‘Will you please stop worrying?’ Ivan squeezed her arm reassuringly. ‘She will love you, because I love you, and because you’re impossible not to love. As for the baby, this is Russia. Anything goes, if you have enough money.’

‘Mama.’ Ivan rose to greet his mother when she arrived in the dining hall, almost half an hour later. She was as short as he was tall, and she seemed to shrink further in his arms.

‘I told you I would send a car.’

‘I like to walk, you know that.’

She went for Layla first. ‘Kotik!’

She held a hand to her chest as she leaned in to kiss her granddaughter, her eyes sparkling.

‘Rad poznakomitsya s vami.’

His mother smiled and turned to Ivan. ‘And she speaks Russian. Where did you find her?’

He was about to answer when the phone rang in his pocket, and as he pulled it out, his expression turned cold. Looking up quickly he said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to take this.’

Briefly, Gabriela heard a woman’s voice at the end of the line as he moved into the next room.

‘Who was that?’ she asked lightly when he came back a few minutes later, his forehead creased.

‘Nothing, just work,’ he said, and she watched him ease back into the role of the prodigal son. When his phone beeped again a while later, he pulled it out, his eyes flashing over the message before he pressed two buttons and she heard the sound of the message being deleted.

‘But won’t you come inside?’ Olga asked, when their car pulled up outside her flat a couple of hours later, the evening sun casting long shadows across the courtyard in front of her apartment block beyond a locked gate.

‘We should be getting back,’ Ivan replied, but Gabriela interrupted.

‘Of course we will.’

Whatever reservations she’d had about meeting Ivan’s mother had been immediately allayed as she cooed over Layla, stopping to look up at them as if they were remarkable for having given her life.

He hesitated. ‘Fine, but we mustn’t be long. We have a booking this evening …’

She was already halfway out of the car, unclipping Layla from her seat.

‘Meet us here in an hour,’ Ivan instructed their driver as he stepped onto the pavement and followed Olga and Gabriela through the gateway.

‘We’ve lived here ever since we moved to Moscow. How many years is that?’ She half-turned to her son as she opened the front door, without waiting for an answer.

Inside, the apartment was modestly furnished: rows of books and a couple of animal skins lined the wall. Through the window in the living room, there was a school building, children of primary age running back and forth in the playground. Momentarily, Gabriela had a flash of memory of Sadie and Callum and her chest tightened.