The blue room was the first room that night to remind Fiona of home.
Even the water jugs looked as though they were of Australian-New Zealand origin. But the blue of this room was not ostentatious. It lay in layers of cobalt: pale as a New Zealand dawn, dark as the Tasman Sea, greenish at the edges like water over a reef, deep and dull in the curtains like the colour of old work clothes that had been washed too many times. On the walls hung devotional pictures of palm-fringed chapels at the mission, alongside maps, seabirds, a framed print of a sailing ship and a small carved idol that looked as though someone had folded Saint Augustine out of palm leaves.

On the bed lay a blanket of blue and grey woollen fabric. Fiona touched it tentatively. She thought of the cold, of work, of sheep, of hands that were rough by evening and yet, the next morning, set about once more with the daily toil for their daily bread.
Wolfgang stood by the door and pulled it shut completely. He seemed out of place in this room, but only a little lost. His dark clothes, his alert eyes and the stubble on his chin turned the blue room into a cabin on the eve of a storm.
Fiona didn’t sit down straight away. She went to the window first. Outside lay neither the Pacific, nor Australia, nor New Zealand. Just the Greek night, moonlight and the dark outline of the cliffs with the white chapel at the highest point. Nevertheless, this was the first room in which she didn’t feel as though she were being watched by Australians.
Wolfgang stepped away from the doorframe and stood politely, as if waiting for instructions.
“I can sleep on the floor if you’d prefer, or even in the bath, with a towel as a pillow. I’ve slept in worse places than on a clean carpet in a wealthy house, and more often than not there weren’t even proper towels in the bathroom. So you needn’t pretend it’s an imposition on me if you claim the bed for yourself.” ”
Fiona looked at him over her shoulder. It was a scrutinising glance, not an unfriendly one.
“I didn’t realise you were so sensitive, Mr Bogdanov. Anyone of your age who still stands so attentively by doors is either too fearful or too experienced, and I don’t think it’s fear in your case. You may take the armchair. Your mother is surely proud of your good manners.”
“We’re not talking about my mother!” Wolfgang snapped, unusually sharply. Then he looked at the armchair. It was upholstered in blue, with low armrests and a small cushion that was probably of no use to anyone who wasn’t a five-year-old child.

“The armchair is lovely. I can sit in it if it makes you happy. Even so, I’m happy to take it, because I’ve learnt that older ladies sometimes lay down rules that are wiser than they might seem at first glance.”
Fiona went over to the bed after all and sat down on the edge. She didn’t take her shoes off. A woman who’d had to get up in the night often enough in her life liked to keep her shoes on for a while longer.
“Older ladies know that furniture is less dangerous than people, because it’s just objects that can be shunted from here to there without a will of their own. You don’t need to be afraid of me, and I’m not particularly afraid of you, even though you’ve probably broken more laws than all the bishops mentioned in passing this evening. I’ve spent my life sorting out bills, workers, sheep, illnesses, the weather and family feuds; a thief sitting in an armchair doesn’t rattle me.”
Wolfgang sat down slowly. The armchair creaked as if no one had sat on it for a long time.
“You say ‘thief’ very calmly. Most people treat it as a judgement, but coming from you it almost sounds like a profession with its own tools. I don’t know whether to find that offensive or exciting.”
Fiona folded her hands in her lap. In this room, there was nothing but blue, wool and concentration.
“A profession is an activity that is carried out regularly and requires certain methods. I don’t harbour the romantic notion that property is only sacred when it belongs to the right person, for I’ve seen too many rich people treat their possessions worse than poor people treat other people’s frying pans. But I also know that stolen items are missing somewhere, and that’s why I won’t regard theft as a moralistic form of redistribution.”
Wolfgang smiled in surprise.
“You sound like a pragmatic Catholic. That’s a dangerous combination, because you never know whether forgiveness or an inventory will follow. In my family, guilt was dealt with more in the light of icons and old smoke, less by lists, but in the end, even there, someone always wanted to know who was paying.”
Fiona looked at him. For the first time that evening, there was a hint of dry interest in her gaze.
“You’re Orthodox, aren’t you? You don’t flaunt it, but you have that way of viewing guilt as something that must be endured rather than explained. Catholics like to manage guilt in tables and books of penance; Orthodox Christians plead for mercy amidst gilded backgrounds and incense.”
Wolfgang laughed softly. For three seconds, he looked younger.

