‘Oh, yes you do.’ She turned from him and went into the kitchen, feeling somehow unsettled. It was as if this milestone in her son’s life was a turning point in her own and yet she could not see how that could be. Tatty came down in her dressing gown, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and Lydia left them helping themselves to breakfast and went up to her room, where she sat on the edge of her unmade bed and contemplated her reflection in the mirror on her wardrobe door. She was forty-five years old, there was grey in her hair, and yet inside she felt no older than the twenty-one-year-old who had danced with Alex, ignorant of what lay ahead. How happy she had been. And how foolish.

Suddenly making up her mind, she made the bed, put a light jacket over her cotton dress and left the house. She picked up some stale bread from the kitchen and walked down to the lake, where she stood breaking it up and throwing it to the mallards. In her mind she was the four-year-old refugee again – lost, bewildered, afraid. As clearly as if it had been yesterday, she heard Alex speaking in his half-broken voice. ‘Try not to be sad.’

‘I cannot help it.’

‘No, I suppose not. But you are a great deal better off than a lot of Russian émigrés. They are finding life in England hard, not speaking English and needing to work. Be thankful.’

Be thankful. Yes, she had a lot to be thankful for. She threw the last of the crumbs and turned back to the house. There it was, four-square and solid, her home, and though the grounds were only half the size they had once been, it was still surrounded by a small park and manicured lawns. It was hers. Thanks to Sir Edward she was wealthy and need never feel cold or hunger or cruelty, though she was well aware they existed. She had always done her best to mitigate some of that, giving generously to charity, helping in more practical ways when she could, especially those refugees from the other side of the Iron Curtain who needed something to get them started in Britain and help with learning the language. Alex’s words, uttered to a traumatised four-year-old had sunk deep. Everything he had ever said to her was etched in her memory. ‘You are not alone,’ whispered while she queued at Kiev station. ‘Sweetheart, you need me, and while you need me, I shall be at your disposal.’ That in Minsk. And at that heartbreaking parting in Moscow. ‘I will come back to you, you see, and I might even have Yuri with me.’

Other memories crowded in on her, more bitter-sweet: a feeling of loneliness – no, not so much loneliness as isolation; her adopted parents, one of whom had loved her more than the other; her first day at school and at college; Kolya, whom she did not want to remember, and Bob, who had been her prop when she needed one most; Yuri lying content in her arms, a chubby, dark-haired baby with surprisingly blue eyes, who had been learning to recognise her and smile a toothless smile. She had never seen his first tooth, never watched his first tottering steps, never sent him off to school with a satchel over his shoulder. He would have finished his education by now, a young man, making his way in the world. She refused to believe he had not survived the war.

And then there was Alex in white tie and tails dancing a waltz with her at the ball to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, even then binding her to him with silken threads which neither time, nor distance, nor death itself could ever sever; Alex in that dreadful uniform, grim with responsibility, torn between love and duty; Alex the lover. That most of all. Oh, how she still missed him!

What had happened to him after she left him in Moscow? What was he doing going back to Minsk when it was being attacked by the Germans? Had he wanted to die? Where had they buried him? Who was the man she had seen standing by the yew tree in the churchyard the day of her father’s funeral? She was still plagued by questions, none of which could be answered.

She went back to the house to hear Bobby and Tatty arguing hotly because Tatty wanted to invite some of her friends to his party and he was against it. ‘You’ll have your own party when the time comes; do you think I’ll want to muscle my friends in on that?’

Lydia acted as mediator, as she always did, telling Bobby he should invite some of Tatty’s friends so that she did not feel out of it, then decided to go and look round the shops in Norwich. Doing that might banish the nostalgia.

She was halfway there when she ran out of petrol. ‘Of all the stupid things to do,’ she muttered, switching off the engine and getting out of the car to find herself in a country lane which did not even have road markings. When and why she had turned off the main road she could not remember. Neither could she remember when she had last seen a signpost.

