‘Apart from buying extra food and clothes, money’s not much good here. And it would only be stolen if I had it.’

‘Very well, then – apart from a little tea money, I shall keep it until you get out. You haven’t got long to go, have you?’

‘Who knows? People are always having their sentences increased, sometimes even doubled on the flimsiest excuse. How do I know it won’t happen to me?’

‘The sentences are increased because the government needs the labour and prisoners don’t have to be paid.’ He paused. ‘I could make sure you left on time.’

‘In exchange for lessons?’

‘Yes.’

And so he had agreed, and Alex went to their house on three evenings a week and taught Leonid and his wife English and German. And he was rewarded with supper. It didn’t help his popularity with his fellow prisoners and he received more than one beating, not only because they considered him a traitor, but because they thought he might have been given money and they meant to take it off him. Only when they had been convinced he was not being paid more than a pittance and a meal, and he managed to smuggle food out for them, did they leave him alone. He fancied Leonid, who was nobody’s fool, knew about this but turned a blind eye.

The comparatively soft life came to an end after two years when Leonid told him he was going back to Moscow. ‘My wife has had enough of living out here and she’s homesick for the sun,’ he said.

‘I shall miss you,’ Alex said. They had established a rapport which, in other circumstances, might have been called friendship and he meant what he said. Besides, he’d miss his free suppers.

‘And I you, my friend. I shan’t forget you. If you need help when you get out, come to me. I will have your fee waiting for you.’

Alex was not such a fool as to believe it – neither the fact that he would get out at the end of his original sentence, nor that Leonid would remember and pay him if he ever did. But then Stalin had died and that had put a whole new complexion on things. To his surprise his application for review of his sentence was granted the following year, probably because he had been a model prisoner and worked efficiently.

In the autumn of 1954, he had found himself, skeletally thin, in a train being conveyed back to Moscow and civilisation. His Certificate of Release had specified he was forbidden to live within a hundred kilometres of Moscow or any other major city and he was given twenty-four hours to make himself scarce or be rearrested. He was given to understand he was expected to make for Potsdam, though no one thought to give him the wherewithal to get there. He had no money, no clothes, no job and nowhere to live, but he was free. He was tempted to go straight to the British Embassy and throw himself on their mercy; he was, after all, a British citizen, but he was plagued by his conscience. He had never forgotten that promise to Lydia. He knew it was an almost impossible task, but he had to try and find Yuri before he could even think of going home. Where was home anyway?

It was then he thought of Leonid Orlov. Would he remember him? Would he honour his debt? He knew the name of the man’s business and, by asking the way, found himself outside a huge factory making engineering tools. He had washed and shaved in the communal baths, but there was nothing he could do about his clothes except brush them down.

‘You want work?’ the man on the gate asked him, looking him up and down in contempt. ‘There’s no vacancy.’

‘No, I want to speak to Comrade Leonid Orlov.’

The man laughed. ‘You haven’t a hope. He won’t see you.’

‘I think he will. Tell him it’s Alexei Simenov. We knew each other years ago.’

‘He’s always being plagued by people who knew him years ago. The whole population of Russia seems to think he owes them a favour.’

Alex straightened his back and lifted his head. ‘I am not the whole population of Russia. I am Alexei Petrovich Simenov.’ It was said with all the authority he could muster, and it worked. The man sighed heavily and picked up the telephone.

‘Wait here,’ he said when he put it down.

It seemed he had been standing in the street for ages and was beginning to think he might as well walk away, when Leo himself came hurrying out to meet him. ‘My dear man, how good it is to see you again,’ he said, giving Alex a great bear hug, much to the astonishment of the gatekeeper. ‘Come along, you look as though you could do with a good meal.’ Leo himself obviously never went short of a meal. He had been plump before, now he was rotund. ‘And you need some clothes. You can’t go about looking like that.’

Alex breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘I can’t stay in Moscow long. I’m supposed to leave within twenty-four hours, and I was wondering how I was going to manage it when I thought of you.’

‘Glad you did, Alexei, my friend, glad you did.’ He took Alex’s arm in a firm grip and led him inside the gate where a monster limousine stood with a chauffeur beside it, who sprang to open the rear door. Leo ushered Alex in and climbed in beside him. ‘GUM,’ he ordered the driver.

They went to the department store where a whole wardrobe of clothes was bought for Alex. ‘A suit and a shirt would have been enough,’ Alex protested.

