“The woman was asking lots of questions about whether I thought any of the Romanovs might have survived. She’s a historian writing a thesis about it. I gave her deliberately vague answers.”

Maria nodded. “So Bolotov is dead? What age is his daughter?”

“Much younger than me: I’d say late thirties. She was born in Australia. It seems he emigrated there.”

“Does she have any brothers or sisters?” She wondered how Stepan felt. It must be peculiar to discover he had a half sister.

“I didn’t ask.”

“How did she find you?” Maria asked, still watching him.

“She didn’t know who I was. Her tour guide brought her to me to ask about the Fabergé box. I didn’t enlighten her, but I did tell her that her father was one of the executioners. That shocked her. She hadn’t known before.”

“Poor woman,” Maria said. “It’s not her fault. We don’t choose our parents.”

“I suppose not.”

“Did you arrange to meet her again? I would love to see my old sketchbook and photo album, and the Fabergé box Mama gave me.”

Stepan shook his head. “I don’t want to see her again. She’s here on holiday and flying back to Australia soon. But she said I could keep these photos.”

“That was kind of her.” Maria clutched them to her chest. “Were you polite, Stepan? You don’t sound as though you were very pleased to make her acquaintance.”

He shrugged. “I made her a cup of tea.”

“You didn’t feel any kind of bond?”

“Definitely not.” He dismissed the idea. “She doesn’t look like me. She has black hair, an oriental look. Besides, I have all the family I could possibly want right here in Russia.”

Maria smiled and patted his hand. “I’d like to show these pictures to the others,” she said. “We can say a tourist brought them to your office, after finding them in an old camera. They don’t need to know who that tourist was.”

Still, after all these years, she had not told Peter who Stepan’s biological father was. He had never asked and she had never seen the need to unburden herself. Some secrets were best kept. As far as she knew, Stepan had not told Ludmilla either. Irina, Mikhail, and Yelena all knew that she had been a Romanov, but her grandchildren had not been told yet, even though the eldest two were in their twenties. Maria had resolved she would never tell any of them that Stepan had a different father than his siblings. It didn’t matter anymore; never had.

Stepan helped her up from the bed and took her arm as she hobbled slowly to the kitchen, cardigan forgotten.

“Peter! Turn the radio off!” she called.