‘Thank you.’

‘You’ll be all right here on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anthea Mason said she’d look in now and again to see that you’re okay.’

‘No, I’ll be fine. Is there another train tonight? I’m sorry I made you miss yours but there must be another one you can catch if you hurry.’ She looked over at her mother. ‘I’d hate you to miss out on your honeymoon because of me.’

‘Well, actually…’ Alfred began.

‘Yes,’ Valentina said with an annoyed lift of one eyebrow. ‘We can change trains at Tientsin. Alfred, be an angel and fetch me a glass of water from the kitchen, would you? I’m finding it hot in here.’ She ran a wrist across her forehead. ‘Probably all the tension of…’ She let her voice trail away.

‘Certainly, my dear.’ He glanced at Lydia. ‘Put your mother’s mind at ease, so she can go off feeling reassured.’ He left the room.

Immediately Valentina tossed her cigarette into the fire and came to stand right in front of Lydia. ‘Tell me, quickly. What happened?’

Lydia felt weak with relief. Yes, of course, she could tell her everything, she’d know what to do, where to buy medicines, a doctor, she could…

Valentina seized her arm. ‘Tell me what that dirty great wolf wanted.’

‘What?’

‘Popkov.’

‘What?’

Valentina shook her. ‘Liev Popkov. You went off with him. What did he say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No. He was just drunk.’

Valentina looked closely at her daughter, then gently wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. Lydia breathed in her musky perfume and held tight, but as she did so she felt her own body start to shake uncontrollably.

‘Lydochka, sweetheart, don’t.’ Valentina’s hand stroked her damp hair. ‘I’ll only be gone a week. I know we’ve never been apart before but don’t be upset. I’ll be back soon.’ She kissed Lydia’s cheek and drew back a step. ‘What, tears? From my I-never-cry dochenka. Don’t, sweetheart.’

Valentina reached for the silver tray of drinks on the sideboard. With a quick glance to check that the door was still closed, she poured a glass of vodka, drank it straight down, shuddered, and poured another which she carried to her daughter.

‘Here. It will help.’

Lydia shook her head. No words. No breath.

Valentina shrugged, drank it herself, and replaced the glass. The red spots on her cheeks were fading.

‘My sweet darling.’ She held Lydia’s face between her hands. ‘This marriage is a new future for us. You will grow to like him, I promise. Be happy.’ She smiled, but there was something not quite right about it. ‘Please. You and me. Let’s learn to be happy.’

Lydia hugged her mother close. ‘Go to Datong, Mama. Go and be happy.’

‘That’s right, ladies, kiss and make up. Don’t want to see anyone looking sad, not today of all days.’ Alfred beamed at them both, handed his wife the water and patted Lydia on the back. ‘I’ve telephoned for the car and it should be here any minute. Excited?’ he asked his wife.

‘Ecstatic.’

‘Good.’

Then there was a fuss with coats and cases and last-minute hugs, but as Alfred and Valentina were walking out the front door, Lydia said, ‘Is it all right if I buy a padlock for Sun Yat-sen’s shed?’

‘Of course,’ Alfred replied airily. ‘But why do you want to padlock your rabbit in?’

‘To keep him safe.’

She washed him. Softly. Barely touching the damaged skin with a cloth soaked in warm water and disinfectant. His rags were crawling with lice and she threw them outside into the rain.

His body was a sickening sight. So thin she could count the bones. And it was branded. Burn marks, each one in the shape of an S. Like snakes. Six of them, scorched into his chest. The burns were black and rotting but even they were nothing compared to his hands. As she unwound the foul strips of cloth that were twisted tight around his fingers, she almost gagged on the smell, and however careful she was, chunks of blackened skin and flesh came away with the bandages.

Left behind were the maggots. White squirming creatures devouring Chang An Lo. Dozens of them. Lydia recoiled in horror.

Liev Popkov raised his head from his chest at her cry. He was on the floor, slumped against the wall next to Sun Yat-sen’s pagoda cage, the vodka bottle she had brought from the house still in his hand.

‘Ah otlichno! Maggots,’ he rumbled. ‘They are good. Eat away the bad and clean the wound. Leave them.’

His head slid forward onto his chest once more and he uttered a deep shuddering snore that Lydia found oddly comforting in the cold shed. She drew the oil lantern nearer to Chang’s hands and studied them. It was brutal. The little finger was missing on each hand. They had been hacked off. The wounds had festered until the hands had swollen into rotting melons that had burst open, filled with pus and maggots.

With painstaking care she lifted out each maggot. She kept telling herself they were no worse than cockroaches or worms. Only once was she actually sick and that was when she pulled out one particularly fat white slug and it popped between her fingers. When they were all removed, she sluiced clean water and disinfectant through the wounds and, after a moment’s uncertainty, replaced two of the maggots in each hand. Liev Popkov should know. He’d been through bad times, probably seen any number of bullet holes and sabre cuts during the revolution, so he should know. But what if the maggots ate their way up to Chang’s brain?

She forced that thought out of her head.

Quickly she dabbed something on the gaping wounds. OPODELDOC & LAUDANUM. She’d found it in the first-aid kit in the bathroom along with some bandages, and it seemed better than nothing. Slivers of bone glimmered white through the raw flesh, and she swathed them in gauze and clean bandages. Chang An Lo made no sound. Sometimes his eyelids flickered. That was the only way she knew he was alive.

Lydia had never looked at a naked man before. She spooned warm water with honey over his lips and eased a dribble of it into his mouth but she was frightened he might choke, so she kept it to only a drop or two every half hour. And all the time she was aware that he was naked.

The sight surprised her. She had no idea his private parts would be so… so soft or so loose or so embedded in thick hair, yet oddly, with Chang she felt no embarrassment. When she removed the rags from Chang’s loins, Liev Popkov had growled his disapproval from his spot against the wall, but he was too busy combing through the fibres of his overcoat and snapping up stray lice between his thumbnails to care too much. It was obvious he thought the Chinese was dying. And what did it matter to him? Liev was eating a hunk of cheese from the kitchen and swigging from the vodka bottle. No interest in words.

After she had tended Chang’s hands as best she could and spread the liniment over his chest as well, she covered his top half with a blanket to keep him warm and set to work on his lower half. She bathed his hips and stomach and it was like bathing a skeleton. Empty bones. When had he last eaten? Days? Weeks? She had thought she knew what hunger was, but not this. Not like this. She squeezed out the wet cloth again and started to wash the mat of black hair at the base of his stomach, but it was deeply encrusted with… what? Blood. Faeces. Urine. More lice. A wave of crippling pain for him swept up from her own stomach, and it was with gentle, nervous fingers that she lifted his penis.

The softness of it surprised her. It lay still on the palm of one hand while she soaped it with the other, easing off the filth and scabs, delicately patting the skin dry with a towel. There was something so unbearably vulnerable about it. Even the tracery of blue veins left it looking bare and exposed, as if it needed another barrier between it and the world. Is that why men want women so much? As a barrier? A protection?