"The Russian Concubine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Furnivall Kate)

16

‘More wine, Lydia?’

‘Thank you, Mr Parker.’

‘Do you think she should, Alfred? She’s only sixteen.’

‘Oh, Mama, I’m grown up now.’

‘Not as grown up as you think, darling.’

Alfred Parker smiled indulgently, his spectacles sparkling at Lydia in the candlelight. ‘I think just this once. Tonight is special, after all.’

‘Special?’ Valentina raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘In what way?’

‘Because this is our first meal together like this. The first of many, I trust, when I am honoured to be in the company of two such beautiful women.’ He lifted his glass briefly to Lydia and then to Valentina.

Valentina lowered her eyes for a moment, ran a finger slowly down the pale skin of her throat as if considering the suggestion, and then flashed her gaze up to his face. Like springing a trap, Lydia thought as she watched with interest the effect it had on Alfred Parker. He turned quite pink with pleasure. Her mother’s sensuous dark eyes and parted lips were churning up his brain and robbing him of far more than Lydia had ever tried to take from him.

‘Garçon,’ he called. ‘Another bottle of Burgundy, please.’

They were in a restaurant in the French Quarter and Lydia had ordered steak au poivre. The French maitre d’ had bowed to her as if she were someone important, someone who could afford a meal like this. In a restaurant like this. She was wearing the dress, of course, her apricot one from the concert, and she made a point of looking around the room at the other diners as indifferently as if she did this every day.

No one could guess this was a series of firsts. First time in a restaurant. First time eating steak. First time drinking wine.

‘Trust you to choose something fiery, darling,’ Valentina had laughed.

Lydia watched Parker closely, copied his table etiquette when it came to the startling array of silver cutlery on the stiff white tablecloth, and noticed the way he dabbed genteelly at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. She’d been surprised when her mother told her Alfred had invited her to join them for supper. Another first. No other man friend had ever included Lydia in their arrangements, and it sent alarm bells clanging through her head, but her desire to eat in a restaurant outweighed her instinct to keep as far away from Mr Parker as possible.

‘Very well,’ she’d said to her mother, ‘I’ll come. But only if he doesn’t lecture me.’

‘He won’t lecture you.’ She took Lydia’s chin in her hand and gave it an urgent little shake. ‘But be good. Be nice. Sugar and spice, even if it kills you. This is important to me, darling.’

‘But what about Antoine?’

‘Bugger Antoine.’

Everything had gone well so far. Only one little slipup. It happened when Parker kindly offered her one of his snails to taste and she had said without thinking, ‘No, thanks. I’ve eaten enough snails to last me a lifetime.’

Valentina had glared at Lydia. A sharp kick under the table.

‘Really?’ Parker looked surprised.

‘Oh yes,’ Lydia said quickly, ‘at my friend Polly’s house. Her mother is mad about them.’

‘I don’t blame her. Smothered in garlic and butter?’

‘Mmm, delicious.’ She laughed wickedly. ‘Aren’t they, Mama?’

Valentina rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She didn’t want to be reminded of the times they’d spent scrabbling around in the rain, rooting snails out from under bushes and off back lawns at night. Even the occasional worm or frog. The stink of them all in the cooking pot.

Lydia turned a sugar-and-spice smile on Alfred Parker. ‘Mama tells me you are a newspaperman, Mr Parker. That must be very interesting.’

She heard her mother’s little sigh of approval.

‘A journalist, yes, on the Daily Herald. This is a very disturbed period in China’s history but a very crucial one, with Chiang Kai-shek at last bringing some kind of sanity and order to this unhappy country, thank God. So yes, it is extremely interesting work.’ He beamed at her.

She beamed back.

‘Tell me, Lydia, do you read the newspaper?’

Lydia blinked. Didn’t this man realise that for the price of a newspaper you could buy two baos and have a full stomach?

‘I’m usually too busy doing my homework.’

‘Ah yes, of course, highly commendable. But it would do you good to read a newspaper now and then, to know what’s going on in this place. Broaden your young mind, you know, and give you the facts.’

‘My mind is broad enough, thank you. And I learn facts every day.’

Another kick.

‘Lydia is at the Willoughby Academy,’ Valentina said with a glare at her daughter. ‘She won a scholarship there.’

