It would be Tom, she thought happily, looking forward to catching up with him. Their regular chats provided the perfect foil for the guarded diplomacy that shrouded her every other interaction. When she pressed play, with each recording Tom’s voice escalated in pitch and intensity so that by the last one he was practically screaming down the phone for her to call him back. The strength of emotion was so at odds with his usual character that she was terrified of what she would learn when she called him a moment later, the foreign dialling tone reminding her of the distance between them.

‘Gaby?’

‘Yes, hi, what’s going on?’

She had barely finished her sentence when she heard a sigh of relief followed by his voice, riled this time.

‘What the hell, are you OK?’

‘Of course, I’m fine.’

‘What do you mean, of course you’re fine? I’ve been out of my fucking mind – why didn’t you call?’

‘What are you talking about? I was on a work trip, I told you I’d be away for a few days—’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did—’

‘No, you fucking didn’t, Gaby. A week I’ve been trying to reach you. After everything you’ve told me about how fraught things are there … You didn’t think it would be courteous to call me, when you’re on the other side of the world?’

‘Oh Tom, for God’s sake, calm down, would you? I’m tired.’

It was unfair to be so dismissive of his feelings, but she resented the implication that she was under some kind of obligation to him.

There was a silence as they settled into their stalemate. She was the one to break first. ‘Look, I’ve just got in, I have to unpack and—’

‘Whatever, fine. I’ll speak to you sometime.’

‘Tom, I—’

But he had already hung up.

When she tried to call back a moment later, he didn’t answer.

Opening the fridge and then the cupboards in search of a bottle, she found nothing. Pulling her coat off the rack and slipping her feet into a pair of heeled boots which would barely withstand the snow that still lined the streets in March, she slammed the front door of her apartment. Several sets of bloodshot eyes looked up at her as she passed the bar below her flat. Pulling her coat around herself as she kept walking, her hood pulled high above her head, she set a brisk pace through the unsettling quiet of the back roads lit with the artificial tinge of occasional streetlamps. Moving on autopilot, she made a beeline towards Red Square and Tverskoi Ryad beyond, where she looked forward to the wide open streets and the reassuring movement of people.