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

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

‘On holiday, are you?’

‘Yes, are you?’

‘No, I live here.’

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

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Your accent.’

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

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

‘But you were Russian once?’

‘Yes. My father was Count Mikhail Kirilov.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘How long have you been in France?’

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

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

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

‘I was four.’

‘Do you remember anything of it?’

So she told him all she could remember.

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

‘Yet you have retained your accent.’

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

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

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

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

‘No. I am a poet.’

‘And do you make money at it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You cannot fault his manners,’ she said.

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

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

‘I hope so. I had hoped Alex…’

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

‘No, I know.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, if you like.’

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

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

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

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

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

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