The Star of Kazan

‘Oh, I do hope I can bring it off,’ she said. ‘It will be so wonderful for you!’

Sometimes when she was alone with her mother, Annika would try and guess.

‘We’re going on a journey to Africa to see lions?’ she would suggest, and her mother would smile and shake her head.

Or: ‘I’m getting a little boat with a red sail to take me over the lake?’

Or: ‘My friends are coming from Vienna on a visit?’

But always her mother would shake her head and say, ‘No, it’s better than that!’

Then came the day when Gudrun and her parents moved back to the hunting lodge and Annika and her mother were alone.

And at dinner that night, Edeltraut raised her glass to drink a toast. Her eyes sparkled, she was flushed with excitement.

‘ To your surprise, my dear,’ she said, stretching her hand across the table to lay it on her daughter’s. And as Annika looked at her, she said, ‘Yes, my darling child, I’ve done it! I was so afraid I’d have to disappoint you, but they’ve agreed. Come upstairs where we can be quite private. Oh, Annika, you’re going to be so pleased!’

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Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the black recipe book which had belonged to her mother and her mother’s mother before her.

She’d got the book down because she wanted to check the quantities of sugar that were needed for some apricot preserve she was making. She had found the amounts almost at once, but now, some ten minutes later, she was still sitting with the book in front of her, and the page open at the entry that Annika had copied in on Christmas Eve.

‘A pinch of nutmeg will improve the flavour of the sauce,’ she read, for perhaps the hundredth time since Annika had gone.

Easter was over. On the Thursday before the holiday weekend, the emperor had given out purses to the poor and washed the feet of the twelve needy gentlemen who had been brought to him from almshouses in the city. Some of the needy gentlemen had enjoyed having their feet washed by the emperor, and some had not, but that was neither here nor there because the feet-washing was a tradition and had to be carried on.

After that, on Good Friday, the paintings and crucifixes in the churches had been shrouded in purple and the sounds of the street became muffled while the citizens mourned the death of Christ. And then on Easter Sunday the bells had pealed out joyously, there was music everywhere, the sun shone and everyone in Vienna seemed to have a new hat.

Ellie had done her best with Easter. She had not bought a new hat because her brown felt hat was only ten years old and had plenty of life in it still, but she had done all the things she had done the year before and the year before that. She had hard-boiled eggs for the little Bodek boys to paint; she had baked Easter muffins for Pauline and her grandfather, and a simnel cake for the professors, and she and Sigrid had taken flowers to the church.

But nothing gave her any joy.

‘I have to get over it,’ Ellie told herself. ‘It’s over two months since she went. Why doesn’t it get better?’

But it didn’t get better. If anything, missing Annika got worse.

There was a knock at the back door and Pauline came in carrying her scrapbook and a pot of glue. Since Annika had gone she came quite often to work in Ellie’s kitchen.

‘Have you had a letter?’ she asked.

Ellie closed the book. ‘No. Have you?’

‘No. And Stefan hasn’t either.’

‘It’s not so long since she wrote.’

‘It’s longer than it’s ever been,’ said Pauline. ‘Perhaps her mother has sent her into the forest with a huntsman and told him to kill her and bring back her tongue, like in the stories.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Pauline, what’s the matter with you? What have you got against Frau Edeltraut?’

‘She’s an aristocrat; they’re always doing things like that. Look at Count Dracula. And that horrible perfume she wears, like mangled wolves.’

But Sigrid came in at that moment and told Pauline to stop upsetting Ellie. Hating people helped some people, but it only gave Ellie a stomach ache.

Pauline put down her scrapbook and the pot of glue and reached for the scissors. She had found a story she liked very much, about a little boy who had climbed into a hot-air balloon and been carried away, but a crippled lady had raced after it in her wheelchair and managed to get hold of the rope and hold on . . .

For a while there was peace as Sigrid started on the ironing and Ellie went back to the stove. Then Professor Gertrude’s bell sounded from her bedroom. It was not her usual gentle ring but louder and more insistent.

‘Something’s the matter,’ said Sigrid.

They trooped out into the hall and found Professor Gertrude, still in her dressing gown and slippers.

‘It’s come!’ she said agitatedly. ‘I saw from the window! It’s come!’

No one asked what had come. Only one thing could make Professor Gertrude run round the hallway like a headless chicken, with her grey plait hanging down her back.