Her parents kiss, her father’s hand strokes her mother’s cheek. He then turns to her. He lifts her up and holds her tight; his cheek is rough, he smells of tobacco and bedtime. And if she’d known this would be the last time she would ever see her father, would she have held on longer? Asked for some special words, or offered him some of her own? Snuggled into his neck so as never to forget the feel of him? The regrets will come later, but for now everything is smothered in fear and hope. Her father puts her down and approaches Misha to embrace him. Misha stops him with an outstretched arm. Her brother does not smile, he does not speak, his gaze flits to the watching officers, he wants them to notice.

Her father certainly does. He shakes his head slowly, and looks very sad. He turns to her mother. ‘I’ll be back soon. The party knows I’ve done nothing wrong.’

The big men hustle him through the door. ‘A mistake has been made,’ he says from the passage.

The two remaining men ransack the Kogan home. They pull books from shelves, and clothes from racks; they haul cartons from the high compartments, and drag bags from cupboards; they break bowls and plates, they toss ornaments aside. The floor disappears beneath the wreckage. And through it all, her mother is saying: there’s nothing to find, we are good Soviet citizens, we are party members.

They have a sack into which they put books and papers; in another sack they put the valuables: a kiddush cup studded with colourful stones, a small brass menorah that belonged to Vera’s parents, Yuri’s new boots, Vera’s amber ring, Lidiya’s doll. They pick up Mikhail’s soccer ball, but after glancing at the stern, silent boy, they put it down again. They take and take, and at last they leave.

There is laughter as they clatter down the stairs. There’s laughter as they enter the street. Lidiya stands at one side of the window, hidden by the curtain. She sees the light from their torches leaping and dancing across the building opposite; she doesn’t understand how torchlight can be so scary. She sees the men toss one sack into the back of the car and take the other into the front. She sees quite clearly the Kogan family kiddush cup: while one man holds the torch, the other tries to prise the stones loose.

The car won’t start. The coughs and complaints of the protesting motor rise high above the street and enter the despoiled space of Kogan family life. There are raised voices and curses, and more spluttering from the car engine. In the end the men are forced to push-start the car. At the street corner the engine kicks over, they jump into their seats, slam the doors, and disappear.