'He'll come,' she told herself and curled her fingers round the stone in her pocket. It lay there, cold and stubborn. She was staring out of the back window over the neat rows of beetroot and swede and turnips in his plot of land, all regimented and weed-free. Like his house.

Vasily, oh Vasily. How could I have got it so wrong? You gave me no sign, no warning. How could I love someone who doesn't exist?

Something hurt in her chest, a real physical pain. It felt as though her heart were spilling hot blood into her chest cavity with each beat of its muscle.

Vasily, how did you become Fomenko? What happened to you?

She touched the board where he cut his bread, the skillet in which he fried his food, the towel where he dried his hands, searching for him. She walked into his bedroom, but it was like entering a dead person's room. A bed, a stool, hooks on the wall for his clothes. She brushed her fingers over the three check workshirts that hung there and they felt soft and worn. She scooped a handful of cloth up to her face, inhaled the scent of it. It smelled clean and fresh, of pine needles. No scent of him, of Aleksei Fomenko. He hid even that.

On a shelf stood a mirror and a dark wooden hairbrush. She picked up the brush and ran it through her own hair as she gazed into the gla.s.s, speckled with black age spots. No sign of him there, only her own reflection - and that was the face of a stranger. She went over to his plain pinewood bed. It was covered by a patchwork quilt over coa.r.s.e white sheets, but when she lifted the top one there was no imprint of his body underneath. She touched his pillow and it felt soft. That surprised her. She had expected it to be hard and unyielding like his ideas. She bent over and placed her cheek on it, sank into its feathers and closed her eyes. What dreams came to him at night, what thoughts? Did he ever dream of Anna? Her hand slid under the pillow, feeling for any secret talisman but found nothing. When she stood upright she felt a dull kind of anger rise to her throat.

'You've killed him!' she shouted into the dead air of this dead house. 'You've killed Vasily!'

She picked up the pillow and shook it violently. 'You had no right,' she moaned, 'no right to kill him. He was Anna's. I know I borrowed him, but he was always Anna's and now you've killed her as surely as you killed him.'

She hurled the pillow across the room. It hit the log wall and slid to the floor, but as it did so something tumbled out of the white pillowcase. Something small and metal rattled into a corner as though trying to hide. Sofia leapt on it. She picked it up, placed it on the palm of her hand and studied her find. It was a pill box fashioned out of pewter, small and round and grey. A dent on one side. It reminded her of the pebble in her pocket. She opened it and inside lay a lock of blonde hair, bright as sunshine.

She waited, her skin p.r.i.c.kling with impatience. She watched the sun march slowly across the room from one side to the other. At some point she drank a gla.s.s of water. And all the time she brooded about Mikhail Pashin and about who he really was. About what he'd done. About what she, Sofia, had sworn to do to him.

She peeled back each layer of pain, like stripping bark, and looked at what lay underneath. It was a ma.s.s of confusion and error.

Oh, my Mikhail, you made yourself suffer for what you did. You scourged yourself like the penitents of the Church, but found no divine forgiveness at the end of it. Instead you constructed a life for yourself that tried to atone and you did it with as much care as you built your bridge. I don't want to smash my fist on it and bring it crashing down now. But . . . . . . you killed Anna's father. you killed Anna's father.

Again and again darkness descended on Sofia as she sat there alone. What kind of mind? What kind of person? What kind of boy shoots human beings in cold blood? She took out the pebble and placed it on her lap but it lay lifeless, a dull white. Yet as she stroked its cold surface, she felt herself change. A vibration rippled through her body and she almost heard the stone hum, high-pitched and faint inside her head. Its colour seemed to gain a sheen, just like a pearl.

Was she imagining this? Was Rafik imagining it all? The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Was it true? And if it was, did it mean anything at all? Vasily was gone. That knowledge, that the Vasily she had loved in the camp no longer existed, had torn an important part of her away. It left a terrible hollowness inside, like hunger. But worse than mere hunger, it was starvation at some deep level. It gnawed at her with sharp rodent teeth. Now Vasily was gone and she was mourning the loss of him. She moaned and rocked herself in Vasily's chair.

Finally she sat up and wrapped her fingers tight round the stone.

'Anna,' she said firmly, 'wait for me. I'm coming.'

52.

'What are you doing in my house?'

Sofia felt a wave of sorrow for the tall, arrogant man whom she had wronged. He stood in the doorway with no marks on him, none that showed anyway, but something about him looked bruised, something in his dark grey eyes.

