Rom shook his head. ‘It’s all right.’ But as Harriet thanked Lorenzo, his sense of wretchedness increased. The gift was one traditionally given to ensure safety for those travelling far away across water — and Harriet wasn’t even going in the Amethyst, Lorenzo knew that perfectly well. What the devil had got into them all?

The car arrived. Furo got out and held open the door and Harriet turned to Rom. ‘Could you be so kind as to remember that I love you absolutely?’ she said quietly, almost matter-of-factly. ‘Could you be so kind as to remember that?’

He bent down then to kiss not her mouth, but her fingers, holding them in a strangely formal gesture to his lips.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could remember that. Were I to forget it, Harriet, it would go very ill with me.’

Long after the car was out of sight and he had returned to the house, his Indians still stood on the steps, waving and waving and waving…

The theatre was dark and silent, the seats already shrouded. It would be a month before another company made its way to Manaus — a Cossack choir from Georgia.

Would they be the last? Harriet wondered, picking her way across the deserted stage. Was Rom right and would this marvellous and fantastical theatre be given over to the mice? Would bats hang from the chandeliers and moths devour the silken hangings? But if it was so — if Mrs Lehmann’s carriage horses had drunk their last champagne and the grandly dressed audience would no longer sweep across the great mosaic square — it had still been a splendid and worthwhile dream to build a theatre here in this place… and one day, surely, it would open its doors again, music would stream from the pit and men, perhaps still unborn, would wait with bated breath for the gold glimmer of the footlights that meant curtain rise.

Down in the wardrobe she found a lone stage-hand, who at first greeted her with respect, not recognising in the elegantly dressed girl the little dancer in her shabby clothes — and then as she smiled, he asked her to sit on the last of the skips so that he could close it, as he had asked her to do three months ago in the Century Theatre when the adventure began.

Then she went back to the stage-door, where Furo was waiting and was driven to the Metropole, where she went, first of all, to say goodbye to Simonova.

During the fortnight since Harriet had last seen her, Simonova’s thinness had become spectacular: now she lay like a death’s head on the single pillow. Dubrov for once was absent, supervising the loading of the scenery.

‘So,’ said the ballerina as Harriet approached and curtseyed. ‘You are happy. One can see that.’

‘Yes, Madame. Extremely happy. But I wish that you—’

‘Oh, never mind, never mind,’ said Simonova irritably. ‘Let them clap Masha Repin. Myself, I will be thankful if I can even walk again.’

‘But you will, you will! Professor Leblanc is the greatest specialist in the world.’

‘Ach, specialists, what do they know? I believe nothing.’ She turned her head restlessly on the pillow and pierced Harriet with her eyes. ‘It will not last, this love of yours, you know that?’

‘Yes, I know. At least, it will for me but not for him. He is going back to the place in England where he was born and there is a woman there who…’ But this did not seem to be a sentence that one finished.

‘Yes, yes. It is always so. Dancers, singers… we are for pleasure, but it is others who become the châtelaines of great estates. So you must see that you get some jewels and you must work and work. Remember what Grisha always tells you about your shoulders — the left one in particular.’

‘Yes, Madame, I will. And I will never forget your Odette — or your Giselle — not if I live for a hundred years. Never, never will I forget them.’

‘And my Lise?’ came Simonova’s sharp voice from the bed. ‘My Lise in Fille — what was wrong with my Lise?’

‘Your Lise too.’ Harriet was close to tears. ‘To have been in your company even for such a short time has been the greatest privilege in the world.’

‘You are a good girl. Now I must rest for the journey, but first…’ She seemed to be coming to some decision, a frown etching deep lines into the worn forehead. ‘Yes, I will do it. Go over there to that blue suitcase.’

Harriet stepped round the stretcher lying ready to convey Madame to the boat and found the case.

‘Lift the lid. There is a pair of ballet shoes on top — my last pair. The pair I wore when I had my accident. Take them out and bring them here to me.’

Harriet did so and Simonova seized them in her bony hands, stroked the pink silk with one long finger as a mother traces the features of an infant in her arms. ‘See,’ she said tenderly, ‘they are hardly worn; I fell so soon. They should go to a museum perhaps — the last shoes of Galina Simonova — but who goes to museums? Take them. They are for you.’

Harriet, unashamedly crying now, shook her head. ‘No, Madame, I can’t! There must be someone who… matters more.’

‘Masha Repin, perhaps,’ sneered the ballerina. ‘Or that pretty friend of yours who thinks only of restaurants. Take them. Take them quickly. And now go!’

It was a very long time before the three friends slept that night. Marie-Claude had a great deal to tell them, for Vincent had secured his auberge and she was to be married in December. ‘And it’s because of you, ’arriette. You made it possible for Vincent to give the deposit and never, never will I forget what you have done.’

As they talked sleepily in their beds it seemed that Kirstin, too, might soon hang up her dancing shoes, for there was a young man in a village on the Baltic not far from the town were she had been born — a childhood friend who for a long time had been willing to be something more. His father owned a fleet of trawlers which Leif would inherit and he had never been to the ballet in his life, which to Kirstin was very much in his favour. ‘I don’t know,’ she said now. ‘It may not work out, but I think I will go back and see. It’s such a pretty place — the red wooden houses, and the water…’

‘So you see, it is you who must be a great dancer, ’arriette,’ said Marie-Claude, ‘so that we can bring our children to see you and tell them that with this divine prima ballerina assoluta we once shared a horrible room full of cockroaches in the city of Manaus.’ She sighed, seeing Harriet’s face. ‘But of course it is this man you want for always — and no wonder,’ she said, motioning to a froth of pale green muslin on the chair: the dress she had bought at Verney’s insistence when shopping for Harriet.

