Nicolas babbles to fill the silence. ‘Real black bread. It’s the taste of home. There’s nothing like this in Paris.’

‘Paris!’ laments a sad voice from the divan. ‘Paris! Why can’t I be in Paris?’ Irina bursts unaccountably into tears and flees from the room.

Osip looks relieved. He butters some bread and eats it quickly. ‘Since the baby, she’s been a little like this. The nurse said that sometimes, when the milk comes in, it makes them blue.’

Nicolas nods and thinks: I’m never going to get married.

‘Hear anything from home?’ asks Osip.

‘Everyone’s well. And you?’

Osip gives a non-committal shrug and pours vodka into two little glasses.

This is their major point of contact: two ex-Jews, making their way in a Christian world, both severed from their origins.

Osip seems eager to pick up the glass. ‘It’s cold today,’ he says, as if to rationalise drinking at lunchtime. Nicolas joins him: he has no choice, really. It would be rude to let Osip drink alone. The drink improves Osip’s mood and the tune he hums as they walk back to the office is in a major key.

Around 2.30, word reaches them of the bombing. By three, the Tsar’s death is confirmed. Osip convenes an editorial meeting. ‘We should publish with black borders. A series of pieces on his legacy. Reaction from around the globe.’ He lays out an imaginary headline with his hands. ‘A lamentable tragedy. The world mourns.’

This direction is heartily approved. There’s one dissenting voice. A younger journalist, a non-Jew called Stepan Bogomilov. He was the one who expressed such admiration for Nicolas’s work in Bulgaria. ‘Do you think it really was the anarchists, this time? I mean, of course it was the anarchists, but how come they got so close? I just think we should dig a bit more deeply. Who benefits from this? It’s just, like, so convenient. When the Tsar’s pressing for reform and there are so many people who oppose him. This works nicely for the conservatives. Now they’ll have one of their own in power.’

‘You think the army are behind it?’ Nicolas finds himself irrationally annoyed.

‘Not the army …’

‘Then who?’

‘Forces of some kind. I don’t know.’

‘Forces? Who are you thinking of? The English? Freemasons? The Jews?’

That’s a very direct challenge. Nicolas and Osip’s ethnicity must be obvious to the other journalists.

‘Let’s not squabble, people,’ says Osip. ‘We have a paper to produce. I want a big piece on the Emancipation. The other major achievement is the Turkish War and the liberation of the Balkan nations.’ He lets his glance alight briefly on his cousin. ‘Now, if only we had someone who could give us the inside scoop on that.’

The other journalists laugh. Nicolas feels, in spite of everything, flattered.