Parker looked impressed. ‘She must be very bright indeed.’ He turned back to Lydia. ‘I know your headmaster well. I shall mention you to him.’

‘No need.’

He laughed and patted her hand. ‘Don’t look so alarmed. I won’t mention how we met.’

Lydia picked up her glass, buried her nose in it, and wished him dead.

Valentina came to her rescue. ‘I think you are right about the newspaper, Alfred. It would do her good to widen her knowledge, and anyway,’ she gave him a slow smile, ‘it would amuse me to read what you write.’

‘Then I shall definitely make sure you receive the Daily Herald every day without fail, Valentina.’ He leaned closer to her, and Lydia was sure he was breathing in her perfume. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure.’

‘Mr Parker?’

Reluctantly he drew his gaze away from Valentina. ‘Yes, Lydia?’

‘Maybe I know more about what goes on in this place than you do.’

Parker sat back in his chair and studied her with a precision that made her wonder if she was underestimating him. ‘I am aware that your mother allows you a degree of freedom that means you get about more than most girls your age, but even so, that’s quite an assumption, Lydia, don’t you think? For a girl of sixteen.’

She should leave it there, she knew she should. Take another sip of the wonderful wine and let him carry on making sheep’s eyes at her mother. But she didn’t.

‘One thing I know is that your precious Chiang Kai-shek has tricked his followers,’ she said, ‘and betrayed the three principles on which the Republic of China was built by Sun Yat-sen.’

‘Chyort vosmi! Lydia!’

‘That’s absurd.’ Parker frowned at her. ‘Who’s been filling your head with such ridiculous lies?’

‘A friend.’ Was she out of her mind? ‘He’s Chinese.’

Valentina sat forward abruptly, her fingernails clicking on the stem of her glass. ‘And who exactly is this Chinese friend?’ Her voice was icy.

‘He saved my life.’

There was a shocked silence at the table, and then Valentina burst out laughing. ‘Darling, you are such a liar. Where did you really meet him?’

‘In the library.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Parker said. ‘That explains it. A left-wing intellectual. All talk and no action.’

‘You must stay away from him, darling. Look what the intellectuals did to Russia. Ideas are dangerous.’ She rapped her knuckles sharply on the table. ‘I absolutely forbid you to see this Chinese again.’

‘Oh, don’t fret, Mama. You needn’t worry. He might as well be dead for all I care.’

‘Miss Ivanova, I do believe. How very interesting to find you here of all places.’

Lydia had just left the ladies’ powder room and was threading her way back through the tables and the chatter when she heard the woman’s voice behind her. She turned and looked up into an amused cool pale blue stare.

‘Countess Serova,’ she said with surprise.

‘Still wearing that dress, I see.’

‘I like this dress.’

‘My dear, I like chocolate but I don’t eat it all the time. Let me introduce you to my son.’

She stepped to one side to give Lydia a full view of the young man behind her. He had a long face and was tall like his mother with her thick curling brown hair and the same haughty manner that made one side of his mouth curl up and his eyes half closed, as if the world weren’t worth the effort of opening them fully.

‘Alexei, this is young Lydia Ivanova. From St Petersburg also. Her mother is a piano player.’

‘A concert pianist, actually,’ Lydia corrected.

The countess conceded a smile.

‘Good evening, Miss Ivanova.’ His voice was crisp. He gave a fractional nod of his head and fixed his gaze somewhere around her hairline. ‘I hope you are enjoying a pleasant evening.’

‘I’m having a simply wonderful time, thank you. The food is so good here, don’t you think?’ It was the sort of thing she thought her mother might say, all light and gay and too good to be true.

But his reply was brief. ‘Yes.’

They hovered on the edge of an awkward silence.

‘Must dash,’ Lydia said quickly.

She turned back to the countess and caught her staring across the room directly at Valentina, who had her head bent close to Alfred Parker’s, talking softly. Lydia thought her mother looked more beautiful than ever tonight, so vivid in the navy and white dress, hair almost black in the soft lighting and piled on top of her head, her lips a carmine red. It was a surprise to Lydia that the whole restaurant wasn’t staring.

‘Nice to meet you again, Countess. Good evening. Do svidania.’

‘Ah, so tonight you can speak Russian, it seems.’

