There was a soldier standing on guard outside the palace who looked somehow familiar, and she took the children’s hands to wander a little closer. He seemed wary as she approached.

“Pray forgive me if I am wrong,” she said to him, “but are you by any chance Fedor Ivanov Lipovsky?”

“Who wants to know?” he demanded.

“You will think me touched, perhaps, but I am a friend of a woman called Annushka who has lost her brother, and you seem to me remarkably similar.”

He stared, openmouthed. “You know my sister?”

She gave a broad smile. “I was sure it was you. Annushka will be overjoyed to see you again.” She gave the address, which had lodged in her memory. “Bolshaya Apartments, number fifty-seven.”

“Did you recognize me from the family forehead?” he asked. “We can’t be the only people to have these.”

Maria shook her head. “Not just the forehead. I like drawing and . . .” She had been about to say that she enjoyed taking photographs, which would instantly have marked her out as a kulak, but stopped herself just in time. “I suppose I have a memory for faces,” she finished. “I’m glad I could be of use.”

Next time she saw Annushka in the bread line, her friend threw her arms around her and almost cried with gratitude. “I will always be in your debt,” she said. “Thank you a million, million times.”

* * *

Maria would have thought no more of this chance reunion, but Annushka told some friends about her miraculous eye for faces and she was approached by two other women who had lost family members. They gave her slips of paper with their addresses and asked her to memorize their features just in case she encountered their missing relatives. Maria made quick sketches of each on the back of their papers and promised to keep her eyes peeled, but cautioned them not to have high expectations. Even if their relatives were in the city, it had a population of over a million and new suburbs were springing up every month.

A woman by the name of Raisa came with her husband to stay in the kommunalka where Maria and Peter lived. It soon became apparent that she was a gossip who loved nothing better than standing in the hallway discussing the affairs of other neighbors in a way that made Maria uneasy. She did not care to know if the couple on the first floor argued most nights; and when the people on the third floor lost a baby, she would rather respect their privacy and let them mourn in peace. At the same time she did not wish to alienate Raisa, fearing that she herself might become the subject of her gossip, so she listened and changed the subject as soon as it was possible to do so without causing offense. One day she told Raisa of her success in reuniting Annushka and her brother.