She considered various strategies, but in the end, with her courage still faltering, she opted for the Soviet way. Mikhail would leave: she would arrange it. She picked up the phone and dialled Alexei’s number. The phone rang and rang. She prayed for him to be home. Finally, he picked up; he was out of breath, he’d run in from the garden. She went straight to the point. She said that Mikhail would like to come and live with Alexei. She said that he was too proud to ask for this himself, but she knew for certain it was what he wanted.

Alexei was delighted at the prospect, as she knew he would be. His house was empty, he was lonely. But he was worried about Galina. ‘You are Misha’s family. You will be lonely now.’ And she said it was because she was family that she could act in Misha’s best interests. She would manage.

‘I want my uncle to be happy,’ she said, with convincing ease.

‘You are a good girl,’ said Alexei.

Together they devised a plan. Most crucially, Misha must never know about this phone call.

‘You are a very good girl,’ Alexei said again. ‘You have made two old men very happy.’

She had been a good Soviet girl, that was what she’d been. She had called in her debts at no cost to herself.

17 UNDER THE AUSTRALIAN SUN

17

UNDER THE AUSTRALIAN SUN

The country was burning. Every evening, the television news ran footage of fire devouring crops, bushland and dwellings. Galina saw kangaroos in a frantic leaping from the fury; wombats, echidnas and bandicoots were incinerated in the undergrowth. As for the sheep and cows corralled in paddocks, the poor creatures did not stand a chance.

Her fear of fire was an inherited terror. Her mother had lived through the siege of Leningrad: nine hundred days with the Germans at the gate, no water, no food, no electricity, and death perpetually on the prowl. Lidiya was just thirteen when it began. The cold of those winters was excruciating, she said. People broke up furniture, they broke up buildings, they broke up paintings and pianos to feed the stove; and the cruelty of it was you were never warm. Later it became even more difficult, not simply because of the scarcity of timber, but strength also was in short supply. Starvation, her mother said, shrivels not only the body but also the will.

And then came the fires you didn’t want. They broke out in the kommunalki, small fires that spread through the dry crackling rooms and passageways. And outside, in a macabre and terrifying light, the constant shelling and incendiary bombs whipped up towering conflagrations all over the city. Leningrad was burning, and there was neither strength nor water to douse the flames. The siege ended, the war finished, Lidiya grew up, she married and bore a child, but her terror of fire died only when she did. There was ample opportunity for her daughter to inherit the fear.