Katie made a sound of distress.

Marek gently took her hand. ‘We have to make a new life.’

‘Can you really not go back to Poland?’

‘We had one friend – he was determined to go back. He said he would write and tell us when it was safe. We never heard another word from him. The Russians own my country now.’ His voice was very bitter. ‘Soviets. Reds. They are in charge – no one says no to Papa Stalin, it seems. Not the British, the Americans: no one. Poland has been smashed apart. You know, they have moved the borders west – by about a hundred and fifty miles? So, my home is now in Ukraine – no home for us any more. We are all . . .’ He made a scattering motion with his free hand.

He looked into her eyes. She could just see the dying flames reflected in his.

‘You have to understand – my country has had many different borders before this war. Many wars before, fighting, people occupying this land and that. And so many hatreds: Ukrainians hate Poles as they were given their land; Lithuanians in the north hate us, as we took Wilno; some people hating Jews for reasons of wealth and religion, some Jews hating us . . . We are a quarrelsome country – but now, it has been a funeral pyre. And we are occupied by Russia . . .’

He stopped, gave a heavy sigh. ‘Some people here – Poles, I mean – can’t accept. One day they will go back, they say. Poland will be free. But I don’t know. Everything is broken. All I can do is go forward, not thinking of the past too much. We are here. We have to make a home somehow.

They were both silent. The fire shifted.

‘Katie?’ Gently he stroked back her hair, leaving his big, warm hand on her head. She heard anxiety in his voice and turned to him.

‘Thank you.’ She turned her head and kissed the delicate skin of his wrist. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘Dear Katinka . . .’ he lowered his hand and his eyes searched hers. ‘You are like home to me, and a new life. Will you stay with me and we make a life together? Will you be my wife?’

She moved nearer, until their faces were very close, in the darkness. Their noses were almost touching.

‘You are my home too,’ she said. There was nothing – no one – she wanted but this. ‘Yes, my darling Marek – I will.’

XIII

MOLLY

Fifty-Nine

February 1949

‘There’s a letter for you, Miss Fox.’

As soon as Molly got through the front door, blowing on her frozen hands, her landlady Mrs Hodgkins came sliding out of her room on the ground floor. Her husband was a sick man and she always moved with an air of trying not to wake somebody. She was holding out a white postcard.