Lydia had no intention of stepping into that trap, so she just smiled and headed back to her table, remembering Miss Roland’s instructions at school. ‘Lead with your hips, girls, at all times. If you want to walk like a lady, you must lead with your hips.’ As she sat down,Valentina looked up and noticed Countess Natalia Serova and her son across the room. Lydia saw her mother’s eyes widen and then turn abruptly away, and when the Serovas passed their table a few moments later, neither woman acknowledged the other.

Lydia picked up one of the mint chocolates that came with the coffee. She decided she could definitely get used to this.

They left her outside the front door.

‘Sleep well, darling.’

Valentina’s fingers waved through the front passenger window of Parker’s car as if they were trying to escape and then disappeared from view. The black Armstrong Siddeley trundled up to the corner, too big and boisterous for the narrow confines of the street, flashed its brake light at Lydia, and was gone. Off to a nightclub, they said. The Silver Slipper. She stood alone in the dark. The church clock struck eleven. She counted each stroke. The Silver Slipper. If you dance there after midnight, do you turn into a pumpkin? Or even a countess?

She pushed aside such strange thoughts, unlocked the door, and started up the stairs. Her legs felt lifeless now, as if she’d left it all behind in the restaurant, and there was a dull ache somewhere inside her head. She wasn’t sure if it was the heavy humid night air or the wine settling under her scalp like a layer of lead. She knew she should feel happy. She’d had an exciting evening, hadn’t she? Alfred Parker had been attentive and courteous. More to the point, he was generous. Exactly what they needed. Life was looking up. So why did she still feel so bad? What the hell was wrong with her? Why was there this sick weight in her stomach, there all the time as if she had influenza?

She pushed open the door to the attic. Parker wasn’t doing it for her, she knew that. He’d caught her thieving and he’d caught her lying. He was the kind of man who had principles the way their attic had cockroaches, and an unshakable grip on his belief in what was right and what was wrong. All that backbone-of-England stuff, for God and King Harry. A straight bat, isn’t that what the English called it? A good egg. She gave a sharp little huff of annoyance. A man like Parker romped around on the moral high ground because he could indulge himself, as thoughtlessly as he could indulge himself in a posh French restaurant. He wouldn’t bend.

Until now. Now he had met Valentina.

She struck a match in the dark, lit the solitary candle on the table, and instantly was surrounded by writhing shadows leaping up the wall and stalking the small circle of light. It was unbearably hot in the room. The window was partly open but she could hardly breathe. She yanked the dress impatiently over her head to let the sultry air touch her skin and maybe ease the hollow ache.

‘Don’t do that.’

Lydia gasped at the sound of the voice. Though it was soft, she knew it instantly and her heart tightened in her chest. She spun around but could make out no one in the room.

‘Who’s there?’ she shouted, her heart thumping. ‘Don’t skulk in the dark.’

‘I’m here.’ The curtain to her own bedroom area twitched.

She strode over and swept the curtain aside. It was Chang An Lo. He was sitting on her bed.

‘Get out.’

‘Listen to me, Lydia Ivanova. Listen to what I tell you.’

‘I have listened. You stole my ruby necklace, sold it down south somewhere, and gave the money away. I heard all right. And you expect me to believe you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a lying, thieving, rotten, conniving, unscrupulous, filthy rat.’ She was storming up and down the room, completely indifferent to the fact she was wearing only her underwear. ‘And I wish I’d let that policeman put a bullet through your black heart when I had the chance.’

‘I came to tell you…’

‘To tell me you robbed me. Well, thanks very much. Now leave.’ She pointed a finger at the door.

‘… to tell you why I did it.’

The false-hearted toad was still standing in the centre of the room, as calm and cool as if he had brought her flowers instead of lies, and that just made her want to choke him. She’d trusted him, that’s how stupid she was, she’d trusted him, she who trusted no one. And what had he done? Just trailed her trust through the sewer and torn a raw hole in her insides.

‘Get out,’ she yelled. ‘Go on, get out of here. I know why you did it and I don’t want to hear a bunch of lies from you, so…’

A loud knock on the door stopped her. A voice called out, ‘Are you all right, Lydia?’

It was Mr Yeoman from downstairs.