She remained seated. 'Comrade Fomenko, I am here to tell you something important.'

'Not now.'

He walked over to the enamel jug of water on the table and drank from the gla.s.s beside it, greedily, as if to flush away something inside himself. For a long moment he closed his eyes, his lashes dark on his cheek, and she knew she was intruding unforgivably.

He turned to her, his voice cold. 'Please leave.'

'I've been here all day, waiting for you.'

'Why on earth did you a.s.sume I would return from prison today?'

'Because of these.'

She held up the remains of the pearl necklace. They shimmered in the last of the evening light that streamed through the window. His mouth seemed to spasm. He drew in a breath, then fixed his gaze on her face.

'Who are you? You come to this village and I try to help you because . . . you remind me so much of someone I once knew, but you look at me with such anger in your eyes and now invade my house when all I want is to be alone. Who are you? What are you doing here?'

'I am a friend.'

'You are no friend to me.' He put down the gla.s.s, leaned against the edge of the table and shook his head, his arms folded across his broad chest. 'So why the pearls?'

'I used half of them to bribe an official to set you free. These,' she cradled the pale beads in the palm of her hand where they chittered softly against each other, 'are promised to him now you are home again.'

He stood staring at the pearls. She thought she could see a spark of recognition in his eyes, of the necklace and its distinctive gold clasp, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was something else. He was hard to decipher.

'Who are you?' he asked again in a low voice.

'I told you, I am a friend.'

Abruptly he walked to the front door and held it open. Outside, the wolfhound lazed in the sun. 'Get out before I throw you out.' He didn't shout. Just quiet words.

Sofia rose and moved closer. She noticed a rip in the collar of his shirt, a rust-coloured smear on one cuff that looked like dried blood. He was in need of a shave. Her heart went out to him, this man she'd both loved and hated.

'Vasily, I am a friend of Anna Fedorina.'

She saw the shock hit him. A shudder. Then so still, not even his pupils moved.

'You are mistaken, comrade.'

'Are you telling me that you are not Vasily Dyuzheyev, only son of Svetlana and Grigori Dyuzheyev of Petrograd? Killer of the Bolshevik soldier who murdered your father, protector of Anna Fedorina who hid under a chaise longue, builder of snow sleighs and agitator for the Bolsheviks. That Vasily. Is that not you?'

He turned away from her, his back as straight as one of his field furrows. For a long time neither spoke.

'Who sent you here?' he asked at last without looking at her. 'Are you an agent for OGPU, here to entrap me? I believe it was you who placed the sacks under my bed. I could see the hate in your eyes when the soldiers came for me.' He breathed deeply. 'Tell me why.'

'I thought you were someone else. I am not with OGPU, have no fear of that, but I did make a terrible mistake and for that I do apologise. I was wrong.'

Still he gazed out at the soft evening clouds, at a skein of geese that arrowed across them. 'Who did you think I was?'

'The boy soldier who shot both Anna's father and Svetlana Dyuzheyeva.'

No response. Her heart pounded. 'Vasily, speak to me. She's alive, Vasily, Anna Fedorina is alive.'

It was like watching an earth-tremor, a quake from somewhere deep below the world's surface. His broad shoulder blades shifted out of alignment and his muscular neck jerked in spasm but he didn't turn. He just tightened his folded arms around himself as though holding something inside.

'Where?'

'In a labour camp. I was there with her.'

'Which one?' Barely a whisper.

'Davinsky Camp in Siberia.'

'Why?'

'For nothing more than being the daughter of Doktor Doktor Nikolai Fedorin, who was declared an Enemy of the People.' Nikolai Fedorin, who was declared an Enemy of the People.'

No more words. Neither of them could find any. The black shadow of Vasily lay across the wooden floor between them like a corpse.

They drank vodka. They drank till the pain was blunted and they could look at each other. Sofia sat in the chair, upright and tense, while Fomenko fetched a squat stool from the bedroom and folded himself on to it, his lean limbs orderly and controlled once more. She wanted him to shout at her, to bellow and scream and accuse her of false betrayal. She wanted to be made to suffer the way she'd made him suffer.

But he did none of these things. After the initial shock, he snapped back from the edge of whatever abyss had opened up and his strength astounded her. How could he hold so much turmoil within himself, yet seem so calm? His self-control was iron-clad, so strong that he even smiled at her, a dry, sorrowful smile, and ran a steady hand over the head of the dog now stretched out at his feet. Its brown eyes watched his face as attentively as Sofia did.