“That’s probably unfair, but not stupid. I’m not particularly devout, but I know the smell of churches where people leave their shame before the icons because they don’t want to take it home with them. Perhaps that’s why I recognise when someone folds their guilt so neatly that no one notices how much blood is on the fabric. I like going to churches, not to steal icons or candlesticks, but because I’m somehow waiting for God to explain to me one day why he created the joke that is life, when death is so much more relaxing.”
Fiona fell silent.
The blue room seemed to darken around her, even though the lamp was still burning. Outside, water lapped against stone. It sounded as though the sea were repeating a sentence that nobody understood.
Wolfgang didn’t look at her triumphantly. He hadn’t discovered anything to be pleased about. Nevertheless, the suspicion now hung in the air.

“Do you remember the relaxed dead woman out there? You had a row with Valeria Sebastienne. I don’t know when, and I don’t know what was said, but I saw at the table that her name didn’t strike you as a stranger’s name. Mary grew hard, Meghan broke down even more, Justine became loud, but you fell silent in a way I recognise from people who have already decided which drawer to lock away.”
Fiona lowered her gaze to her hands. They were old, but not weak. Hands that had ironed, cooked, washed, counted, written and carried. Hands that had been caressed far too rarely.
“You’re a keen observer for a man who supposedly spends his time only picking locks and going on joint raids with his friend Felix. I didn’t have an argument in the sense of a loud row with Mrs Sebastienne, because loud rows are usually just the sort of conflict that poor people have to put up with. I had letters, investigations, a brief visit that should never have taken place, and in the end a decision that seemed cleaner to me than hatred.”
Wolfgang leaned forward in his armchair. The armchair creaked warningly.
“‘Cleaner than hatred’ sounds dangerous. When someone like me harbours hatred, they take a car, a bag, a safe or a bad plan, and afterwards you can at least count the stupidity. When someone like you calls something ‘clean’, there are probably filing cabinets, doctors, solicitors or a bottle of poison on the table.”

Fiona looked up, and this time there was something in her expression that Wolfgang hadn’t expected: not shame, but a hard, almost youthful defiance.
“Valeria accused me of only seducing Paddy Cleary because Mary had secured herself the rich Carl Carson. In her version, I was the scheming little sister-in-law who saw that the older sister-in-law was marrying into a family in Drogheda, and so took poor Paddy to get my hands on the farm through children after all, because I’d supposedly ruined Mary’s fertility. She wrote it with such certainty that I almost had to laugh, if it hadn’t been so mean.”
Wolfgang said nothing. By now he knew when silence revealed more than a question ever could.
Fiona slowly took off one shoe. Then the other. She placed them side by side, exactly parallel.
“My family in New Zealand was richer than the Carsons. Not just a little better off, but genuinely richer, more secure, more respected, with opportunities that Paddy never had and could never have had. I didn’t marry him because I wanted to gain something from him, but because I was pregnant out of wedlock and because, in that world, a young woman with a child and no husband was very quickly cut off from her own future. In my life – and this will surprise you, as a promiscuous man of today – I’ve only slept with two men. One of them was my husband Paddy, with whom I had nine children.”
She clasped her hands again. This time they weren’t trembling, but the room suddenly knew that they might have been.

“I didn’t marry Paddy out of self-interest, nor did I marry him out of the pure love he would have deserved. I married him because it was necessary, because my mistake needed a name, and because, despite all his harshness, Paddy was a man who shouldered the burden without proclaiming it from the pulpit. So Valeria took the most ridiculous aspect of my life and turned it into a conspiracy, because people like her always believe that every woman secretly reaches for the possessions that men officially manage.”
Wolfgang leaned back. His face now showed not derision, but respect.
“That was a foolish attempt at blackmail. Not without risk, because foolish attempts at blackmail often cause a great deal of damage, but foolish in its execution. She misjudged the hierarchy, misjudged the money, misjudged Paddy and, most of all, misjudged you. You come from a wealthy family, yet you still didn’t marry the man you loved. Why?”
Fiona nodded slowly.
“You’ll find this amusing: my grandmother was a daughter of the Duke of Leinster. Yet, for love’s sake, she married only a brother of the Margrave of Conyngham, who, incidentally, went on to become treasurer in New Zealand. Their son married a countess – my mother. And then, as a naive fifteen-year-old, I came back to our estate from boarding school during the summer holidays and met my Prince Charming – or at least my Prince Duke.”
Wolfgang realised that this sentence had hit him like a slap in the face. For there was something wistful about the way his own story had welled up within him.
“I don’t think I want to hear that…”