‘Nonsense. Three lessons a week for two people for two years, at so much an hour, must come to a tidy sum.’

They left the store with Alex looking and feeling smarter than he had in years. ‘Now for something to eat,’ Leo said. ‘Then you can tell me everything.’

‘Everything?’ Alex queried.

‘Yes, you didn’t come to me to beg, I know you better than that.’

‘I thought you might remember the lessons.’

‘So I did, but there’s more to be told. We’ll go home, you’d like to see Katya again, wouldn’t you? And we won’t be overheard.’

In Alex’s experience, if there was one place in Moscow to be overheard it was at home where living quarters were shared and everyone lived cheek by jowl in rooms divided by paper-thin walls, so that it was impossible to have any privacy. But Leonid Orlov’s home was not like that. He had a privileged apartment in a block of flats in Granovski Street where he and his wife had six rooms all to themselves. It was here Alex had a warm bath, the first since that time with Lydia in that dreadful kommunalka with its filthy bath along the corridor. Even that room had been spacious and the bath a luxury compared with how he had lived afterwards. Not that he had cared at the time where he lived when he had Lydia with him, loving him, relying on him. Those times could never come again, neither the worst of them, nor the best of them.

‘Now, tell what’s been happening to you,’ Leonid said, after they had finished an excellent meal cooked by Katya. ‘I assume you have been set free?’

‘Yes, pardoned after review.’

‘Good. I am not going to have the police knocking on my door in the middle of the night, then.’ It was said with a chuckle.

‘Don’t joke about it, Leo,’ his wife said.

‘You can never tell,’ Alex said. ‘I can’t quite believe I’m free and they won’t find some other charge they’d forgotten.’

‘You are safe here for the moment,’ Leo said, making himself serious again. ‘Tell me what your plans are.’

‘It is a long story and I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.’

‘Oh, but I do. I might be able to help. That’s why you looked me up, isn’t it?’

Alex smiled. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘Were you hoping to go back to England? I can’t help you do that.’

‘No. I wouldn’t allow you to risk it anyway. It’s something else.’

‘Fire away, then.’ He opened another bottle of wine and refilled their glasses. ‘You are not in a hurry, are you?’

‘No.’ He paused, wondering where to begin. ‘Nearly fifteen years ago, I made a promise to someone I love very dearly, a promise to search for someone.’

‘In Russia?’

‘Yes. Her father was Count Kirilov. She left Russia in 1920, the only survivor of her family. Her father, mother and brother were all killed during the Civil War. She was taken to England and adopted by Sir Edward Stoneleigh. All she had of her old life was a piece of jewellery sewn into her petticoat.’

‘Oh, the poor thing!’ Katya exclaimed. She was even rounder than her husband.

‘She was luckier than some. Sir Edward is a great man. She adores him.’ This didn’t seem real, this warm room, his stomach replete, his head a little fuzzy with excellent wine and this charming man, who seemed to be listening attentively. He took a deep breath and confided the whole story.

Leo got up suddenly and left the room. When he came back he was carrying a large book. He sat down beside Alex and opened it. It appeared to be about the tsar’s court. ‘Here,’ he said, turning it to show him a photograph. It depicted an autocratic lady in a long straight evening dress, dripping with jewels, including a tiara. Standing on one side of her was a young man, still in his teens, in a white uniform, and on the other the tsar and tsarina.

‘Good heavens,’ he said, reading the Russian inscription aloud. ‘The Tsar and Tsarina with the dowager Countess Irina Kirillova and Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Kirilov at the ball at the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, to celebrate the New Year 1900.’

Alex pointed to the young man. ‘That must be Lydia’s father and that her grandmother. And that’s the Kirilov Star.’

Leo turned the page. ‘There is a little more here about the tiara. According to legend the centre stone was cut from a huge diamond found on the banks of the Ob River by a peasant who was fishing and had no idea of its worth. He could not afterwards remember exactly where he found it. In that region, there are no easy landmarks. He took it to the village priest, who thought it might be worth money and made the long journey to Tobolsk where he sold it to a silversmith who in turn sold it to a travelling merchant. It eventually ended up in Novgorod where Count Kirilov owned an estate. It is not known how much he paid for it, but it would not mean anything in today’s money, considering we are talking about the eighteenth century. He had it made into a tiara for his wife.’