‘Da, yes. To a soirée.’ Mrs Zarya said it proudly. ‘A poetry reading at General Manlikov’s villa. He was a friend of my husband and he is a fine man who has not forgotten his old comrade’s widow.’

‘Have a good time.’ Lydia scampered up the stairs. ‘Thanks for the yam. Spasibo.’

It was when she reached the last flight of stairs that she heard the voices coming from the attic. They seemed to strike her upturned face. She stood still. One was her mother’s, low and intense; the other was a man’s, raised in what sounded like anger. They were speaking Russian. She opened the door quietly. Two figures were together on the sofa, talking fast, hands gesturing through the air between them. Lydia felt a shiver of dismay and wanted to leave, but it was too late. It was the man from the police lineup, the big bearded bear with the black oily curls and the eye patch, the one with the wolf boots. Beside him Valentina looked like a tiny exotic creature perched on the edge of the seat. The man was staring straight at Lydia with his one dark eye and it was enough to turn her cheeks a fiery red.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said at once. ‘I didn’t mean to make the police come after you like that, I just…’

‘Lydia,’ her mother said quickly, ‘Liev Popkov speaks no English.’

‘Oh… well, tell him I apologise, Mama.’

Valentina spoke in rapid Russian.

He nodded slowly and rose to his feet, filling the attic room with his massive shoulders, ducking his head to avoid the low ceiling, and still he stared at Lydia. She wasn’t sure whether it was hostility or curiosity, but either way it made her uncomfortable. But what confused her was how on earth he had discovered where she lived. Chyort! She was jumpy as hell.

He walked over to the door where she was standing, and up close she feared he would tear off her head with one of his great paws.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said once more before he had the chance to unsheathe his claws, and she held out her hand.

To her surprise he took it, swallowed it up inside his own, and shook it gently. But his single black eye seemed to stare at her in disgust.

‘Do svidania,’ she said politely. Good-bye.

He grunted and shambled out of the room.

‘Mama, what did he want?’

But Valentina wasn’t listening. She was pouring herself a drink. Into a glass, not a cup, Lydia noticed, another sign of Alfred’s generosity.

Her mother walked over to the replaced mirror on the wall and stared at her reflection as she took a first taste of the vodka.

‘I am old,’ she murmured and ran a hand down her cheek and throat, over the rise of her breasts and hip. ‘Old and scrawny as a sewer dog with worms.’

‘Don’t, Mama. Don’t start that. You are beautiful, everyone says so, and you are only thirty-five.’

‘This stinking climate is destroying my skin.’ She put her face right up close to the mirror and ran a finger slowly around her eyes.

‘Vodka ruins your skin faster.’

Her mother said nothing, just tipped her head back and emptied the alcohol down her throat, and then for a brief moment she closed her eyes.

Lydia turned away and looked out the window instead. The old woman in the rocking chair had fallen asleep and the two urchins were trying to slide the half-plucked bird from her grasp, but even in sleep her fingers clung on. Lydia leaned out and shouted at them. They stopped their thieving and ran off down the street with their pillowcase of feathers. Above the rooftops the sky was streaked with lilac tendrils as the sun started to slide away from China, but Lydia was not to be distracted.

‘What did that man want, Mama?’

Valentina was at the table, refilling her glass. ‘Money. Isn’t that what everyone wants?’

‘You didn’t give him any.’

‘How could I give him money when I don’t have any?’

Lydia considered snatching the vodka bottle away and pouring it out the window, but she’d tried that once and knew it didn’t work. It was like pushing a stick into a wasp’s nest. It only made her worse.

‘I thought you were going to work at the hotel this evening.’

Valentina gave her a look that made it quite clear what she thought of work and hotels. ‘Not tonight, darling. They can stuff their work up their own fat backsides. I’m sick of it. Sick to bloody death of their groping hands and their thrashing hips. I want to chop them all up into tiny pieces, like steak tartare.’

‘It’s just a job, Mama. You don’t really hate it.’

‘I do. It’s true. They sweat. They stink. They put their hands where they shouldn’t and where they wouldn’t if I were one of their own kind. They want to fuck me.’

‘Mama!’

‘And Alfred too. That’s what he wants to do.’

‘I thought he came and bought all your dances to protect you from the others.’

‘When he can.’ She sipped her drink. The glass was fuller this time. ‘But often he has to work late for deadlines at his newspaper office.’ She fluttered her fingers in the air. ‘Such rubbish they all write. As if this colony were the centre of the universe.’

‘How did that Russian man find me here?’

Her mother shrugged eloquently. ‘How the hell should I know, darling? Use your head. From the police, I suppose.’

Valentina was wearing an old cotton dress that she hated but deigned to put on in the house to save her few other clothes for best. It always put her in a bad mood, and Lydia swore that tomorrow she would throw it in the trash. For now, she went over to the stove and started chopping up the piece of yam.

‘Dochenka, something occurred to me today.’

‘That vodka can kill you?’

‘Don’t be so impudent. No, it occurred to me to wonder where the money came from to redeem Alfred’s watch from the pawnbroker. Tell me.’

The knife hesitated in Lydia’s hand.

‘The truth, Lydia. No more lies.’

Lydia put down the knife and turned to face her mother, but she was back in front of the mirror staring at her reflection. It seemed to give her no pleasure.

‘It happened when I was walking past the burned-out house in Melidan Road,’ Lydia said casually. ‘Two people were shouting at each other in there, a man and a woman.’

‘So? Are you saying these people gave you the money?’

‘Sort of. The woman threw a handful of silver at the man and then they both shouted some more and left. So I went in and picked up the money from the floor. It wasn’t stealing. It was just lying there for anyone to find.’

Valentina narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Is that the truth?’

‘Honestly.’

‘Very well. But it was wicked of you to steal the watch in the first place.’

‘I know, Mama. I’m sorry.’

Valentina turned and studied her daughter critically for a minute. She shook her head. ‘You look an awful mess. Quite horrible. What on earth have you been up to today?’

‘I went to a funeral.’

‘Looking like that!’

‘No, I borrowed some clothes.’

‘Whose funeral?’ She was turning back to the mirror, losing interest.

‘A friend of a friend. No one you know.’

Lydia finished chopping the yam and wrapped it in a scrap of old greaseproof paper, then took a large bowl of water into her bedroom and proceeded to strip off her damp dress and grimy shoes. She washed herself all over and brushed her hair till every last morsel of dirt and dust was out of it. She must make more effort with her appearance or Chang An Lo would never look at her the way he’d looked at the Chinese girl with the fine features and the short black hair at the funeral today. Their heads close together. Like lovers.

‘Better?’

‘My darling, you look adorable.’

Lydia had put on the concert dress and shoes. She wasn’t sure why.

‘I don’t look horrible anymore, do I, Mama?’

‘No, sweetheart, you look like peaches and cream.’ Valentina was wearing only her oyster-silk slip now, her long hair loose around her bare shoulders. She placed her empty glass on the table and came to stand in front of Lydia. Even half drunk she moved gracefully. But her eyes looked suspiciously red at the rims, as if she might have been crying silently while Lydia was behind her curtain, or it could just be the vodka talking. She cupped Lydia’s face in her hands and studied her daughter intently, a slight frown placing a crease between the finely arched eyebrows.