The Kirilov Star (34 page)

‘I knew about the envelope in the trunk,’ Tatty told her mother. ‘I found it by accident.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘It seemed too private. But I was curious about the young man in the white tie and tails.’

‘Alex.’

‘Yes, so I realised.’ She laughed and looked at Alex.

Alex took the album from Lydia and set it aside. Taking a small box from his pocket he opened it. ‘Lydia Conway, I love you,’ he said. ‘And I cannot see any reason why we cannot spend the rest of our lives together. Please say you will marry me.’

Seeing the diamond and ruby ring he was holding and which he had every intention of slipping onto her finger, she looked from him to her children who were grinning broadly. ‘You knew about this?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you approve?’

‘Oh, Mum, you don’t have to ask us,’ Tatty said. ‘But yes, we approve.’

‘So?’ Alex said to her, looking anxious in spite of their assurances. ‘What do you say?’

She laughed through a veil of tears. ‘Yes, Alex, yes.’

He kissed her, long and hard, and then pandemonium broke out as Bobby and Tatty vied with each other to
congratulate them. The excitement was almost too much to bear and Lydia was exhausted long before anyone else and she needed a moment of quiet contemplation. ‘I think I’ll go up to bed, if you don’t mind.’

She kissed all three goodnight and made her way to her room. It was the room she had occupied as a child. Here she had always felt safe and happy, and she felt safe and happy now. She smiled as she took off the pendant and ran her fingers over the Kirilov Star. It was a link to past and present, to history and to the future, infinitely precious, not because if its worth, but because of what it meant. Picking up the album, she sat looking at the pictures, touching Yuri’s face with her forefinger, as if she could feel the flesh. ‘Yurochka,’ she murmured. She let the album drop and looked across at the framed picture of her father and grandmother with the tsar which stood on her bedside table, next to the one of her and Alex at her twenty-first birthday ball. Even on a black and white photograph, the Star seemed to sparkle at her throat.

She put it on her bedside table, while she prepared for bed, then she climbed between the sheets and wriggled down on the pillows. Alex wouldn’t come to her tonight but it didn’t matter. There were lots more nights to come. The rest of their lives.

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help given to me by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, British ambassador in Moscow 1988–1992, author of several books, articles and reviews on Russia and the international scene, who kindly agreed to read the manuscript and set me right on Russian spelling and points of fact. Any errors that remain are mine.

I read many, many books in researching
The Kirilov Star.
Here are some of them:

The Summer House

The Fountain

The Kirilov Star