Lydia’s eyes met Chang’s, and for the first time she saw danger in them. He was up on his toes, ready to strike.

‘No,’ she whispered harshly to him. ‘No.’

‘Are you having a spot of bother, dear? Do you need any help?’

Mr Yeoman was an old man, no match for Chang. Lydia rushed to the door and opened it a crack. He was standing on the landing, his white hair bristling, a brass poker in his hand.

‘I’m okay, Mr Yeoman, thanks. Really. Just… arguing with a… a friend. Sorry we disturbed you.’

His bright bird eyes peered at her, unconvinced. ‘Are you sure I can’t help?’

‘Sure. Thanks anyway.’

She closed the door and leaned against it, breathing hard. Chang had not moved.

‘You have good neighbours,’ he said in a quiet voice.

‘Yes,’ she said more calmly, ‘neighbours who don’t trick me with sly words.’ By the teasing light of the candle she could see the skin of his face grow taut across his high cheekbones and he started to speak, but she hurried on, ‘And if my mother should walk in now and find you here, she’d skin you alive, with or without your kung fu kicks. So…,’ she reached for her dress and slipped it on, ‘we will go out into the street, you can tell me what it is you came to say, and then I never want to see you again. Understand?’

She heard his intake of breath, and it seemed to suck the air from her lungs. ‘I understand.’

She led him to a house two streets away. It was more of a shell than a house because it had burned down nine months ago but still lay like a blackened tooth stump in the middle of the brick terrace, and it had become home to bats and rats and the occasional feral dog. Much of what remained had been scavenged, but the outer walls still stood and gave a sense of privacy despite the lack of a roof. Rain had started to fall, a soft gloomy drizzle that sweetened the air and made Lydia’s skin twitch.

‘So?’ She stood and faced him.

Chang took his time. In silence he made himself a part of the darkness and seemed to glide through the ruined rooms, no more solid than the wind that rippled up from the river and cooled Lydia’s bare arms. When he was satisfied no others had taken refuge behind the black piles of rubble, he came back to her.

‘Now we talk,’ he said. ‘I came to see you so that we would talk.’

The faintest remnants from the street lamp on the far corner trickled into the space between them, and Lydia looked at Chang carefully. There was a change in him. She couldn’t see how or what, but it was there. She could feel it. As she could feel the rain on her face. There was a new sadness at the corners of his mouth that tugged at her and made her want to listen to his heart, to learn why it was beating so slow. But instead she tossed her head and reminded herself that he’d used her, that all his concern for her was worth nothing. Just lies and rat droppings.

‘So talk,’ she said.

‘It would have killed you.’

‘What?’

‘The necklace.’

‘You’re crazy.’ She had visions of it throttling her as she tried it on.

‘No, my words are true. You would have taken it to Junchow old town, to one of those snake holes that ask no questions. They rob the thieves that come to their doors but keep their hands white and clean. But no one would touch this necklace, no one would take that risk.’

‘Why?’

‘Because already it was known that it was meant as a gift for Madame Chiang Kai-shek. So you would have returned empty-handed and before you reached home you would be dead in a gutter, the necklace gone.’

‘You’re trying to frighten me.’

‘If I wanted to frighten you, Lydia Ivanova, there are many more things I could say.’

Again his mouth revealed a sorrow that the rest of his face denied. She studied his lips with care and believed them. Standing in the rain in the middle of the filthy ruin under a night sky as black as death, she felt a cold rush of relief. She breathed deeply.

‘It seems I owe you my life yet again,’ she said with a shiver.

‘We are involved, you and I.’ His hand moved through the gap of yellow streetlight that lay between them and touched her arm, a faint brush of skin, no more than a moth’s wing in the darkness. ‘Our fates are sewn together as surely as you stitched the flesh of my foot together.’

His voice was as soft as his touch. Lydia felt the solid ball of anger inside her tremble and start to melt; she could feel it trickling through her veins and out through the pores of her skin into the rain where it was washed away. But what if these were lies too? More lies from those lips of his that could make her believe his words. She wrapped her arms around her body and refused to let the small hard core of her anger escape. She needed it. It was her armour.

‘Involvement means sharing, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘And it doesn’t alter the fact that the necklace was mine. If you sold it somewhere in the south where they don’t know the importance of it, then at least we should share the money. That sounds fair to me. Fifty-fifty.’ She held out a hand.

