Next to the fire, the Cossack stared sadly at the body of his dead wife. Pyotr had fetched a mop and was dabbing gently at the wet floorboards around her where the ice from her clothes had begun to thaw.

Upstairs in the dormitory the bunk beds creaked. People were getting up. Soon they would be down, the young lawyer on his way to Vladivostok and the old salesman from Irkutsk and the others, wanting their breakfast. Well, I would make breakfast. I would fill the samovar and give them hot tea and fresh rolls. I would send Pyotr into town for the carpenter and the priest and when he got back I would say to him that I was very sorry but I was going back to Birmingham now. I would tell him that he could keep the inn if he wanted it, I would leave everything for him, the beds and the cooking pots, the crockery, the vodka jugs, the knives and forks, the wood pile in the back, my balalaika, and then I would pack my bags. I would walk out into the snow and climb on the first train that was heading west out of Siberia and I would keep going until I got back to Geoffrey, and once I was there I would do what I should have done years ago, I would have some driving lessons, and when I passed my test, I would drive, and Geoffrey would navigate. And if I failed my driving test, I would take Geoffrey’s hands in mine and tell him I loved him. I would make us a good dinner and open a bottle of wine, I would put on the blue Margaret Howell linen blouse he gave me for our twelfth wedding anniversary and the cedar-wood bracelet he gave me for our fifth, and I would talk to him about public transport.

Myth

Myth

IT WASN’T LIKE you think.

When the time came I was brought to the queen’s tent and told to lie down on the couch.

The whole place was lit with tapers and it was bright as day. All the other women were there, standing in rows on the carpeted ground – to give me strength, said the queen. She herself bound my wrists and ankles and secured them to the couch. I was given a beaker of cordial to drink and after that I can’t tell you how long it seemed before the Chinaman arrived.

When he did I began to shake. My feet bucked against the leather straps and my gorge rose.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I prefer to die,’ but the queen shook her head and the little Chinaman asked for water.

He was tiny. A minute person in a soft blue tunic and a bamboo hat who had once set the queen’s broken leg. Black cotton shoes on his neat little feet, in his hand a hide bag with a pleated neck holding his instruments.