After I have fed Baba and helped her back to her room, I square my shoulders and go to my father’s room. It is big and strangely still. The shutters are closed and it is dark. For a moment, I stand at the doorway and feel a sensation of remorse. I took a man’s life. Even if I did not pull the trigger, it was I who orchestrated him into that position, and would have eventually completed the execution I was a hair’s breadth away.

My father was right. I will never be the same again.

Then I shake off the dark sense of disquiet and switch on the light.

His bed is crumpled and clearly shows the marks of his body being pulled out of it. I have to be out of here before the servants start arriving. I pull on my rubber gloves, walk to the bed, and rearrange it so it looks the way it would if someone got out of it naturally.

Then I collect his wallet, his belt, his money clip and his shoes, and put them all into a laundry bag. I take one last look then I switch off the light and go to my own room. I add my clothes and shoes to my father’s things and lock the laundry bag in my safe. I will burn everything later.

Then I go into the shower.

While I am standing under the strong cascade of warm water, I have a strange sensation. As if what is happening to me can’t be real. My father is dead. Sergei is dead. Noah told me he loves me. My grandmother is completely devastated. Noah is alive. I’m a murderer.

After my shower I go downstairs to the kitchen.

‘Where’s Rosita?’ I ask the chef.

‘I think she’s in the laundry room,’ he says.

I run down to the basement and find her folding some sheets.

She smiles broadly. ‘You’re up early.’

‘No, I’m not,’ I deny guiltily, then I stop myself. ‘Yeah, I drank a lot last night and slept like a log. I woke up with a headache, but thank God it’s gone now that I’ve had a shower.’

Rosita smiles politely while she waits to hear what I want from her.

‘Hey, you know the puppy I gave you the other day, where is it now?’

Her smile suddenly widens to a big, toothy grin.

‘Come, come. It is good that you have come to take him. He’s very naughty. Impossible to work when he is around,’ she says, and takes me to the corridor.

Just outside the cellar door is a cage with the poor puppy inside it. He is sitting upright and staring at us curiously. I open the cage door and take him into my arms. He is ecstatic to be free and licks my face with his tiny little tongue.

‘I’m so sorry. It’s not your fault at all. You’re a good little boy,’ I say, kissing his soft ears.

Then I take him with me upstairs to Baba’s room.

He’ll never take Sergei’s place, but he deserves better than being locked up in a cage in the basement. One day I’ll learn to love him.

I put him on the floor in Baba’s room. He starts running around like a mad thing. Just like Sergei used to.

I look at Baba. ‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to call him Niki. He will be Papa’s gift to us. He will be one of the good things that Papa gave to me.’

* * *

I wait until 2.00pm when it has become certain among the servants and everybody in the household that Papa is missing. Something is wrong. Then I call Oliver. He doesn’t pick up and I am about to leave a message when he comes on.

‘Hello, Tasha,’ he says. How I could have thought I could marry him or live with him seems incredible now. I must have been a different person. Not truly living at all.

‘Oliver, I’m calling to give you the bad news that my father is missing.’

‘What do you mean missing?’

‘He left in his car in the middle of the night and now neither he nor his car can be found.’

‘Are you joking?’

‘Of course not,’ I say coldly.

‘Sorry,’ he apologizes, taken aback by my coldness. ‘It just seems so incredible.’

‘Anyway, the reason I’m calling is to tell you under the circumstances there won’t be a wedding.’

‘Not so fast. Your father and I had a deal.’

‘Yes, I know. You’ll have to take it up with him when he shows up. Goodbye.’

‘Hang on a minu—’

I end the call. ‘That’s that,’ I say, and a smile comes to my lips.

My phone rings. It is him. I reject the call and block his number.

It is time to go to the police. I buy a new pay as you go, throw my old cell phone in a bin on Park Lane and the battery in a bin outside the police station just before I go in to make a missing person report.

* * *

That night I sleep in Baba’s room with Niki.