‘Gabriela …’ Tom followed her through the house. She moved away from him quickly, fearful of the prospect of a conversation.

‘Don’t be like that, of course I want you to come,’ Tom said, attempting to overtake her in the narrow hallway, past the disorderly row of shoes stretching from the front door to the kitchen. ‘I’m just saying I thought you had to …’

She didn’t answer, moving more briskly towards the door. As he stepped in front of her, he kicked several pairs of shoes out of his path and held out his arms to prevent her from leaving. ‘You can’t do this, not again. Talk to me! Why are you always walking out on us?’

‘Get out of my way!’ she shouted back at him, her voice echoing through the house as she wrenched open the door, slamming it behind her. She could hear Tom’s voice yelling back at her from inside, and she clamped her hands over her ears, running as fast as she could until her feet could run no more.

Ivan was away again. As the demands of his work became greater, it became so rare that their diaries overlapped that on the occasions when they were together, it was an ongoing process of re-assimilation.

For the most part in those moments of familial adjustment, they talked about Layla, and Polina – Ivan reassuring her that she had no reason to worry on the occasions when she confided – in order to explain away the sudden rush of emotion that would consume her at times – her fears that Polina was a better mother-figure than she was.

Though Gabriela knew it frustrated him, she was too shattered and scared of being spotted to visit the high-end restaurants or cultural events he booked them into. Mainly, they would eat at home and watch films; she was too tired even to read the books Ivan bought her in airport bookshops when he was on his way back from wherever it was he had been, foreign texts mimicking the type of highbrow reading she’d impressed him with in the early days of their relationship.

When the conversation ran out, they sat on the sofa in silence, watching the mouths of the characters on the enormous state-of-the-art television move as she wondered what it was that they had ever talked about.

As autumn took hold, and with it the imminent prospect of days spent walking the streets in the cold, Gabriela was so tired from nights flitting in and out of consciousness, plunging in and out of dreams in which her two worlds would finally collide, that she longed to curl up in a state of hibernation and never get up. She could almost picture the various strings of her life coming loose, tying themselves around her neck in endless knots.