He laughed. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh and it did something strange to her. It made her mind uncurl. For that one fleeting moment she forgot the endless struggle.

‘You are like a she-fox, Lydia Ivanova, you sink your teeth in and never let go.’

She wasn’t sure if that was an insult or a compliment but didn’t stop to find out. ‘How much did you get for it?’

His black eyes watched her face, and still the laugh lingered on his lips. ‘Thirty-eight thousand dollars.’

She sat down abruptly. On a low ragged wall. Put her head in her hands. ‘Thirty-eight thousand dollars. A fortune,’ she whispered. ‘My fortune.’

The silence was broken only by something scuttling across the floor and making a dash for the doorway. Chang stamped on it. It was a weasel.

‘Thirty-eight thousand,’ Lydia repeated slowly, rolling the words around her tongue like honey.

‘As many lives were taken in Shanghai and Canton.’

Canton? What was he talking about? What on earth did Canton have to do with her thirty-eight thousand dollars…? Her mind felt clumsy, but then something clicked inside it. A massacre last year. She remembered everyone talking of it. And then there was the time in Shanghai when, on Chiang Kai-shek’s orders, the Kuomintang Nationalists ambushed the Communists and wiped them out in bloody street fighting. A purge, they called it. But in China that was nothing new. Not remarkable. There was always some warlord or other, like General Zhang Xueliang or Wu Peifu, making pacts with another and then betraying each other in savage warfare. So what was it about Canton? Why did Chang bring up that particular incident?

She looked up at him. He had stepped deeper into the shadows, but his voice had given him away. It was so full of rage.

Suddenly it all made sense to her. She leaped to her feet.

‘You’re a Communist, aren’t you?’

He said nothing.

‘It’s dangerous,’ she warned. ‘They behead Communists.’

‘And they jail thieves.’

They stared at each other in the darkness. Silent accusations unspoken on their tongues. She shivered, but this time he did not touch her.

‘I steal to survive,’ Lydia pointed out stiffly. ‘Not to indulge some intellectual ideal.’ She moved away from him. ‘I cannot afford ideals.’

She did not hear his footfalls, but suddenly his dark figure was in front of her again. Rain glistened in his cropped hair and turned his skin silver.

‘Look, Lydia Ivanova, look at this.’

She looked. He was holding up something small and thin, hanging from his fingers. She peered closer at the object. It was the dead weasel.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is my meal tonight. I am not the one who eats my food in a restaurant using sweet lies and false smiles. So do not offer words about the price of ideals. Not to me.’

Lydia’s cheeks burned.

‘Settle this business now,’ she said more sharply than she intended. ‘I want my share of the money.’

‘You are always hungry like the fox. Here. Feed on this.’

He held out a leather pouch to her. She took it. It felt light. Too light. She moved over to where the street lamp’s glow was stronger, stepping over crumbling bricks and finding the open rectangle that had once been a window. In a rush her fingers opened the pouch and tipped out its contents, the same way they had trickled the ruby necklace into her palm not so long ago, but this time there were only a few coins. Did he think a handful of dollars would keep her quiet? She felt them smooth and warm against her skin, the price of his betrayal. Was she worth so little to him? She spun around and in three quick strides she was in front of him again. She pulled back her arm and hurled the pieces of silver into his face.

‘Go to hell, Chang An Lo. What is the point of saving my life, if you destroy it?’

She didn’t go home. The thought of being alone in that miserable room was more than she could take right now. So she walked. Hard and fast. As if she could walk the heat from her blood.

Walking at this hour was not safe. Tales of kidnap and rape were always rife in the International Settlement, but it didn’t stop her tonight. She wanted to rush down to the river where she could escape from the thousands of people all fighting for their square inch of air and space in Junchow, and maybe there she could breathe easier. But not even Lydia was that reckless. She knew about the river rats, the men with knives and a habit to feed, so she headed uphill, up Tennyson Road and Wordsworth Avenue where the houses were safe and respectable and where dogs in kennels kept watch for any stealthy tread.