‘Perhaps this earl’s grand-daughter to whom he goes in England no longer loves him?’ suggested Kirstin. ‘Perhaps she has met someone else?’

‘And then when he has recovered from his broken heart, he can put you into a villa in some suitable district with your own carriage. In Paris it would be somewhere near the Bois… or in St Cloud, perhaps, but in London I don’t know…’

‘St John’s Wood, I think,’ said Harriet, recalling the novels she had dipped into while doing her homework in the public library. ‘Somewhere near the Regent’s Park Canal. A Gothic villa with a wisteria in the garden.’ Her eyes grew bright at the thought that she might after all have a future as a kept woman, awaiting Rom’s visits twice a week in a violet tea-gown. No, that was greedy. Once a week. Once a fortnight, because the trains were dreadful from Stavely and the roads even worse. It was ridiculous of course. Isobel would not have met someone else — no one who had ever loved Rom could possibly stop — and a man married to a woman as beautiful as Isobel would scarcely trouble to travel to London to visit his mistress in St John’s Wood. Moreover, Rom, once he married, would be faithful, Harriet was sure of that. But the daydream had done her good and trying to work out how many days she would see him if he came every other week for, say, five years… wondering if that was what the pomegranate seeds had meant… she fell asleep.

In the morning there was an unexpected development. Grisha and some of the Russian girls, going down before breakfast to meet the Bernadetto as she docked, returned to say that Olga had not been aboard, nor had the crew any idea of her whereabouts.

‘It is extremely strange,’ said Grisha, returning to the Metropole dining-room where the rest of the company sat at breakfast. He turned to Harriet. ‘Monsieur Verney sent some men to fetch her from the Gregory, I think?’

‘Yes, he did,’ said Harriet, and beamed at the ballet master because he had pronounced Rom’s name. ‘I’m sure of it.’

Grisha shrugged. ‘I suppose she has decided to wait for us in Belem,’ he said, and instructed Tatiana to pack Olga’s things and see that they were put on board.

The rest of the day passed in a bustle of last-minute shopping, packing, promises and plans. Harriet bought farewell presents for her friends: a deceptively demure nightgown for Marie-Claude and a blouse for Kirstin. She also bought a record of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ for the Indians and found for Rom, in a dusty shop full of maps and oleographs, a book with pictures of the tapestry of ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ — a wonderful stroke of luck, for above the golden-haired virgin and her obedient beast were embroidered the words: Mon seul désir — and these were the words which Rom had whispered to her two nights ago as she lay in his arms.

By the time she returned with her purchases, the preparations for Simonova’s removal were already under way. Two orderlies were coming from the hospital to lift her on to the stretcher and carry her to the ambulance; a nurse had just arrived and was sterilising her instruments in the kitchens prior to giving the ballerina the pain-killing injection which would enable her to endure the unavoidable jolting as they drove to the quay.

Under these circumstances Harriet would not have attempted to seek out Dubrov, to whom she had not yet said goodbye, but as she made her way across the hall she was waylaid by the harassed stage manager. ‘If you’re going past his door, could you give this to the boss? It’s just arrived at the theatre, sent on by the London office, and looks as though it might be important,’ he said, handing Harriet a letter with a Russian stamp and a massive and elaborate seal.

Dubrov was not in his own room, but Harriet’s quiet knock brought him at once to Simonova’s door.

‘I came to bring this letter, Monsieur, it’s just arrived. And to say goodbye — and thank you.’

He put up a hand to pat her cheek. ‘There’s no need to thank me. You have worked hard and could have been—’ He paused, the blue eyes suddenly sharp, took the letter and quickly broke the seal. ‘Wait!’ he threw over his shoulder at Harriet, and carried the heavy embossed paper over to the window.

‘Well, what is it?’ came Simonova’s fretful voice from the bed.

Dubrov, however, was unable to answer. It was necessary for him to mop his eyes with his handkerchief several times before he could trust his voice. Then: ‘It is from St Petersburg,’ he said. ‘From the Maryinsky.’ Another sniff, another dab at his watering eyes… ‘From the director, the man who dismissed you.’

‘And?’

‘He asks… he invites you… to dance at a gala for the Romanov Tercentenary! To dance Giselle before the Tsar!’ Dubrov abandoned the effort to check his tears, which now ran unhampered down his cheeks. ‘The honour! The incredible honour! Now, at the end of your career! We will keep it always, this letter. We will frame it in gold and hang it on the wall and when we sit in our armchairs in Cremorra—’

‘Armchairs? Cremorra?’ Simonova’s voice pierced like a gimlet. ‘What are you talking about? Give the letter to me!’ And to Harriet, tactfully edging her way out of the door: ‘You will remain!’

The letter which caused Dubrov to weep, overcome by pride and the tragedy of its timing, had an entirely different effect on Simonova.

‘Let me see,’ she murmured in a businesslike manner. ‘March the fifteenth… Nine months. Ha! Only two other ballerinas are invited — that will teach Pavlova to desert her native land. Think of it — all Russia will be en fête for the Tercentenary! The Grand Duke Andrei asked for me specially — he remembered!’

‘Ah, dousha, the honour! The distinction of having been asked!’ Dubrov was still awash with emotion. ‘We shall never forget that you were invited… that you could have—’

‘What do you mean, could have? Why are you always so pessimistic? Just because I have wrenched my back a little — I have done it a hundred times — and I have told you already that I will not mulch! Now let me see, we will go to Paris, yes, but not to that idiot specialist — to buy clothes! There will be a reception at the Winter Palace without a doubt and several balls. Then straight on to Petersburg to work with Gerdt. No performances, just work, work, work!’