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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Come with me, then.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘To go back to England?’

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

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

‘You can work, can’t you?’

‘But what about Yuri?’

‘What about him?’

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

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

‘When are you going?’

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

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

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

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

‘Did they have Yuri with them?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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