Sofia caught her breath and Elizaveta raised her head from what looked to be a secret drawer in the side of a fine satinwood desk. Her long back straightened and she faced Sofia with a sudden pulse of colour high on her cheeks.

‘So I was right,’ Elizaveta said quietly. ‘You are a spy for Deputy Stirkhov, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

The two women locked eyes, the older woman’s face growing ever more angular in her conviction, but Sofia said nothing more. If she did, she might say too much and not know when to stop.

‘No,’ she repeated firmly.

The schoolteacher didn’t dispute it further. ‘I did not invite you inside this room. Please leave.’

‘I’ll wait in the hallway,’ Sofia said. ‘Be quick.’

She left the beautiful room and a moment later Elizaveta Lishnikova joined her, with two keys in her hand. One she used to lock her private room, afterwards sliding it into the thick coil of grey hair at the back of her head. Sofia was impressed.

‘You have the key to the chamber – whatever that is?’

‘Of course,’ the teacher nodded.

‘Then let’s take it to Rafik.’

‘Not you.’

‘What?’

‘I want you to stay here. In the hallway. Don’t leave it.’

‘Why?’ Sofia was impatient to return to Mikhail.

‘In case the troops come searching. They most likely won’t but… they might.’ The older woman’s careful brown eyes scanned Sofia appraisingly. ‘You look the kind of person who could keep them out of my school. Guard it well. I’m trusting you.’

With a whisk of her grey shawl the teacher was gone, the door closing quietly behind her. Sofia paced the scuffed boards in frustration. She wanted to be out there, ensuring that Mikhail and Rafik were not tossed into the truck in place of the sacks. She hated being left behind to watch over some irrelevant little schoolhouse.

What was there to guard anyway, other than some pieces of fine furniture? And what did Elizaveta Lishnikova mean when she said Sofia was the kind of person who could keep the troops out of the school? That she was in league with the OGPU forces? That she would argue well against them? Or that she had the youth and the feminine wiles to turn troops from their course?

Oh, to hell with the woman! Sofia banged her fist against the wall in frustration.

It was some minutes later that she first heard the noise. A tiny, whimpering sound, like a mouse in pain. She wondered if it could be a creature that had fled from the barn fire. Then the sound stopped as suddenly as it began.

Sofia resumed her pacing of the narrow hallway, her mind struggling to make sense of what she’d seen Rafik do to the officer and to Mikhail with what looked like no more than a touch of his hand, but before she’d conjured up once more the intense gaze that had burned in the gypsy’s eyes, the noise started up again. Louder now. A recognisable wail this time.

It seemed to be coming from behind the other door in the hall, the one she assumed led into the schoolroom. Her breath grew shallow and she could feel the hairs rise on the back of her neck, but she wasn’t going to stand here doing nothing. She lifted the oil lamp from its bracket and pushed open the door. The lamplight leapt in ahead of her, looping in great arcs though the pitch darkness, jumping off the windows and lighting up a clutch of small pale circles. It took her a second to recognise them as faces. Children’s faces, pale and wide-eyed with fear.

Children from less than five years old up to ten or eleven were seated there, each one silent at a desk. Eleven pale moons in the darkness and, in front of each one on the desktop, a bundle of some sort, some large and lumpy, others small and strong-smelling. Nearly all the children had their thin arms wrapped protectively around the bundle of food they had saved from their homes. One older boy had a zinc bucket at his feet stacked high with what looked like grain of some sort.

The noise was coming from a tiny girl. She was sobbing, and an older girl had her hand clamped across the little one’s mouth, but still the mouse-pain sound squeezed its way out. Quickly Sofia took the lamp back into the hall and replaced it in its bracket, so that no light showed in the schoolroom. She returned to the children and, as she shut the door behind her, she heard their collective sigh. She groped her way to the teacher’s chair at the front and sat down.

‘Now,’ she whispered softly, ‘I’ll tell you a story. But you must stay quiet as little mice.’

22

‘Papa, wake up. Please, wake up. You’re late.’

Mikhail opened his eyes and a spike of morning sunlight lanced into them. He winced. He was on the floor of his own living room, curled up in his coat, a bottle nestled to his chest. An empty bottle. He swore softly under his breath, only to discover that his mouth tasted like cow dung.

‘Papa, you got drunk!’

Mikhail sat up and scrubbed a hand through his hair. The ceiling swooped, then settled, and a heavy pulse started up behind his eyes and echoed dully in his ears. His mind struggled. It felt oddly empty, like the inside of a drum. And a soft female voice whispering words he couldn’t quite catch in his ear.

‘I wasn’t drunk, Pyotr.’

‘You were, you know you were.’ The boy’s eyes glared, a long, sulky beat. ‘And now you’re late for work.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Eight-thirty.’

‘Chyort! ’

Mikhail felt an unfocused anger rise inside him – he wasn’t sure at what or at whom, but he knew somehow he had lost control and he hated his son seeing him like this. ‘Pyotr,’ he said sharply, ‘I’ll drink if and when I have a mind to. I don’t need your permission, boy.’

‘No, Papa.’

Mikhail rose to his feet and groaned. Fuck it, this was a hangover like none he’d experienced before. His whole brain felt dislocated. He made his way out to the tub of water in the back yard, stuck his head in it and kept it there until blood reached his brain. Today he’d have to ride Zvezda hard.

His shirt was wet round the collar and stank of alcohol, and of something else. He sniffed the sleeve cautiously. Was it her? The scent of her skin on his arm? The sudden memory of Sofia’s face in the darkness, her mouth soft and full as she whispered words to him. What words? Damn it, what words? He couldn’t remember. He shook his head but nothing became clearer. Had the vodka done this or…? Dimly he recalled Rafik being there last night. What had the gypsy to do with it? He headed back into the house where the boy was staring out of the window.

‘Pyotr,’ he said gruffly, ‘you know I’m like a bear with a sore head if I sleep too long. You were right to wake me. Spasibo.’

His son continued to look out at the street, his back rigid, elbows stiff at his sides. Mikhail felt an urge to wrap his arms round his stubborn son’s young frame, to hold on to it, to keep it safe and guard it from grain hunters and fire starters and slogan sellers. Instead he went into his own room, shaved, changed his shirt and when he came out again Pyotr was waiting for him.

‘Papa, what happened last night?’

Last night. Mikhail shook his head again, trying to clear the blurring that smudged his thoughts at the very mention of last night. What did happen? And why do I feel Sofia so close?

‘What happened to the grain and the sacks, Papa? All the piles of them that the Procurement Officers stacked in the truck. People are saying it was stolen. That you were… involved.’

The boy’s face was tense, as if he was frightened to hear the answer. They both knew of the infamous case of the boy, Pavlik, who only last spring had reported his own father to the authorities for anti-Soviet activities and the Politburo had used it as a major propaganda tool. One of Pyotr’s feet kicked again and again at the floorboards.

‘No grain was taken,’ Mikhail said firmly. ‘There were only four sacks.’