Mikhail does not return. Neither does Vera nor Yuri. It’s just Marya and Lidiya alone in the rooms at the kommunalka. Later, Lidiya will discover that her father was shot within days of his arrest. Her mother takes longer to die in the freezing plains of a Siberian labour camp. The official cause of her death is tuberculosis. It is more acceptable than exposure and starvation.

Four months after both parents are taken, nine packages addressed to Yuri in Vera’s handwriting are delivered to the kommunalka. These are the parcels left by Vera at the Big House to be passed on to her husband; the fresh food has been removed, and each parcel neatly resealed. The return of the parcels is code that Yuri is dead. The sick irony of this occurs to Lidiya only when she is older: that here is a regime which commits murder as frequently and as inconsequentially as an eye-blink, but could never be accused of petty theft.

In these days of terror, it is common to see grandmothers caring for young children. These poor mites suffering the loss of their parents are now forced to hide their grief, for the taint of parents condemned as enemies of the people flows through to the children. Marya instructs Lidiya that if asked about Vera and Yuri, she is to say they are away, doing important work for the Soviet republics. Lidiya has to appear happy, she must behave as if the parents she loves have not disappeared, she must stifle her great sorrow.

There come to be two epochs for Lidiya: the time before her parents are taken and the time after. In the new era, her parents are gone, her brother is gone, food shrinks to kasha and cabbage, clothes are patched, and shoes are improvised. And who does she blame? She blames Stalin, ‘the best friend to all children’, and she will never forgive him.

There is no hope. Forced to live her life in the negative, Lidiya nonetheless attends school, she does her lessons, she plays with her classmates. She does exactly what is expected of her as if nothing has changed, as if her days are not scarred by loss.

‘We have to be careful,’ Marya says, as she cuddles the child in her ancient arms and promises never to leave her.

And although Lidiya wants her mother, wants her so badly that her whole body hurts, she knows she has to be brave, she has to be grown up.

It has been decided.

Twenty-two years later, Lidiya herself became mother to a daughter. She looked down at the infant and swore she would protect her from all harm. For the first decade of Galina’s life, Lidiya never spoke of her own parents, and for the next decade only sparingly: she was determined to spare her daughter the penalties of a spoiled biography. By the time of Brezhnev’s funeral and the glimpse of Mikhail, Galina was no longer a child, and what little faith in the Soviet system remained to Lidiya after her parents were taken was killed off during the war. There was such inhuman suffering when Leningrad was under siege, such neglect from the central authorities, that Lidiya emerged from those nine hundred days decanted of any patriotism or desire for it. So when Mikhail appeared on the TV displaying the rewards of a life without a spoiled biography, Lidiya broke her silence.