She was angry with Chang An Lo. But worse, she was angry with herself. She’d let him get under her skin and make her feel… oh hell,… feel what? She tried to snatch at the swirling knot of emotions that was making her chest all blocked and tight, but they were jumbled together, snagged on one another, and when she pulled they dragged through her lungs and caught at the back of her throat like barbed wire. She kicked at a stone and heard it ricochet off the hubcap of a parked car. Somewhere a dog barked. A car, a house, a dog. With thirty-eight thousand dollars she could have had them all. There were twelve Chinese dollars to the English pound, that’s what Parker had told her tonight, more than enough for what she wanted. Two passports, two steamer tickets to England, and a small redbrick house, one that had a bathroom and a parquet floor for dancing. A patch of lawn too for Sun Yat-sen. He’d like that.

Her thoughts shut down. It was too much. She pushed the images out of her mind, but she couldn’t push away so easily the images of Chang’s intent eyes and the whisper of his touch on her arm. It echoed through her, spreading over her skin from limb to limb.

She tried to work out what it was about him that was different tonight. He was thinner, yes, but it wasn’t that. He’d always been lean. No, it was something about his face. In his eyes, in the set of his mouth. She had seen that same kind of expression once before, on Polly’s face when her beloved cat Benji was run over. A look of constant pain. Not pain like when she’d sewn up Chang’s foot. Something deeper. She longed to know what had happened to him to cause such a change since that day at Lizard Creek, but at the same time she swore to herself she would never ever speak to him again. Tonight he’d made her feel… what? What? What?

Bad. He’d made her feel bad about herself.

She turned in through a pair of stone pillars and wrought-iron gates – easy to climb over – and keeping in the deep shadow of the high box hedge that surrounded the property, she ran swiftly through the rain toward the back of the house.

‘Lydia! You’re all wet.’ Polly’s blue eyes were wide and startled, but her face was still soft with the mists of sleep.

‘Sorry to wake you. I just had to come and tell you about…’

Polly was pulling at her, dragging the wet dress over Lydia’s head and shaking it out with a sorrowful little moan of displeasure. ‘I hope it’s not ruined.’

‘Oh Polly, never mind the dress. It got soaked when I wore it before but dried out fine. Well, almost fine. One or two water stains on the satin bit, that’s all, so a few more won’t hurt.’

Polly placed the dress with care on a hanger. ‘Here, wear this.’

She threw Lydia a dressing gown. It was white with small pink elephants round the hem and cuffs. Lydia thought it childish but put it on anyway to cover up her fleshless bones. Polly’s body was all soft and full of curves, her breasts already full and mobile, while Lydia’s were little more than upturned saucers. ‘When you get some food inside you, darling, they’ll fill out, don’t fret,’ her mother had told her. But Lydia wasn’t so sure.

Polly sat down on her bed and patted the spot beside her. ‘Sit down and tell all.’

That was one of the things Lydia loved about Polly. She was adaptable. She didn’t mind in the least being woken in the middle of the night by a rap at her window and was happy to throw it open to her drenched nocturnal visitor. It was a simple climb up to the second floor, one Lydia had often done before, up the trellis, across the veranda roof, and an easy jump up to the windowsill. Fortunately Christopher Mason was so besotted by his dogs that they were allowed to sleep in the scullery whenever it rained, so there was no risk of losing a chunk of leg to sharp teeth.

‘How did it go?’ Polly demanded, excitement making her face look younger than her sixteen years. ‘Did you like him?’

‘Like who?’

‘Alfred Parker. Who else? Isn’t that what you’ve come to tell me about?’

‘Oh yes. Yes, of course. The dinner at La Licorne.’

‘So what happened?’

Lydia had to search a long way back in her mind. ‘It was fun. I had prawns in garlic sauce,’ she breathed heavily into Polly’s face to offer proof, ‘and steak au poivre and…’

‘No, no. Not the food. What was he like?’

‘Mr Parker?’

‘Yes, silly.’

‘He was… kind.’ The word surprised Lydia, but when she thought about it she decided it was true.

‘How dull!’

‘Oh, yes, he’s as dull as a Latin lesson. He thinks he knows everything and wants you to think the same. I got the feeling he likes to be admired.’

Polly giggled. ‘Don’t be such a dunce, Lyd, all men love to be admired. It’s what they’re about.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Haven’t you noticed? That’s what your mother is so good at and why men flock round her.’

