I stared at her and said nothing. Of course I couldn’t imagine it. The idea was beyond imagination.
‘And throughout this time, he will drift in and out of consciousness, but mostly he will be awake to experience the pain,’ she continued. ‘His entire body will go into seizure and he will become delirious. He will be torn between nightmares, between screaming out in pain and praying for his father or me to help him, to relieve some of his suffering, but there will be nothing we can do. We will sit by his bedside, we will talk to him, we will hold his hand, but we will not cry, because we cannot be weak in front of the child. And this will last for who knows how long? And then do you know what might happen, Georgy?’
I shook my head. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘Then he might die,’ she said coldly. ‘My son might die. Russia might be left without an heir. And all because you allowed him to climb a tree. Do you understand now?’
I knew not what to say. The boy was a haemophiliac; he had what they called the ‘royal disease’, an affliction I had overheard servants gossiping about but had never given much thought to. England’s late queen, Victoria, the Tsaritsa’s own grandmother, had been a carrier, and having married off most of her children and grandchildren to the princes and princesses of Europe, the ailment was a shameful secret in many regal courts. Including our own. They should have told me before this, I thought bitterly. They should have trusted me. For after all, I would sooner have put a knife through my own heart than cause the Tsarevich any suffering.
‘Can I see him?’ I asked and she smiled at me for a moment, her expression softening slightly, before she simply turned away and disappeared back into the shadows of the long corridor, in the direction of the Tsarevich’s room. ‘I want to see him!’ I shouted after her, not even considering how inappropriate this was. ‘Please, you must let me see him!’
But my cries fell on deaf ears. In a reversal of the earlier moments, the Tsaritsa’s footsteps marched quickly away but grew quieter now, fading into the distance until I was left alone again, staring into the garden, desperate and grieving for my actions.
And it was at that moment that Anastasia came to me.
She had been listening to every word that had been said between her mother and me She must have arrived in the carriages earlier, as I had hoped. She had come for her brother.
And, I thought, for me.
‘Georgy,’ she cried, her voice rising above a whisper and carrying across the tops of the hedgerows and bushes to land like music on my ears. I turned my face in the direction from which it had come and saw the flutter of her white dress behind the dark-green plants. ‘Georgy, I am here.’
I looked around quickly to ensure that we were not being observed and ran outside. She was waiting for me behind a cluster of hedgerows, and when I saw her anxious face, I felt like weeping. Her brother was in his bed, terrified, preparing for weeks of agony, but none of it seemed to matter suddenly and I felt ashamed. For she was here before me.
‘I hoped you’d come,’ I said.
‘Mother brought us,’ she cried, falling into my arms. ‘Alexei is…’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I should have… I should have taken more care. If I had known—’
‘You weren’t to know the dangers,’ she insisted. ‘I’m frightened, Georgy. Hold me, won’t you? Hold me and tell me that everything will be all right.’
I didn’t hesitate. I wrapped myself around her and pressed her face to my chest, kissing the top of her golden hair and resting my lips there, inhaling the sweet aroma of her perfume.
‘Anastasia,’ I said, closing my eyes, wondering how I had ever found myself in this position. ‘Anastasia, my beloved.’
1953
I WAITED FOR ZOYA in the window seat of a café opposite the Central School of Art and Design, glancing at my watch from time to time and trying to ignore the chatter of the people around me. She was already more than half an hour late and I was beginning to grow irritated. A copy of The Caine Mutiny lay open before me, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words and eventually set it aside, picking up a teaspoon instead to stir my coffee as I tapped the table nervously with the fingers of my left hand.
Across the road, the staff and students from the college were wandering past, stopping and chatting with each other, laughing, gossiping, offering kisses, some attracting the disapproving frowns of passers-by due to the unorthodox nature of their clothing. A young man of about nineteen turned the corner and marched along the street as if he was trooping the colour, wearing a pair of drainpipe trousers, a dark shirt and waistcoat, all topped off with a knee-length, Edwardian jacket. His hair was slick with Brilliantine and turned up at the front in an elegant quiff, and he strutted along as if the entire city was his alone. It was impossible not to stare at him, which was presumably the intention.
‘Georgy.’
I looked around and was surprised to see my wife standing beside me; I had been so entranced by the goings on outside the college that I’d failed to notice her arriving. That, I considered in a moment of sadness, was something that would never have happened a year before.
‘Hello,’ I said, looking at my watch and instantly regretting the move, for it was an aggressive gesture, designed to indicate her lateness without having to articulate it. I was annoyed, that was true, but I didn’t want to seem annoyed. I had spent most of the last six months trying not to seem annoyed. It was one of the things that was holding us together.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, sitting down with an exhausted sigh and divesting herself of hat and coat. She had cut her hair quite short a few weeks earlier in a style reminiscent of the Queen – no, the Queen Mother; I still hadn’t grown accustomed to calling her that – and I didn’t care for it, if I was honest. But then there was a lot that I didn’t care for at the time. ‘I got held up as I was leaving,’ she explained. ‘Dr Highsmith’s secretary was away from her desk and I couldn’t leave without making the next appointment. It took her for ever to get back, and when she did, she couldn’t find her diary.’ She shook her head and sighed, as if the world was simply too exhausting a place to countenance, before smiling a little and turning to me. ‘The whole thing took for ever. And then the buses… well, anyway, what can I say? Except sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, shaking my head as if none of it really mattered. ‘I hadn’t even noticed the time. Everything all right?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘What can I get you?’
‘Just a cup of tea, please.’
‘Just tea?’
‘Please,’ she said brightly.
‘You’re not hungry?’
She hesitated for a moment, considering it, and shook her head. ‘Not right now,’ she said. ‘I don’t have much of an appetite today, for some reason. I’ll just have tea, thanks.’
I nodded and went to the counter to order a fresh pot. Standing there, waiting for the water to boil and the leaves to be drenched, I watched her as she stared through the window, looking out towards the college where she had been teaching for about five years now, and tried not to hate her for what she had done to us. For what she had done to me. For the fact that she could show up late, without an appetite, which suggested to me that she had been somewhere else, with someone else, eating lunch with him and not with me. Even though I knew that this was not the case, I hated her for the fact that she had made me suspicious of her every move.