This was probably wishful thinking on the part of her mother — not that Galina had a better explanation for the lack of women mourners. It was certainly not the cold that kept them away: after a series of wintry days the weather had actually improved. Indeed, if you believed in God you’d think he was personally managing Brezhnev’s farewell. For this man, who throughout his life could never have too much pomp and ceremony, there would be no rain or snow on his final parade.

They tried to slow their eating to keep pace with the funeral. This was a mighty challenge for her mother, who always gobbled her food — a lifelong hangover, she said, from the starvation years of the blokada. After the mushrooms, they started on the smoked fish and the pickled vegetables. The most plodding, most leaden version of Chopin’s funeral march was playing — enough to turn you off Chopin forever, Galina was thinking, and she went to check on the pirozhki heating in the oven. Filled with meat and not their usual potato, this was her favourite of the feast food.

She returned to the couch with the pirozhki, and settled again in front of the TV. It was said that Andropov would be the new leader. Andropov, like all the Soviet leaders, was old, and he’d been a member of the power elite for as long as she could remember; there’d be no change if he were in charge. He was standing in the centre of a group of dignitaries observing the parade. Leading the legions of military men was the pillar-box-red coffin, borne aloft by a gun carriage, and towed by an armoured tank so small Galina wondered if it had been made specially for parades and funerals. There followed a multitude of wreaths, each arrangement so large it required two men to carry it.

Her mother was laughing. ‘It looks like an unfixed forest, like mobile Birnam Wood in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.’

Following the forest of wreaths, there were forty or fifty military men, each carrying a miniature red cushion on which was displayed one or more of Brezhnev’s hundreds of medals. Then came huge battalions of soldiers and navy men and other military officials, many of them marching in a slow-motion goose-step, their arms swinging similarly slowly.

‘I bet they’re aching all over,’ Galina said.

Lidiya did not respond. She had stopped eating. She was staring at the TV screen. The camera had zoomed in on the medals and their bearers. Brezhnev was known to prize his medals; even when dressed in civilian clothes, he would always have one or two pinned to his lapel. Galina assumed that to be a medal-bearer at his funeral was a special honour, given only to trusted members of his inner circle. She was thinking how absurd they looked, these block-shaped, heavy-featured men, each carrying a delicate red cushion, when her mother spoke in an odd, strangled voice.