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‘Does he know you’re coming, this cousin?’
    She didn’t answer. She could feel her face, turned down behind her hand, scrunching up as she tried to stop the tears. But they coursed down her cheeks anyway, out from under her tight-pressed eyes. Her shoulders were shaking under his arm.
    â€˜Don’t you fret, now.’ The peasant’s voice was low and soothing. ‘We’ll find him and everything will turn out all right. You’ll see.’
    Looking up, Inna said, still shakily, ‘I’m all right now.’
    â€˜I’ll ask someone then,’ he said matter-of-factly, stepping away. ‘Moscow Prospekt, you say?’
    He stopped one of the hard-faced traders, and Inna, still worried about crying again, saw the man answer him with a jerk of the thumb, to the left.
    â€˜House Number Two,’ she said, and they set off into the biting wind with a new sense of companionship.
    The address she had written down turned out to be in a dark, fetid courtyard off one of the big ugly avenues nearby.
    Even the peasant looked doubtful as they pushed open the door to a prison-like staircase, which seemed never to have been cleaned, and began to make their echoing way up the wide stone steps to the first-floor flat.
    Inna stood tall, took a deep breath and rang.
    Part of her felt journey’s end just ahead, and safety, and wanted the peasant gone. But another part of her was full of gratitude for his help and panic that he’d just slip away before Yasha came to the door.
    So she did nothing – didn’t meet his eye, didn’t speak – as they both strained to hear voices or footsteps from inside the leather-padded door.
    It was only when footsteps did become audible that she looked at him. He looked back, thoughtfully nodding his head.
    She feared he might make the sign of the cross, or say something pitying in farewell.
    â€˜You forget about that gypsy woman, and her foolishness. What does she know? The future is a matter for God,’ he said simply.
    She was about to shake her head and say, No, it was a matter for her. But the door was opening and a stripe of warm yellow light came from within. The peasant, as if unwilling either to intrude or to leave before Inna had found her relative, stepped back into the shadows.
    A tall, muscular, close-shaven man in his twenties was looking out. ‘Can I help you, mademoiselle ?’ he asked Inna politely.
    She stared at him.
    Could this man possibly be…?
    There were none of the luxuriant dark curls she remembered from the photograph. This man’s hair was cropped close to his skull. Following the bluish line of stubble from the long throat and lean jaw upwards, she saw how it receded at the temples and appreciated the small vanity that must have prompted the Spartan style he’d chosen. Still, he was handsome, in a sportsmanlike way: long-legged, with a torso whose muscles she could guess at under his white shirt, and that elegant throat, with his head set on top with almost military precision, chin down, crown high, in a way she’d never have guessed at from the picture.
    But she recognized the straight nose with its flaring nostrils, and the wide, straight mouth, and the cheekbones, and the brown, almond-shaped eyes, with the possibility of softness suggested by their thick lashes. There was no softness in them now. Yet she’d never seen a face so arresting.
    â€˜Yasha?’ she asked.
    It was only as he nodded, and confirmed, still in that neutral voice, though with just a hint of impatience or surprise, ‘Yes, I’m Kagan … how can I help you?’ that Inna was aware of the peasant slipping away down the stairs. She was too preoccupied with the man in front of her to turn or call goodbye. It was only later that she realized she’d never even asked the peasant his name.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    Yasha had been about to go out when he heard the doorbell. He’d have been long