and I was given a rudimentary education, aimed at making me a good Soviet citizen. I had been there two years when Olga Nahmova came to claim me.

‘I had to take her word for it that she was my mother. She told me we had been separated when a bomb went off at a railway station on the way to Minsk. My father was killed and she was badly injured and not expected to live. But she survived and was in Minsk when the Germans invaded Russia. She was evacuated to the east along with the other patients and recovered, if you can call it a recovery. She was deeply scarred by it.

‘She brought me to Petrovsk, expecting to find friends here, but the war had scattered them. I don’t know how we lived. We had nothing – no money, no clothes. The land wasn’t being farmed and the tractor factory was ruined by bombs. We squatted here and my mother did whatever work she could find to keep us from starving and to send me to school. All we had to eat was bread, soup and potatoes, and little enough of that. She would clean lavatories, carry bricks, hoe the fields when the kolkhoz started up again, anything to keep us from starving. She cultivated the bit of land around the house and grew vegetables and flowers which she sold in Petrovsk. She would buy things off the peasants who needed money to buy food, and sell them for a profit.

‘I had to help her. She was as hard a taskmaster as the orphanage had been and she was excessively possessive. I could not go out and play with my friends, I had to stay by her side, and if I was even a few minutes late home from school, she would be out searching for me. I supposed it was because she had lost me once and was afraid it might happen again. After she told me who I really was, I wondered if it was because she worried that someone might tell me the truth.’

‘Who could have done?’ Sophie asked.

‘Ivan Ivanovich, for one. He befriended me.’

‘He knew me and my parents and brother.’

‘I didn’t know that. He never said.’ He paused to drain the vodka in his glass and open another bottle. He filled Alex’s glass and offered some to Lydia but she shook her head, more interested in his story than in drinking. The more he talked, the more she could see a family resemblance, a fleeting gesture, a slight movement of the head; the way he used his hands.

‘But you must have done well at school,’ she said. ‘You went to university.’

‘Yes. Stalin wanted engineers and technicians and we were encouraged to study and apply for a place. I got on by working hard and keeping out of trouble. If the authorities had known who my true mother was, I would never have got in, so I owe my adoptive mother that debt. After I graduated as an engineer and mathematician, I was given a job in Leonid Orlov’s factory. I married Sophie a year ago. Most of the time we live in our apartment in Kiev, but Leonid Orlov allows us to use the dacha for vacations. He is a very influential man and I owe him a lot.’

‘So do I,’ Lydia said, with feeling. ‘And Alex.’ She turned to smile at him as she spoke. He was not saying anything, simply letting them talk.

‘He came here,’ Yuri went on. ‘Years ago. My mother was terrified of him. She was worse for weeks after he came, jumping at every sudden sound and running to hide. She wasn’t quite right in the head, you understand. It was the result of her injuries in the explosion.’

‘Did you know Kirilhor once belonged to our family?’ Lydia asked him.

‘No. My mother told me I had been born here and she often spoke of her time here before my father died as very happy. I had no idea of the truth. Even last year, when she was dying and told me she was not my real mother, she said my real mother had given me away so that she could go back to England. The authorities would not have allowed her to take a Russian child out of the country. These letters…’ he tapped the pile which he had put on the arm of his chair ‘… tell a very different story. It is very confusing. I ask myself which is the truth.’

‘What I wrote is the truth,’ Lydia said. ‘I grieved for you all the years I have been parted from you and could not find you. It is because of Alex’s promise to me we are reunited now. You have a half-brother and sister. Perhaps, one day, when travel between our countries becomes easier, you will meet them.’

‘Tell me about your life, how it is in England.’

It was so late when Lydia finished talking they were invited to stay the night. Yuri seemed to have accepted the truth at last, and as the evening wore on and the vodka relaxed him, they were able to talk more easily. Lydia showed him her photographs, all the ones that had been tucked away in the brown envelope and others of Bobby and Tatty and Upstone Hall. Sophie was excited to think that her husband’s grandfather had been a count, known to the tsar. The years of Communism had not extinguished a curiosity about that ill-fated man.

‘Satisfied?’ Alex asked her, as they boarded the plane back to Moscow the next day.

‘Yes, oh, yes, my darling. Thank you. Thank you.’

‘And now that’s all out of the way and you have your son back where he belongs as part of your family, what about me?’

‘You?’

‘Yes, you know what I mean. I want to be part of the family too. Bobby and Tatty have met me, they’re not blind, they can see how we feel for each other and we’ve wasted too much of our lives already…’

‘We couldn’t help that.’

‘No, but we can make up for it now. So how about naming the day?’

‘When we get home. I promise.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

Bobby and Tatty were at home when they returned, anxious to hear their adventures, and it took ages to tell everything and look at the pictures they had taken, which she had put into an album. Here she was with Leo and Katya sitting round their dining table. Here was Alex, walking beside her in the forest at Kirilhor, which was taken by Yuri just before they left. Here she was talking to Ivan Ivanovich, Yuri and Sophie. Yuri cutting logs with Ivan. Here was the son she had lost who was lost no longer, and the best of it was he now knew and acknowledged she was his mother. Now she could forgive Olga and be grateful to her for bringing him up and keeping him out of the orphanage. Tatty and Bobby crowded round to look over her shoulder while she explained each one.

‘I knew about the envelope in the trunk,’ Tatty told her mother. ‘I found it by accident.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘It seemed too private. But I was curious about the young man in the white tie and tails.’

‘Alex.’

‘Yes, so I realised.’ She laughed and looked at Alex.

Alex took the album from Lydia and set it aside. Taking a small box from his pocket he opened it. ‘Lydia Conway, I love you,’ he said. ‘And I cannot see any reason why we cannot spend the rest of our lives together. Please say you will marry me.’

Seeing the diamond and ruby ring he was holding and which he had every intention of slipping onto her finger, she looked from him to her children who were grinning broadly. ‘You knew about this?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you approve?’

‘Oh, Mum, you don’t have to ask us,’ Tatty said. ‘But yes, we approve.’

‘So?’ Alex said to her, looking anxious in spite of their assurances. ‘What do you say?’

She laughed through a veil of tears. ‘Yes, Alex, yes.’

He kissed her, long and hard, and then pandemonium broke out as Bobby and Tatty vied with each other to congratulate them. The excitement was almost too much to bear and Lydia was exhausted long before anyone else and she needed a moment of quiet contemplation. ‘I think I’ll go up to bed, if you don’t mind.’

She kissed all three goodnight and made her way to her room. It was the room she had occupied as a child. Here she had always felt safe and happy, and she felt safe and happy now. She smiled as she took off the pendant and ran her fingers over the Kirilov Star. It was a link to past and present, to history and to the future, infinitely precious, not because if its worth, but because of what it meant. Picking up the album, she sat looking at the pictures, touching Yuri’s face with her forefinger, as if she could feel the flesh. ‘Yurochka,’ she murmured. She let the album drop and looked across at the framed picture of her father and grandmother with the tsar which stood on her bedside table, next to the one of her and Alex at her twenty-first birthday ball. Even on a black and white photograph, the Star seemed to sparkle at her throat.

She put it on her bedside table, while she prepared for bed, then she climbed between the sheets and wriggled down on the pillows. Alex wouldn’t come to her tonight but it didn’t matter. There were lots more nights to come. The rest of their lives.