‘I thought it was because she’s beautiful.’

‘Being beautiful isn’t enough. You have to be smart.’ She shook her tousled blond hair with an affectionate smile. ‘My mother is absolutely useless at it.’

‘But I like your mother just as she is.’

Polly grinned. ‘So do I.’

‘Are your parents in bed?’

‘No, they’re out at some party at General Stowbridge’s place. They won’t be back for hours yet.’ Polly jumped off the bed. ‘Nobody’s here except the servants, but they’re off in their own quarters, so shall we go down and make some cocoa?’

Lydia leaped at the offer. ‘Yes, please.’

They hurried out of the room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Lydia felt more comfortable here. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t actually like Polly’s bedroom; it made her tense. It was Polly’s behaviour in it that unsettled her. Lydia had quickly learned to touch nothing. Absolutely nothing. If she picked up a hairbrush from the dressing table or a book from the bookcase, Polly got all twitchy and rushed to put it back in exactly the right spot and at exactly the right angle. Worse were the dolls. She had a whole row of twenty-three beautiful dolls lined up on a shelf, with china faces and hand-embroidered dresses. If any of them moved as much as a finger or a lock of hair, Polly noticed and felt compelled to strip the whole shelf and set them up again. It took forever.

Lydia steered well clear of them. The odd thing was that these weird obsessions fell away as soon as Polly left her room, and her desk at school was far more scatterbrained than Lydia’s own. It was as if in the privacy of her own room she could indulge her anxieties and fears, but elsewhere she hid them away and smiled at the world. Lydia was always careful to make sure no one upset Polly, not even Mr Theo.

‘I’ll just go and check on Toby,’ Polly said. ‘Won’t be long.’ She disappeared into the scullery.

Lydia wandered into the hall, sliding her feet along the polished floor till they squeaked, and peeked into the drawing room just to catch a glimpse of the gramophone and its shiny brass horn in the hope that their aroma of luxury would drag her mind away from Chang. But they only made her feel worse. Next to the drawing room was the door to Polly’s father’s study, which was always kept firmly shut. For the hell of it, Lydia tried the handle. It turned.

The room was dark, but she didn’t dare turn the light on. A bright yellow rectangle tumbled into the study from the doorway and lay across the big oak desk that sat squarely in the middle of the floor with a row of dark wooden filing cabinets behind it. On the wall opposite was a painting of a tall grey horse with one black hoof and beside it a portrait in oils of a nervous-looking young boy. Presumably Christopher Mason in earlier days. But Lydia’s attention was not on the walls. It was on a large leather-bound book that lay on the desktop. With a rapid glance over her shoulder to see if Polly was anywhere near, she stepped into the gloomy room and leaned over the book. On its tan cover was the one word in gold-embossed letters. DIARY. She opened it. Quickly she flicked through until she came to the page that showed the date of the concert, July the fourteenth, Saturday.

His writing was large and hurried, a scribble of black ink that was difficult to read, but she made out enough. Six a.m. – riding with Timberley. Eight-thirty – breakfast meeting with Sir Edward at the Residence. Below it was something written in and scratched out again by heavy black lines followed by Tiffin with MacKenzie and then Willoughby 7:30. Finally, written in small letters at the bottom of the page, was V.I. at Club. It was underlined.

V.I.

Valentina Ivanova.

So the meeting had not been accidental.

‘Lydia?’ Polly’s voice from the kitchen.

‘Coming,’ Lydia called out. She skimmed through the previous pages. V.I. V.I. V.I. V.I. V.I. V.I. One in each month. From January to July. She flicked ahead. One scheduled for August the eighteenth.

‘Lyd?’ Polly’s voice was closer.

She slammed the diary shut and made it to the door just as Polly was pushing it farther open.

‘What are you doing in here?’ The blue eyes were horrified. ‘No one is allowed in here, not even Mother.’

Lydia shrugged but didn’t reply. Her mouth was too dry.

Both girls were standing in the kitchen blowing steam off their cocoa and Polly was laughing as Lydia told her about the way Alfred Parker’s spectacles slid down his pink nose when Valentina invited him to remove a wayward crumb from her neck. There was the sound of a key in the front door. Polly froze. But Lydia moved fast. She tossed the last of her drink down the sink, pushed the cup inside a cupboard, and slipped behind the open kitchen door, where she was hidden from sight. She had no time for more than a glance at her friend, who was looking panicked. Please, please, Polly, use your head.

