Delphine picked out a heavy gold cuff link.
“My dad’s,” Sophie muttered.
A small piece of lace was next to come out. “It must have been from one of my mother’s summer dresses,” Sophie said.
Delphine put them carefully back in the box. “And this?” she asked, unfolding a piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn from a magazine. Inside was a large colorless stone on a piece of old string. It looked like a piece of dirty glass.
“I don’t know, really,” Sophie said. “It’s just something of my dad’s. He used to hold it up to the light and it would suddenly have all these other colors in it.”
“Prism,” said Marianne.
“What?” Delphine held the glass up and little sprinkles of light seemed to jump out.
“Refraction!” Marianne said. “When light is split up into its component parts. Like in a rainbow. Don’t youeverpay attention in physics?” She added, “It looks a bit like my lucky druid stone.”
“Mon Dieu,”Delphine muttered. “How can you be so superstitiousandso clever?” She held the piece of glass up to her ear. “It’d make a nice earring, though.”
“Except there’s only one.” Sophie sat down on her bed. “I don’t have a pair of anything. Rosemary got rid of most of my parents’ things in one of her big spring cleanups.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t got rid ofyouin one of her cleanups!” Marianne said, trying and failing to lighten the mood. “Sorry,” she added.
“I wonder what it would be like to be one of a pair …” Sophie whispered. “Or afamily…”
There was an awkward silence and then Delphine said softly, “It’s all right being the only one, Sophie. It means you’re unique.”
Sophie smiled, although she didn’t feel happy. Talking about her parents always made her feel their loss more keenly. She took the box from Delphine, wrapped the piece of glass back up in the torn magazine page, and put it neatly back in the box. Then she put the box in her rucksack. Her father had promised to take her on a magical journey. Of course, he probably meant traveling by flying carpet, or charging along in a time machine. She couldn’t manage either of those, but she would take what little she had left of him with her. That wayshecould takehimon a magical journey.
She was really going!
She allowed herself to think about it — really think about it — for the first time. Of Russia. Of vast lily pads of ice slipping down the inky river Neva. Of uprisings and royal bloodshed. Of the story of the poet who fought a duel on a bitter frosty dawn for the sake of his skittish young wife. And everywhere — under the hooves of the horses pulling sleighs through the streets, on the onion domes of churches, or covering the parks of ornate baroque palaces — snow.
Twenty English girls stood underneath the clock in the Moskovsky Vokzal train station, waiting for their host families to arrive. The early start from school, the excitement of the flight from England, and the taxi across the city had left them all exhausted.
Miss Ellis, their language teacher, clapped her hands. “We are now in Russia!” She spoke loudly, as if she were addressing a huge crowd rather than a group of twenty schoolgirls. “Remember — and this especially means you, Nadine” — she glared at a sixteen-year-old whose hair had been backcombed into a Marie Antoinette birds’ nest and who was picking the silver varnish off her nails — “that you are ambassadors for your country! You are ambassadors for womanhood! You are ambassadors for New Bloomsbury College!”
Sophie didn’t care about being an ambassador. She was in Saint Petersburg! She was actually here. Not only that, there was a blizzard outside. Real, proper snow. Wild, magical weather instead of London drizzle. And the station itself was as beautiful as apalazzo. She felt as if she were already somewhere enchanting, somewhere full of possibilities.
Sophie looked out over the crowded concourse. Men wore fur hats. Their faces, under the lights, were the color of the meat in a pork pie. The women looked bored and disdainful in long fur coats, but glamorous and foreign with their bright, waxy lipstick and thick black eyeliner. In between the crowds, young soldiers in greatcoats wandered around, their faces impossibly clean, their eyes sleepy. They carried large black machine guns on leather straps over their shoulders.
As the crowds parted, Sophie noticed a woman at the station café, beautifully if showily dressed in a long tapestry coat with a high fur collar. Unlike many others in the station, she wore no hat. Her short hair, which curled around her wide cheekbones like orchid petals, was very black and almost as shiny as her high patent-leather boots. Every few seconds, the woman checked the time on her watch and glanced over to the station clock above Sophie’s head. Sophie found her concentration fascinating. What was the woman so concerned about that needed such careful attention to the passing of time? Perhaps she was a countess, smuggling secrets, about to take the train through the snows and the forests to some dangerous assignation with a foreign agent? Or was she about to start work on a cosmonaut base, training brave young Russians to travel to the stars? Or was she even, Sophie wondered as she watched the woman lift a tiny cup to her lips, a famous ballerina who simply wanted to find some anonymity away from adoring audiences and a grueling dance schedule?
Delphine, dressed in a gray-and-silver tweed coat, a soft silk scarf at her neck, and a gray man’s homburg hat pulled down low over her loose blonde curls, pointed her toe and photographed her shoe.
Marianne, wearing her navy school coat, jeans, and sneakers, nudged her in the ribs. “Why are you taking photographs of your feet?”
“For my visual diary!” Delphine explained. “Don’t you think my shoes are pretty? And the herringbone pattern of my tights? I’m going to make a film when we get back to London.”
“Your feet?” Marianne repeated. She shook her head and waved her guidebook at Delphine. “With ‘all the splendors of the Tsars’ to be seen, you’re going to make a film of your feet?”
Sophie slipped her copy of the itinerary out of her rucksack. Their hostess was called Dr. Galina Starova. That sounded like a good name. A glamorous name.What would a woman with a name like that be like?Sophie thought. She decided she would greet her in Russian — if she didn’t become tongue-tied at the last minute.
How would she say hello?“Strast-vooo-id-tye,”she muttered.
This Dr. Starova, decided Sophie, was probably responsible for scientific research at a top secret institute. She would be beautiful and clever, but also do wicked things like smoking, playing cards, and wearing fur. She would be an excellent shot. She would definitely be wearing thick black eyeliner and too much lipstick.
“Paj-hal-ster.”It would be good to be able to say “please.”
By the end of the week, Dr. Starova and Sophie would be firm friends and write to each other for the rest of their lives.