Fiona made an imperious gesture, as if in her mind she were back in her parents’ castle. “He promised to marry me. And for the whole of the following school year, I couldn’t think of anything else. I wrote him letters, once a day; he replied once a month with a friendly postcard. The following summer it happened, and although we lacked the church’s blessing, I became pregnant.” She hesitated for a moment. “He didn’t marry me because he didn’t want to risk the scandal of a divorce from his duchess. He didn’t love her; she was seven years older than him and had no children. And yet he could have had me, the sixteen-year-old, naive and fertile little Margravine.”
Wolfgang cut her off: “How old was he?”
Fiona was snapped out of her trance. “What?”
“How old was this duke?”
Fiona suddenly felt ashamed, even though she’d been the one to start the story. “He was thirty-five, but a wonderful man – handsome, elegant, cultured. Everything that Paddy wasn’t. But Paddy was our gardener and my parents pressured him to marry me despite the pregnancy. He did, and I was always faithful to him and, as I said, bore him nine children. And then along comes this Valeria Sebastienne, claiming I’d snatched Paddy away to get my hands on Drogheda. You’d have to be incredibly stupid to think that!”

Wolfgang looked grim. “And what did you do about this Sebastienne?”

“I hired a private detective. I didn’t shout; I prayed and waited for that woman to choke on her own stupidity.”
Fiona gave Wolfgang a sharp look. But then she realised that he hadn’t been criticising her, but simply understood her approach.
“I hired a man in Sydney, and later one in Europe as well. I wanted to know who she was, who was paying her, who she was writing to, where she lived, whether she had any debts, whether she belonged to a political group, and whether there was any legal way to have her arrested. If no crime could be found, then perhaps commitment to a psychiatric hospital for lifelong treatment, if she was dangerous enough; and if even that wasn’t possible, deportation to a country she herself was so fond of praising in her slogans, without having to live there: The Soviet Union, so she could experience her communist fantasies first-hand and behind an Iron Curtain that separates the British Empire from the Bolshevik hell.”
Wolfgang’s eyes lit up.
“You wanted to have her deported to the Soviet Union. That’s cold, harsh and, in a very Catholic way, almost elegant, because no one sees any blood and yet someone disappears. I must say, Mrs Cleary, I didn’t think you were capable of such passion, let alone such criminal ingenuity. But as a true Russian stray in Berlin, I must at least bring you a disappointment from the Polish People’s Republic: even in the Bolshevik hell, as you call it, there are blackmailers, war profiteers and women who will stop at nothing.”
Fiona lifted her chin.

“I didn’t want to kill her. I wanted to remove her, and that’s a distinction an administrative mind takes very seriously. An arrest would have suited me fine, a compulsory admission perhaps better, deportation best of all, because then she would still have been alive, but no longer near my family.”
She paused. During the silence, the sound of the sea could be heard.
“You may despise me for it, if you wish. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to deal with contempt. But I won’t pretend that I waited, out of pure Christian mercy, until Valeria had torn the women of my family apart, one by one.”
Wolfgang looked at her for a long time. Then he placed his hands on his knees, as if speaking before an icon, but with the respect of a burglar.
“I do not despise you. I am impressed, and that is perhaps worse, because it shows how little I had previously credited you with. You have acted like a woman who has learnt all her life that open anger is punished, and who therefore turns anger into administration.”
Fiona did not reply immediately. The word ‘administration’ stood between them and was suddenly not dry, but dangerous.
 
“I managed Drogheda because someone had to. I managed children, wages, supplies, illnesses, births and funerals because men too often believed their grand emotions were work in themselves. Perhaps you’re right, and I even managed my anger until it fitted into columns.”
Wolfgang nodded slowly.

“That’s braver than you think. Not cleaner, not more innocent, but braver. I know people who get very loud with a pistol and, after five minutes, have less resolve than you do with a letter opener and an address in Sydney.”
Fiona looked at him, and something moved around her mouth. Not quite a smile. But not pain either.
“You have an astonishing way of paying compliments to an old woman. I’m not sure whether I should feel honoured or suspicious, and presumably both are appropriate. Perhaps I should have been told more often in the past that order isn’t the opposite of passion.”
Wolfgang stretched out his legs, then drew them back in again because the armchair was finally making his back ache.
“The armchair isn’t as comfortable as it looks, at least not for someone of my stature.”
Fiona looked towards the bed. It was wide enough. Too wide for propriety when one was young. Wide enough for reason when one was old enough.

“The bed is big, and I’m tired. You may sleep on the other side, because I don’t believe you’re foolish enough to molest a woman who’s just explained to you how she deals with enemies using files. But you’ll keep your shirt on, Mr Bogdanov, because a minimum of decency must be maintained even in a criminal’s bed.”
Wolfgang looked at her. Then he began to laugh, softly at first, then more heartily, but never loud enough to wake the neighbours.
“I understand you perfectly. The shirt stays on, your hands stay with me, and if I snore, you may nudge me with a Catholic elbow into my Orthodox ribs. I’ve received many strange orders in my life, but this one is among the better ones.”
Fiona pulled back the blanket. She did so with the natural ease of a woman who had made beds for decades and was now finally claiming one for herself. Then she unbuttoned her black waistcoat and draped it neatly over the back of the armchair from which Wolfgang had risen. He took off his shoes, then his socks.

