All Sven wanted was for his only child to show some spark of life. Often, he felt like shaking her. Sometimes, he felt like shaking his wife. He was nothing like her: where could Aud’s bad genes have come from?

And then came the night that his life, and Aud’s, changed forever.

It was cold, pitch-black, the way October nights in Espoo often are. He woke, frightened, clutching his warm woollen blankets to his chest. A nightmare? No, he realized there was a thunderous banging on the door.

The police . . . ? Someone was dead . . . ? His store had been burned down ... ? Heart pounding, he pushed his wife away from him as she reached out to clutch at his nightshirt, tugged on his boots, and raced down the stairs. Aud had crept out of her bedroom; she watched from the landing as Sven wrenched open the door.

“Sven, let us in.” It was a plaintive cry. “I’m so cold. So cold . . .”

He stared. But the sight that met his eyes did not alter. There were two figures shaking with cold, their lips blue in the light of the street lamps, on his doorstep. One of them was a skinny, pale young man in a soaking-wet fur coat, his eyes dark and wild. The other was his sister.

“My God!” he said. “My God, Tasha! You’re alive—you’re here . . .”

Her teeth chattered. Sven pulled her to him in a bear hug, then almost recoiled. Her body was freezing, and there were crystals of ice in her hair.

“Aud!” he roared. “Marianne! Get down here. Aud, lay the fire. And then draw a bath. Marianne, get some roasted elk and my bottle of whisky. Hurry!”

As he hugged Natasha, the pale young man slipped quietly inside the house and shut the door. He looked up at Aud and said, in perfect Finnish, “Make that bath barely lukewarm, or we will get chilblains. The fire must wait until we have thawed.”

Sven’s mouth opened, then closed again. The man looked like a drowned ferret, his skin was pale with the chill and his eyes horribly red from lack of sleep. But he spoke with such confidence that he could have been the mayor condescending to pay Sven a visit.

“Who are you?” he muttered.

Tasha looked nervously at the stranger, who held her gaze coolly. He answered staring into her eyes, not even looking at Sven. It was not until a year later that Sven would recall that moment as odd.

“My name is Pyotr Vladekovich,” he said.