Free The Third Section by Jasper Kent Page B

mother?
    The door opened, banishing her recollections.
    ‘Hello, Dubois,’ she said with half a smile to the butler who had evidently spied her presence before she had even needed to knock – the same French butler she had known since she was seventeen.
    ‘Madame Tamara.’ His speech was as understated as ever, but she could tell that he was surprised, and pleased.
    He took her hat, coat and mittens and almost – but not quite – ran to announce her to her parents. They had changed little, in her eyes at least. Yelena Vadimovna was now sixty-two, but did not show it as she ran across the room to greet her daughter. Valentin Valentinovich moved more slowly, partly due to his age, partly due to his generally more restrained manner, but his embrace was as tight as Yelena’s had been.
    They talked a lot about very little. At first they spoke of the war and of Rodion, Tamara’s brother. He was stationed at Helsingfors. Apparently, the British fleet in the Baltic was even larger than in the Black Sea, though the waters were unnavigable until spring. The whole family had been back for the New Year and they’d left the eldest boy, Vadim Rodionovich, to stay with his grandparents to be educated in Moscow – it was a shame he’d already gone to bed when Tamara arrived. Then, realizing perhaps that it revealed too much if they spoke only of her brother’s side of the family, they began to turn the conversation on to her.
    They asked her where she was living and Tamara was vague. They asked if she was still working for the government, and she said she was. They asked which department, and she said His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery. They asked which section and she said the fourth. They were pleased – working to help educate the poor was an ideal job for Tamara.
    ‘I must admit though,’ Yelena had eventually said, ‘to a little surprise that you’ve come back to live in Moscow after all these years. Not that we’re not both delighted.’ She glanced at her husband, as if to verify his agreement. Tamara seized the opportunity to turn the conversation in the direction that she both feared and yearned for.
    ‘I came to research my parents,’ she said. She almost felt herself flinch in anticipation of their response. She knew how they always reacted, yet still she kept on doing it.
    ‘“Research” us,’ said Valentin. ‘That’s a nice way of putting it.’ But his laughter was forced – a last-ditch attempt to avoid hearing what he knew she was about to say.
    ‘My natural parents, I mean.’ Tamara put every effort into making it sound unimportant. Only at the last moment did she manage to say ‘natural’ instead of ‘real’. The mood of the room changed instantly.
    ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Toma, haven’t we been over this enough?’ Yelena stood as she spoke, and began to pace across the room.
    Valentin shook his head sadly, and rubbed his hands against his thighs. ‘Insulting. Most insulting,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Ungrateful.’
    Tamara felt like a little girl again. She’d always hated to upset them, but she’d grown to learn it was often a trick. Whenever she was naughty, the easiest way to punish her was to make her feel that she had let them down. She felt the tears rising in her, but held them back. On this occasion they were probably being genuine, to a degree. She
was
being insulting, and ungrateful – but that didn’t diminish the fact that what she was saying was true.
    ‘I don’t love either of you any less for it,’ she said, hearing the sudden emotion in her own voice. ‘I probably love you even more.’
    ‘It’s a madness in you,’ said Yelena. ‘An obsession.’
    ‘A serpent’s tooth,’ muttered Valentin.
    ‘All that you’ve done for me counts for even more if I’m not your flesh and blood.’ Now Tamara felt she was pleading.
    ‘Exactly,’ said Yelena, coming to a halt in front of Tamara. ‘How could we – why would we – if you’re not our