It was the bottom drawer that gave her a kick of hope. It was locked. Something to hide.

This was it. She took a moment to look coolly round the room. No keys in the desk. If she owned this room she would hide a key… where? The bookcase. Had to be. She listened intently for Polly’s footsteps on the stairs. No sound. Quickly she ran her fingers over the books and the shelves. Any one of the volumes could be hollowed out to secrete a key. No hope of finding it if that’s what he’d done. None. Instead she dragged over Mason’s big leather desk chair, climbed on it and stretched up above her head to feel on the very top of the bookcase itself. Nothing. A smattering of dust. A dead spider. She shifted the chair further along, searched again. This time her fingers touched metal.

‘Lydia?’

Polly’s voice. Still upstairs. Lydia rocketed off the chair and opened the door a crack.

‘Yes?’ she called.

‘Nearly finished.’

‘Don’t rush.’

‘I won’t be long.’

Lydia shut the door again, leaped back onto the chair, and retrieved the piece of metal. A key. It lay on her palm. Her mouth was dry. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was in that drawer. Already her head was filling up with suspicions. She took a long breath, as Chang An Lo had shown her, exhaled slowly, and then strode over to the tallboy and crouched in front of the bottom drawer. The key turned easily and the drawer slid open as if well used.

It was full of photographs. Tidy bundles of them in elastic bands. She rifled through them. Every one was of a naked woman. Lydia felt she should be embarrassed, but she didn’t have time for that. She snatched up each pile in turn and inspected it quickly. The sight of a Negro girl mounted by a black greyhound made her shudder but she didn’t stop, peering closely at the faces of the women. Most were hard and painted. Prostitutes, she assumed. She’d seen faces like that in the streets and hanging around the bars at the quayside. It was in the fifth bundle that she found it. A sultry picture of a slender white woman lying naked on a bearskin rug, one arm thrown in abandonment above her head, her hand twined in her thick long hair, showing off her breasts. The nipples were painted a dark color. Her legs were eased apart, one finger trailing in her dense pubic bush, a glimpse of something pale and glistening inside. The woman’s full lips were smiling but the dark eyes looked dead.

Valentina.

A sob shook Lydia. A rush of anger that almost choked her and an avalanche of shame. Her teeth clenched together and she felt her cheeks on fire. She went through the rest. Four more of Valentina. Twenty of Anthea Mason. Two of Polly.

Lydia wanted to scream.

She pushed them into her schoolbag.

‘Finished.’ Polly’s voice. At the top of the stairs.

In a final rush Lydia scooped out the books from her schoolbag and dumped all the reels of negative film in their place. She threw the key into the bottom drawer, kicked it shut, and with her books under one arm and the bag under the other, she left the room.


‘You don’t mind, do you, darling?’

‘No, of course not. I’ve got homework to do.’

Lydia kept looking at her mother, her eyes following every flick of her finger – that finger – as she skimmed through the latest Paris World magazine and each toss of her hair as she lit another cigarette. Why? Over and over it squirmed in her head. Why did Valentina do it? Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why?

Her mother turned to Alfred. ‘We won’t be back late, will we, angel?’

He exchanged a quick glance with Lydia. He had driven her to school that morning on his way to work, and she had mentioned that Valentina seemed a bit tense since the business with Chang An Lo and the soldiers. Maybe it would be a good idea to take her out this evening? A meal at the club? Dancing at the Flamingo? Alfred had jumped at it.

‘Well, I’m not sure what time it’ll be,’ he said with a look of open admiration at his wife. She looked stunning. An elegant new black and white evening gown that was cut low to reveal the full swell of her breasts. Lydia couldn’t look at them. Not now. Not after what she’d seen.

Alfred handed his wife her mink muff and helped her on with her coat.

‘Have a good time,’ Lydia said cheerfully.

The moment she heard the car swing out of the drive, she raced upstairs and pulled out the green dress.


‘Little sparrow, moi vorobushek, I think you’d forget an old lady.’

‘No, nyet, I’m here. I even have an official invitation.’ Lydia waved the thick embossed card.

‘So grand.’ Mrs Zarya chuckled with delight, her broad bosom swaying dangerously close. She tucked her arm through Lydia’s. ‘And quite lovely you look. So grown up now in your pretty green dress.’

‘Grown up enough to dance?’

Mrs Zarya fluttered her own wide taffeta skirts in a strangely coquettish gesture. ‘Maybe, vozmozhno. You must wait to be asked.’


