That Saturday afternoon, as she sunbathed with her friend Yulia by a lake in Beryozovsky, a small town east of the Ural Mountains in Russia, Alexandra was excited. It had been a few years since her divorce and Alexandra had settled into life as a 35-year-old single mother to a 10-year-old boy. There was much to be happy about. She was already a team leader at the car parts factory where she worked, and two days earlier, she had booked a holiday in Egypt for her and her son.