IT IS 1939. All that’s left of Étoile du Nord is the shuttered premises. Inside, there’s damp, loose carpet and horizontal mannequins where wealthy Parisians once tussled over the spring collections. A decade of economic blight has eaten away at the business. Nicolas’s trip to London failed to turn up a buyer for the store and depleted precious savings, making any hope of transcribing the rolls impossible. Nicolas and Anya are compelled to economise. Old age, shame and increasing poverty combine to bring about a contraction of their circle. On a rare social excursion, Nicolas has his troubling encounter with the duchess. Father David died years ago. His replacement is a young émigré called Father Gerasim, who has left Russia to get away from the communists. The experience of religious persecution has, paradoxically perhaps, made him more narrow-minded and intolerant. He’s a stickler for convention. Father Gerasim has a thick sable beard that he likes to gather in his fist like a pigtail when he’s listening. In his eyes, there often seems to be a secret joke, but it’s never clear at whose expense.

There’s none of the wisdom and chatty intimacy that Nicolas enjoyed with his predecessor. In any case, Nicolas rarely goes to church these days – now and again at Orthodox Christmas, and mainly because he likes the music.

Volchkov has moved to Lyon. Rachkovsky’s gone entirely. He vanishes from this story, leaving a mask to be worn by other antagonists.

Paris falls in June 1940. Anya is too frail to leave. Since her terrible decade of loss, she’s found it increasingly hard to leave the house. Unfamiliar places seem full of unspeakable menace. It is a form of mental illness. Nicolas has long since given up attempting to reason with her delusions. He cares for her in their apartment: a much smaller one, in which piles of his books form teetering internal walls.

In the aftermath of military defeat, an old theme emerges. There has already been some grumbling that the Notovitches’ remaining son is abroad and not doing his bit for France. Now the recrimination is more overt: ‘On nous a vendu,’ goes the muttering. ‘Sales youpins.’ They sold us out. The dirty Jews.

By October, Jewish businesses are forced to display bilingual signs in the windows. Entreprise juive. Jüdisches Geschäft. Under the Statut des Juifs, foreign Jews must register their names and places of birth at the police headquarters.

Nicolas wisely chooses to ignore the order. He tries once more to sell the department store with the hope of raising money to emigrate. Someone offers him a ten per cent down payment, changes the locks, and then reports him as a foreign Jew to avoid paying the rest.