But everyone knew who the SVR people were, from the licence plates on their cars and the higher standard of the Volga cars themselves, not to mention the military habits of these members of the elite. And then there was their pride. My father was far too proud of his role in the SVR to hide it convincingly from the neighbours.

The apartment block next door to ours was run by Military Intelligence and was for the sole use of foreigners–mainly diplomats, journalists and trade representatives from developing countries.

There were fixed militia posts dotted around this diplomatic block and operatives from KGB counter-intelligence shadowed the two buildings round the clock. When I was six years old my father told me, ‘Never, ever approach the diplomatic building or any of its inhabitants.’

Teachers at my school backed this up by telling us that to approach foreigners was ‘way outside Soviet rules’, so we were all scared of, and fascinated by, contact with foreigners.

But then we had the dacha at Barvikha to escape to. It stands in the beautifully still, evergreen forest south of Moscow, near Yasenovo, the SVR training centre. Yasenovo–a lyrical name–was the SVR’s cold heart. But inside the KGB we just called it the Forest.

For Nana and me, Barvikha was a place of great peace, despite the armed guards. Their presence was somehow dwarfed by the great forest. The forest breathed its quiet timelessness and rock-like calm into us both.

The dachas were spread discreetly among the trees, out of sight of each other, and ours was a short walk away from a deep green pond, soft and brackish in the summer, hard-iced and covered with snow in the winter. There was a high fence around the perimeter of the forest, of course, but we didn’t notice we were in a special fenced area once we were inside.