Tom met her at Arrivals when she returned for Christmas, clearly regretting the homemade Welcome Home sign he held weakly at his chest.

When he saw her face, he let it drop a bit further, gritting his teeth, and she smiled, shaking her head.

‘Hi,’ she said as she kissed him, feeling her cheeks redden as she handed him one of the bags that hung from her arm.

He paused, taking her in, his eyes soft with love. ‘Look at you, you look even better than I remember.’

She nudged him self-consciously. ‘Ah, shut up, I’ve always looked this good.’

‘A lot can change in a year,’ he replied, taking her suitcase and pulling her arm as she moved instinctively towards the signs for the train.

‘For instance …’ He made a drumming sound as they made their way towards the short-stay car park.

‘Ta-da!’

It might have been the first Renault 5 ever to have fallen off the production line and the door almost took her out as she opened it to step into the passenger seat, but there was something about it that was so perfectly Tom that she couldn’t help but grin.

‘Yeah, sorry about that, I might have been a little over-zealous with the WD40,’ he said as she nursed her elbow.

‘Oh my God, it has an actual tape deck. This is amazing, I feel like it’s 1984,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you went for red. Boy-racer style. So you.’

‘I’m thinking of getting it lowered, maybe some strip-lights under the bumper,’ he said and she laughed.

‘Missed you, Gabs.’

‘I missed you, too. But I’m back for two weeks, so let’s make the most of it, OK?’

She watched his face focused on the road ahead as the motorway shuttled them towards the grey cityscape. Making their way back through familiar streets, the relative sluggishness of the London air straining in her lungs, she felt such fondness towards him that she pushed away the sensation that her internal organs were being compressed so intensely that she could barely breathe.

Tom had been in the midst of a freelance project when she moved to Moscow, working on a commercial development that conveniently would last about as long as her trip abroad. This was to be his first big job since he graduated; he couldn’t just disappear, he’d said, as if she’d invited him to go with her.

They were equals, of sorts, in that moment: him immersed in a new job, playing landlord in her house while she tried out life in foreign service with the same uncertainty with which one tries on a new coat, slipping her hands in and out of the pockets, taking discreet glances at the back and sides, checking if it fits.