“You said you wouldn’t talk about your mother. And then you asked me about the age difference between me and the Duke. You don’t have to answer now, but was it because your mother also became pregnant whilst young and unmarried?”
Fiona took off her dress and draped it over the arm of the armchair as well, then climbed into bed in her petticoat and pulled the covers up. She looked at Wolfgang, who was standing next to the armchair as if frozen, already barefoot.
“You’ve been very honest with me, but I don’t know if you could bear my honesty, because I can barely bear it myself.”
He took off his trousers and threw them over to the socks. Fiona looked at him, but didn’t press the issue.
Wolfgang took a deep breath. As if to emphasise his confession, he took off his underpants and threw them onto the pile of clothes, keeping only his shirt on. Fiona didn’t look away; Wolfgang hadn’t expected her to. “My mother was sixteen too. And my father…” Wolfgang’s voice broke.
Fiona hesitated. Then she threw back the duvet and climbed out of the bed with its blue bedspread. She went over to Wolfgang and placed a hand on his shoulder. 
“Your mother loved you; otherwise you wouldn’t be able to speak of her like that. And whatever else happened, that love was never broken.”

Wolfgang closed his eyes. “My father… didn’t love her, he just used her. She had to run his household, sell off his stolen goods and get him the alcohol he used to drink himself into oblivion.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Now I understand why you can’t mourn him: he hurt the person you loved – your mother. Did he use violence as well?”
Wolfgang nodded. He swallowed and looked down at the floor. “But the worst thing was, my mother… my mother was his daughter!” Wolfgang’s voice broke again. He closed his eyes in shame, but Fiona did not withdraw her grandmotherly hand; she showed no sign of horror or incomprehension.
“To you, she was your mother; that’s all that matters.”
Wolfgang opened his eyes and made sure that Fiona was really standing there in front of him and wasn’t recoiling in revulsion. “When he shouted it at me during an argument, she ran off and threw herself into the Spree. I can’t even tell you how much I’ve been waiting for the day he dies. And no depiction of hell on an icon could express what I wished upon him.”

At that moment, there were more important things than propriety, and if an old woman had learnt one thing, it was this: not every breach of polite form of address needs to be corrected.
He took a deep breath to find his way back into his hard shell. Gently, he brushed Fiona’s hand from his shoulder and boldly lifted her chin.
“I obey, Mrs Cleary—no, Countess Cleary.” He made a slight bow. “We are both strong enough not to be broken by the mistakes of our ancestors and the cruelty of our parents. Let us enjoy this blue room not because I have suddenly become a decent person, but because a clear order from a woman with your administrative background is to be taken more seriously than any threat of Wolfgang’s sort. Besides, I’m curious to see if I can sleep next to someone who considers deportation to the Soviet Union a neat solution.”
Fiona looked at him thoughtfully once more, then nodded with a certain, almost conspiratorial calm. She lay on her side, her back straight, her hands resting on the duvet in front of her. She waited until Wolfgang was lying on the other side of the bed. A space remained between them, wide enough for propriety, narrow enough for a new kind of trust.

“You’ll be sleeping next to me, not next to my methods. I’m a very old Catholic, Mr Bogdanov, and we survive not because we always tell the truth, but because we know when we must go to confession.”
Wolfgang actually chuckled. Not mockingly, but almost happily, as if he’d found an unexpected confidante in this austere blue room.
“That’s the loveliest threat I’ve heard in years. I shall remain as silent as a confessional, although my church prefers different furniture. Good night, Countess Cleary, and if you really only wanted to manage Valeria, then she was a greater fool than I thought, because she didn’t realise who she was dealing with.”
Fiona closed her eyes.
“Good night, Mr Bogdanow. Go to sleep now, before you become even more polite and I have to change my mind about you. And keep that shirt on, because I’ve already seen enough of you.”
Wolfgang pulled the blanket up to his chest and lay still. His shirt remained on. Fiona couldn’t see his grin, but she could hear it.

The blue room grew quiet enough for two people who, just a few hours earlier, had barely known one another, to lie on the same bed: the Catholic and the Orthodox, the administrator and the thief, the woman of wiles and the man of locks.
There was no innocence between them. Just a carefully maintained distance, a shared secret and the faint sense that some alliances are born not of trust, but of the sudden realisation that the other person does not misinterpret one’s own guilt.