‘Two of those, please,’ Madeleine said before turning back to Gabriela, eyeing her in a manner that felt unsettling. Was she reading something in this already?

After a moment, her voice adopting a tone Gabriela didn’t recognise, Madeleine said, ‘Talking of something stronger, I’ve just been in your old neck of the woods. I drank so much vodka, I think I can still feel it in my liver.’

‘Moscow?’

Instinctively, Gabriela bristled, but then she realised that Madeleine was referring to her stint in Russia in the early days at the FCO, and she exhaled, enjoying the relief of this momentary distraction from the chaos in her brain as she spread the napkin over her lap, smoothing out the creases with her palms.

‘What were you doing in Russia?’ she asked and Madeleine raised her eyebrows.

‘What am I always doing? Work. Is there anything else in my life apart from work? God, sometimes I wonder if I’m getting this living thing all wrong. But no, I shouldn’t say that, not now when things are finally coming together.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

It was less than a minute since Gabriela had had her whole story on the tip of her tongue ready to fall into her friend’s lap, but the shift in tone meant the conversation was going somewhere else and she couldn’t say why, but she felt wrong-footed, like suddenly she didn’t know where to start.

‘Anyway, we always end up talking about my work. I’m such a narcissist. Tell me about you, what’s going on?’

‘Here we are, ladies.’ The waitress arrived and settled their drinks and their usual selection of starters on the table in front of them.

Taking a long sip of her brandy, Gabriela tried to gather her thoughts, but even thinking of an alternative narrative to explain away the past months – it had been months since they had last met, and yet, she thought, it could have been years, a lifetime – made the pain in her head worse.

‘No, tell me about Moscow. I’m interested, it’s been so long since I was there,’ she said, instinctively deflecting attention away from herself but also aware that this conversation was heading in a direction over which she had no control; she could feel the lies spilling out already.

‘Is it?’ Madeleine asked, and Gabriela paused, their eyes locking before she looked away.

‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you this, but we always share things with each other, don’t we? Besides, who are you going to tell, right? So you know how I told you we were closing in on some of the peripheral figures? Well, one of those is a Russian-owned company …’ Madeleine paused. ‘But there are a few things we need to tie up first.’

Gabriela felt the ice cube she had been swallowing stick in her throat. When she spoke, her voice was small.

‘Right.’