‘But you weren’t. You were here in Moscow, just as I am here.’
‘Yes.’
She felt his hand tighten on hers. ‘The gods look after those they love.’
She smiled. ‘Well, they’ve certainly looked after me.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘So what did you promise them in exchange?’
‘Hah! My Lydia,’ he smiled, ‘you know me too well. You are right. I did in fact promise them the earth.’
They both laughed. The separate sounds of it rolled between them, hers light and teasing, his low but full of pleasure, merging into one single breath that hung in the air. They relaxed. She felt some of the tension, the uncertainty that lay like a shadow at their feet, fade to a shapeless blur and into its place slid a brighter shade of something else. It might have been the sunlight, bright and sparkling. But to Lydia it felt like something solid. It felt like happiness.
They walked out of the circus field and back through the street market, arm in arm like any normal couple, eating the apples she had bought.
‘Now please tell me, Lydia,’ Chang asked, ‘have you discovered news of your father?’
‘We said no questions.’
‘I know.’
He felt her shiver, just a flicker through the fingers that lay curled on his arm. Nothing more. But he waited patiently.
‘We travelled to the prison camp,’ she said in a low voice, ‘the one near Felanka where he’d been held, but-’
‘We?’
‘Yes, Liev Popkov came with me, the Cossack.’ She glanced up at him with that little twist of amusement on her lips that always tugged at something deep in him. ‘You remember him, I’m sure.’
‘Of course. Is he here in Moscow?’
‘Yes. He and a woman friend of his are sharing a room with me.’ She laughed. ‘All very cosy.’
He studied her. Listening to the words behind her words. ‘Soviet Russia,’ he said, ‘has its own problems. Please give my greetings to Comrade Popkov. I hope his back is still as broad and as strong as the Peiho River.’
She laughed again. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Liev is as strong as ever.’
Chang had only met the big Cossack once, though met was hardly the right word. In China Popkov had hauled Chang’s sick body through the streets of Junchow for Lydia to nurse back to health. The memory was still a dark stain, filling him with a sense of shame. That he had needed another man’s legs to carry him to safety.
‘But my father was no longer in that camp,’ Lydia continued. ‘He’s been moved to Moscow. Alexei and I parted company in Felanka.’
‘Alexei Serov?’
‘My brother,’ she pointed out quickly and bit into her apple.
He knew he’d spoken too fast.
‘Alexei Serov, is he here?’
‘He came with me to Russia to help in the search.’ She stepped deliberately on a pristine patch of snow and left a clear footprint in it, as if she would stamp her imprint on the world. ‘Jens Friis is his father as well as mine, remember.’
She let her hair swing forward, concealing the side of her face, and he wanted to lift it aside, to see the sadness behind it. What was it she felt for her father? Instead he stopped walking. He stood still, one hand holding hers, and immediately she turned towards him, her lips parted in a small breath of surprise. He drew her to him. In a tired backstreet in this faceless city he centred them both on a sunlit patch of dirt and encircled her fragile waist easily with one arm. He drew her so close that she was pressed hard against him, their bodies moulding to each other, her breasts under her coat firm against his chest. She didn’t resist in any way, though people in the street stared for a moment; she just took to herself the shape of him as if it belonged to her.
He tapped a finger on the pale centre of her forehead. ‘My dearest love,’ he murmured. ‘In here,’ he tapped again, ‘you are alone. In here we are all alone. You cannot force into your head a father you do not know and a brother who, until recently, you weren’t aware existed. Or into your heart. A family is more than just blood, it is also made of those you trust. In China I have people who are my family, even though we share no bond of blood.’
He saw her throat constrict, the delicate bones rise and fall, and his heart grieved for her.
‘I am your family,’ he promised her softly.
A sound came from her lips, a low wordless utterance that spilled from somewhere deep within her. Her eyes darkened till they were the colour of winter rain and she leaned forward, nestling her head in the hollow of his neck. He stroked her hair, smelled its familiar fragrance, its strands alive under his fingers.
‘But you left me,’ she whispered.
He had no answer to that.
36
Lydia spotted the boy immediately, skulking on the edge of a cluster of residents. The courtyard lay in deep shadow and as she hurried under its archway her eyes took a moment to adjust after the brightness of the street. She had zigzagged her way home across the city, waiting her turn with impatience in the tram queues that snaked through the dying shafts of afternoon sun. The surrounding buildings seemed to lean forward, casting their black shapes possessively over the yard’s cobbles, but she didn’t miss the thin figure of Edik.
What struck her as odd was the sound of music and laughter. It was coming from the heart of the small crowd gathered there, a scratchy plonking sound that made her smile it was so comical. She knew it at once. An organ grinder. The last time she’d seen an organ grinder was as a child in St Petersburg with her hand tucked safely into her father’s, but the memory was hazy and before she could prod it into life, a sudden squawk from what sounded like a parrot caused ripples of laughter in the courtyard. People pressed closer and she saw the boy’s pale hair move in, smooth as buttermilk. A light brush against the man at the back of the crowd, as though eager to get a better view.
Lydia stepped forward, seized a handful of Edik’s filthy jacket sleeve and yanked hard. His feet scrabbled on the ice.
‘Get off my-!’ He swung round, wide-eyed, realised who it was and grinned. ‘Privet. Hello.’
‘Put it back.’
The grin fell off his face.
‘Put it back,’ she said again.
For a moment there was a wordless battle, then his shoulders slumped. He shuffled back to the man and easily replaced whatever it was he’d stolen. The boy refused to look at Lydia but she took hold of his sleeve again and dragged him back to their doorway.
‘That’s better,’ she said.
‘For you?’
‘No, stupid, for you.’
As they climbed the stairs, neither mentioned that his sleeve had torn and was hanging in tatters between her fingers.
‘Here, give her this.’
Lydia handed a piece of kolbasa sausage to the boy and, though he accepted it, he still wouldn’t look at her. He had sidled into their room and found a spot for himself on the floor, his back propped against the wall where even the ecstatic greeting of Misty, who had been left behind there, didn’t bring a smile to his sallow face. He broke off a chunk of sausage and popped it on the dog’s moist little tongue, then one on his own. Elena was seated in the chair, hands busy with needle and thread, a navy garment of some kind spread on her broad lap.
‘Sausage is too good for that animal,’ she grumbled.
Lydia wasn’t sure whether she meant the boy or the dog.
‘And what are you grinning at?’ Elena aimed the question at Lydia.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Nothing.’
‘The kind of nothing that puts a smile the width of the moon on your face and a purr in that voice of yours?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Come on, girl, you look like a cat that’s landed in a bucket of cream.’
The boy laughed and stared up at Lydia, suddenly interested. Despite herself Lydia felt her cheeks start to burn.