‘So I really don’t think the old boy should…’ Christopher Mason stopped in midflow. His footsteps rang out crisply on the wooden floor, nearer now. ‘Polly? Is that you in there?’

For a sickening moment Lydia feared Polly was going to stand there like a rabbit pinned in speeding headlamps, but just in time she got her feet moving and walked out into the hall to greet him.

‘Hello, Father. Did you have a nice time at the party?’

‘Never mind that. What in blazes are you doing up at this hour?’

‘Couldn’t sleep. It’s so hot and I was thirsty.’

To Lydia her friend’s voice sounded distinctly odd, but Mason didn’t seem to notice. She could hear the evening’s brandies blurring the edge of his words.

‘Oh, my poor girl,’ Anthea Mason murmured. ‘Let me fetch you some cool lemonade. That will help to…’

‘No, thanks, I’ve had a drink.’

‘Well, I’ll fetch some for myself anyway. I have a splitting headache.’ The click of high heels heading Lydia’s way.

‘Mummy.’

‘Yes?’

‘Let’s sit down in the drawing room. I want you to tell me all about the party and what Mrs Lieberstein wore this time. Did she…?’

‘It’s much too late for that kind of nonsense now.’ It was Mason again. ‘You should be in bed, my girl.’

‘Oh, please.’

‘No. I won’t say it twice. Upstairs with you.’

‘But…’

‘Do as your father says, Polly, there’s a good girl. We’ll chat about the party tomorrow, I promise.’

A pause. Then the sound of bare feet scampering across the hall.

Lydia held her breath.

Polly’s door closed upstairs and the sound of it was like a signal to the pair standing in the hall.

‘You’re too soft on that girl, Anthea.’

‘No, I…’

‘You are. You’d let her get away with bloody murder if I weren’t here. I won’t stand for it. You’re letting me down, don’t you realise that? It’s your job to see she learns how to behave properly.’

‘Like you did tonight, you mean?’

‘What exactly are you implying by that?’

A silence.

‘Come on, I demand to know what you’re implying?’

For a moment there was no answer, then a long sigh filled the silence. ‘You know precisely what I’m talking about, Christopher.’

‘Good God, woman, I’m not a damned mind reader.’

‘The American woman. Tonight at the party. Is that the way you’d like Polly to behave?’

‘For Christ’s sake, is that what this is all about and the reason you made me come home early? Don’t be so absurd, Anthea. She was just being friendly and so was I, that’s all. Her husband is a business contact of mine and if only you would be a bit more outgoing, a bit more fun at these…’

‘I saw you both being friendly on the terrace.’

It was said quietly. But the slap that followed it echoed around the hall, and Anthea’s sharp gasp of pain drew Lydia from her hiding place. She stepped forward into the kitchen doorway, but the couple in the hall were too intent on each other to notice her. Mason was hunched forward like a bull, his neck sunk into the shoulders of his rumpled dinner jacket, one arm outstretched and ready to swing again. His wife was leaning back, away from him, one hand to her cheek where a red mark was flaring outward to her ear. The earring was missing.

Her blue eyes were huge and round, just like Polly’s, but full of such despair that Lydia could hold back no longer. She darted forward but too late. Another slap sent Anthea Mason spinning around. She staggered, caught herself on the umbrella stand, and ran into the drawing room, slamming the door after her. Mason stormed into the dining room, where Lydia knew the brandy was kept, and kicked the door shut behind him. Lydia stood there in the middle of the hall, shaking with fury. From inside the drawing room she could hear the muffled sound of crying and she longed to rush in there, but she had enough sense to know she would not be welcome. So she walked back up the stairs, indifferent to how much noise she made, and returned to Polly’s room.

One glance at her friend’s face and Lydia knew Polly had heard enough of what had gone on downstairs. More than enough. Her mouth was pulled so tight it was almost bloodless, and she wouldn’t look at Lydia. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, a doll clutched fiercely against her chest, her breath coming in quick little puffs. Lydia went over, sat down beside her and took one of Polly’s hands in her own. She held it tight. Polly leaned against her and said nothing.