Natasha struggled with the cruel question. He smiled at her; he enjoyed watching her squirm.There were tears in her eyes, and she was biting down on her lip as she forced a smile.

“Yes, Pyotr,” she half whispered. “I do.”

Good. She was still obedient. He intended to test her. So far she had not strayed. She called him by his new name, Pyotr; it amused him to slip from one identity to another as he left his old life behind. She had led him to her relatives, and stuck to the story he’d fed her; Natasha had wanted to escape, and Pyotr had selflessly offered to help her; he had sacrificed all his own wealth on the altar of her desire.

Of course, her relatives in Espoo had welcomed Pytor with open arms. Especially the grandmother, Katrinka. Natasha was her favourite granddaughter, and she cooed and billed over Pyotr.

He was a saviour.

He was a hero.

And he was the favoured suitor for Natasha’s niece, Aud.

Natasha’s brother, Sven, had married a French girl from Nîmes, come back to Finland, and prospered. After the war, the French were desperate to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, and one way to do it was to return, after rations and austerity, to glorious cooking. Marianne had relatives in the restaurant trade, and Sven made a fine living exporting Finnish delicacies: fresh fish, smoked meats, fermented honey. The entire family bought a large suburban house with a plot of garden.They owned a colour television and an American car. Sven supported his grandmother, his aging father, and one plump, plain daughter.

He had called her Aud after the great foundress of Iceland, Aud the Deep-Minded. Alas, the name was no more appropriate than Helen of Troy would have been. Aud was simple and boring. She helped her father in his store, showed no desire to attend college, and seemed to have no ambition other than to get an extra helping of pudding every night.

Sven tried to love his daughter. He had no idea why she had not turned out like Marianne, his stylish wife, or his long-lost sister Natasha, the passionate one who had eloped to Estonia with a rich banker so many years ago, both of them women who had been prepared to enter whole new worlds for love, to cast off the familiar and leap into the darkness. Aud just stood around, gaining weight and owlishly squinting at the television. She showed no interest in dressing up, or flirting with boys. For all her docility, Aud had an instinctive grasp of one thing: she was not attractive, and she would never be attractive. She gave up men as a bad job and dedicated herself to helping her father.