She began to walk. It started to rain, big drops that soon soaked her light summer jacket and dress and plastered her hair to her face. ‘Serve you right,’ she muttered, stopping to look over a five-bar gate. There was a yard and a cottage and a dog that barked ferociously, but she could also see a telephone line. Taking a deep breath, she opened the gate and made her way towards the cottage, thankful, when she approached, to see the dog was chained. She had almost reached the door when it was opened and he stood in its frame.

‘So you found me,’ he said.

She could not move, could not speak. Her heart was pounding and her legs felt like rubber. All she could do was stare at him.

He reached out, took her arm and gently pulled her inside. ‘Come in, Lidushka, you look like a drowned rat.’

His use of the diminutive of her name sent her flying back to Moscow and yet it served to wake her out of the strange dream she seemed to be having. ‘But you’re supposed to be dead.’ It came out as a croak.

‘Am I? Now, I never knew that. I don’t feel a bit dead. Feel me.’ He took her hands in both his and put them either side of his face. ‘Is that substantial enough for you?’

‘Alex! Oh my God, Alex.’ And she burst into tears.

He took her in his arms to comfort her. ‘My poor darling,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘It was a shock, wasn’t it?’

She leant back and looked up into his face. It was his face, no doubt about that, but it was thinner, the cheeks sunken, the eyes somehow darker as if they could not quite shake off the terrors he had seen. His hair was streaked with white and hadn’t been cut for some time. ‘But what happened? How did you come to be living here? Why didn’t you tell me you were alive? And so close.’

He sat her down beside the kitchen fire and, taking a towel from a clothes horse, stood over her and began rubbing her hair dry. It was an intimate thing to do, but so natural she didn’t question it. ‘Would it have helped to know?’ he asked. ‘You had made a new life for yourself. You had a new family. I was history.’

‘Alex, you were never history, you could not be.’ She pulled away to look up at him. ‘You are part of me, of what I was, of the woman I am, and, as far as I was concerned, that part died on the day Papa told me you had been killed. I mourned for you, Alex.’

‘It is gratifying to know that,’ he said wryly.

‘How can you be so calm about it?’

‘You think I am calm? How little you know.’

‘Then tell me. Tell me how you feel, tell me everything.’

He put down the towel. ‘Later perhaps. First things first. How did you come to be standing on my doorstep in the pouring rain?’

‘I ran out of petrol down the road. I was on my way to Norwich. I must have been daydreaming. I can’t remember turning off the main Norwich road, nor even why I should. It was as if fate was taking a hand.’

‘It often does. Is your car locked?’

‘Yes, I pushed it off the road and started to walk, looking for a phone box. I saw your phone line and came to ask if someone would ring a garage for me. I didn’t know I’d be confronted by a ghost.’

‘Petrol’s no problem. I’ve got a can of it in the shed. I think you’d better take those wet clothes off. I can find you something to wear while they dry. And while you’re doing that, I’ll fetch your car and rustle up some lunch.’

‘But…’

‘But what? You think you shouldn’t be here? You think you should be on your way, soaking wet? How foolish is that?’ He turned to face her. ‘And you do want to know what happened to me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’ She was shivering but whether it was from shock or her wetting she couldn’t be sure.

‘Then give me your car keys and then come with me.’

He put the keys on the table, led the way upstairs, went into his bedroom, and came out again carrying a pair of trousers, a belt and a shirt which he put into her arms, then opened another door. ‘Here’s the bathroom. There’s plenty of hot water. Take your time. Come down when you’re ready.’

She ran a bath, stripped off and lay in the warm water, unable to believe what was happening to her. Alex was alive. Alex was here. Alex, whom she had never ceased to love and never would no matter how many years passed, had held her in his arms again. Oh, the joy of it! Husband, children, home all faded into insignificance beside that stupendous fact.

She dried herself and dressed. In spite of Alex’s thinness the trousers were far too big. She pulled them into her waist with the belt and rolled the legs up above her ankles. The shirt hung loosely, its sleeves also rolled up. She smiled at her reflection and went down to join him in the kitchen.

Hearing her come in, he turned from stirring something on the stove and laughed. ‘You look very sexy like that.’

‘Do I?’