The conclusion, for her, was that it fitted perfectly. There was a lot to be desired about some aspects of the trip, but the possibility of what this life represented: the potential for travel, for learning, the opportunity her role at the FCO afforded her to try out different lives under the guise of someone who knew what they were doing, of someone who was supposed to be there … Once she had a taste of that, she knew she could never give it up.

Tom recognised the change in her, the new-found grown-up self-assuredness, as she immersed herself in London life for the brief time that she was there. And he wasn’t the only one. On Christmas Eve Saoirse and her partner Jim came over for drinks and a blissfully unfestive kebab. They had recently exchanged Kentish Town for a battered two-bed on Wilton Way near London Fields, since rents were still relatively affordable in Hackney.

Like most of Gabriela’s friends who’d grown up in this now boujie pocket of North London – those whose parents hadn’t conveniently died when they were in their twenties – Saoirse had left the area not long after coming back from university, in her case in Leeds.

‘You seem different,’ Saoirse said as the four of them sat around the kitchen table, necking cheap wine. Jim was an old university friend of Tom’s and Gabriela had known within minutes of meeting him that he and Saoirse would either hate each other or fall head over heels in love. As she predicted, when they met there was an energy between them that was so alive she would find herself just watching them and feeling her jaw tense with envy.

‘Different how?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Saoirse smiled, as if trying to work something out. ‘Different in a good way. Grown up.’

Gabriela raised her eyebrows. ‘Fancy …’

‘Very fancy,’ Saoirse said and then she paused. ‘Speaking of which …’ She turned to Jim. ‘We’re getting married …’

Gabriela squealed with genuine delight, falling across the table to hug them both. ‘That’s amazing, and really weird, ’cause surely you’re still only twelve, so how could you be getting married?’

‘Great news, guys,’ Tom said, lifting his glass. He tried to meet Gabriela’s eye and she looked away.

When he tried to talk to her in bed later that night, she pretended to be asleep.

It was strange being back in London, for those couple of weeks.

Aside from occasional after-work drinks with colleagues from the embassy, in Moscow she had taken to spending weekends alone, relishing the visits to the market outside the city, flicking through old Soviet memorabilia, or trips to one of several new galleries which were opening across town. There, even just a walk around the old hotels or shopping malls felt like an exotic experience. Though the work itself, in Moscow, was less obviously rewarding.