The Serov villa at the far end of Rue Lamarque in the French Quarter was even grander than Lydia had expected, with pillars and porticoes and a long sweeping driveway that was packed with cars and chauffeurs. The reception rooms were lit by ranks of crystal chandeliers and crowded with hundreds of guests in elegant evening dress. All around her swirled the lilting sound of Russian: Dobriy vecher, Good evening. Kak vi pozhivayete, How are you? Kak torgovlia, How is business?

She remembered to say ‘Ochyen priatno,’ Pleased to meet you, when introduced by Mrs Zarya, but she did not listen to their names. She was here to seek out only one person. And he was not to be seen. Not yet. At first she stayed at Mrs Zarya’s side, reassured in this sparkling new world by the familiar smells of mothballs that wafted from her overheated figure. Old gentlemen with side whiskers and Tsar Nicholas’s beard came to flirt with Mrs Zarya and kiss Lydia’s hand, while women in long white gloves toured the rooms, displaying their glittering jewellery and Russian temperaments. Lydia lost count of the number of diamond tiaras that glided past.

She wondered what Chang An Lo would make of all this. How many guns just one of those diamonds would buy. Or what number of empty bellies that fat woman’s huge gold earrings would fill. Such thoughts caught her by surprise. They were Chang An Lo’s thoughts. Inside her head. That pleased her. That she could look around at all this wealth and see it not as desirable, but as a means of putting right an unbalanced society, was something totally new for her. Balance. That’s what Chang said was needed. But she watched a man with the stomach of a well-fed pig and gold chunks on his pudgy fingers take a glass of champagne from a silver salver without even glancing at the Chinese servant holding it. The servant was gaunt-faced with submissive eyes. Where exactly was the balance in that?

A shiver of shock rippled through Lydia. It was not only new thoughts she possessed, but new eyes. It seemed she really was becoming a Communist.

‘Lydia Ivanova, I’m delighted you could come.’ It was Countess Serova, regal as ever in her cream satin gown with high neck and full skirt, encrusted with pearls. ‘And tonight you are in a different frock, I see. I was beginning to think you only possessed one. How charming green looks on you.’

Lydia found the mixture of insult and praise disconcerting. ‘Thank you for inviting me, Countess.’ This time she didn’t bob a curtsy. Why should she? ‘Is your son here tonight?’

Countess Serova’s cool blue eyes took the measure of Lydia, and without replying she turned her gaze on Mrs Zarya. ‘Olga Petrovna Zarya, kak molodo vi viglyaditye, how young you look tonight.’

Mrs Zarya preened herself delightedly and dropped a curtsy, but Lydia did not hear her response because a young woman in black who was standing behind the countess, clearly an attendant of some kind, leaned close to Lydia and murmured in Russian, ‘He is in the ballroom.’

Lydia excused herself and followed the sound of music.


The woman shimmered. In an off-the-shoulder sequinned gown she was seated at a grand piano at one end of the ballroom, her fingernails vivid red against the ivory keys. She was playing a modern piece Lydia recognised. Something by Shostakovich, something decadent. The pianist swung her silky blond waves in time to the rhythm. It annoyed Lydia instantly, that overdramatic way of performing. But why hadn’t the countess invited Valentina to play? She turned away because whenever she thought of Valentina, the photographs in the drawer leaped into her head and made her feel sick. Instead she looked around her.

The room was beautiful. The high ceiling was painted with muscular heroes and nebulous goddesses who looked down on the pale polished-beech floor. Huge gilt-framed family portraits of people with long noses and arrogant eyes were designed to overpower guests of fragile nerve. Gleaming mirrors reflected thousands of pinpricks of light from chandeliers and threw them back into the room to highlight the dancers as they flowed with bright smiles from one end to the other. But Lydia’s eyes were soon elsewhere, on a cluster of men in deep discussion in front of one of the long velvet drapes. One tall angular back in immaculately styled evening wear and with a head of cropped brown hair set Lydia’s hackles rising.

She made directly for it.

‘Alexei Serov,’ she said coldly. ‘I’d like a word.’ She touched the black ridge of his shoulder.

Instantly he turned, and the broad smile that greeted her only infuriated her further. She felt an urge to slap it off his face.

‘Good evening, Miss Ivanova, how delightful that you are able to join us tonight.’ He snapped his fingers at a servant in maroon livery, standing to attention against the wall. ‘A drink for my guest.’