'Comrade,' he said, 'I am glad Anna has a friend.'

'Help me, Vasily, to be a true friend to her.'

'Help you how?'

'By rescuing her.'

For the first time the firm line of his mouth faltered. 'I have no authority to order any kind of release in-'

'Not with orders. I mean together, you and I, we could go up there. You could authorise travel permits and we-'

'No.'

'She's sick.'

'I'm very sorry,' he said quietly.

'Sorry means nothing. She's going to die. She's spitting blood and another winter up there will kill her.'

A dull mist seemed to settle behind his eyes, blurring them. 'Anna,' he whispered.

'Help her.'

He shook his head slowly, full of regret.

'What happened to you?' she demanded. 'When did you lose your ability to care for another human being? When your parents were shot, was that it? Did that moment smother every feeling in you for the rest of your life?'

In the gathering gloom he stared at her in silence.

'You don't understand, comrade.'

'Make me, Vasily, make me understand. How can you abandon someone you loved, someone who still loves you and believes in you and needs you? How does that happen?' She leaned forward, hands clasped. 'Go on, tell me. Make me understand.'

'I traced Maria, her governess. I wanted to . . .' Suddenly words failed him.

With a groan he rose to his feet, walked over to the vodka on the table and took a swig straight from the bottle.

'Comrade Morozova, my feelings are my own business, not yours. Now please leave.'

'No, Vasily, not until you tell me-'

'Listen to me, comrade, and listen well. Vasily Dyuzheyev is dead and gone. Do not call me by that name ever again. Russia is a stubborn country, its people are hard-headed and determined. To transform this Soviet system into a world economy - which is what Stalin is attempting to do by opening up our immense mineral wealth in the wastelands of Siberia - we must put aside personal loyalties and accept only loyalty to the State. This is the way forward - the only only way forward.' way forward.'

'The labour camps are inhuman.'

'Why were you sent there?'

'Because my uncle was too good at farming and acquired the label kulak kulak. They thought I was "contaminated".'

'Do you still not see that the labour camps are essential because they provide a workforce for the roads and railways, for the mines and the timber yards, as well as teaching people that they must-'

'Stop it, stop it!'

He stopped. They stared hard at each other. The air between them quivered as Sofia released her breath.

'You'd be proud of her,' she murmured. 'So proud of Anna.'

Those simple words did what all her arguments and her pleading had failed to do. They broke his control. This tall powerful man sank to his knees on the hard floor like a tree being felled, all strength gone. He placed his hands over his face and released a low stifled moan. It was harsh and raw, as though something was ripping open. But it gave Sofia hope. She could just make out the murmur of words repeated over and over again. 'My Anna, my Anna, my Anna . . .' The dog stood at his side and licked one of its master's hands with a gentle whine.

Sofia rose from her chair and went over to him. Tentatively her fingertips stroked his soft cropped hair, and a sweet image of it, longer, with young Anna's fingers entwined in its depths, arose in her head. He had cut off Vasily's hair as effectively as he'd cut off his heartbeat. Time alone was what he needed now, time to breathe. So she walked into his tiny kitchen to give him a moment, filled a gla.s.s with water, and when she returned she found him sitting in the chair, his limbs loose and awkward. She wrapped his hand round the gla.s.s. At first he stared at it, uncomprehending, but when she said, 'Drink,' he drank.

Then she squatted down on the floor in front of him and in a quiet voice started to tell him about Anna. What made Anna laugh, what made her cry, how she raised one eyebrow and tipped her head at you when she was teasing, how she worked harder than any of his kolkhozniki kolkhozniki, how she could tell a story that kept you spellbound and carried you far away from the damp miserable barrack hut into a bright shining world.

'She saved my life,' Sofia added at one point. She didn't elaborate and he didn't ask for details.

Gradually Aleksei Fomenko's head came up and his eyes found their focus once more, his limbs rediscovered their connection and his mind regained control. As Sofia talked, a fragile smile crept on to his face. When finally the talking ceased he took a deep breath, as though to inhale the words she had set free into the air, and nodded.

'Anna always made me laugh,' he said in a low voice. 'She was always funny, always infuriating.' The smile spread, wide and affectionate. 'She drove me mad and I adored her.'

'So help me to rescue her.'

The smile died. 'No.'