As she stepped down into the room, the waitress shooed her into a red leather chair in front of a table by the window, smiling briskly.

‘Anything to drink?’

‘A Coke, please … and I’ll have the mozzarella and aubergine bake,’ she added, sitting back in her chair and tuning in to the buzz of her fellow diners.

She had just taken the first bite of her lunch when the bell tinkled. When she looked up, quietly relishing the prospect that it could be him, she noticed a man duck into the restaurant, the tight, greying curls on his head brushing against the top of the low doorframe.

Scanning the room in that way people do, instinctively, when they sense they’re being watched, she felt his gaze land on her for a moment before moving to the line of foods in plastic tubs.

‘Luca,’ he said to the man behind the counter before speaking amiably for a moment to the chef in Italian. So he was a regular here, too.

‘I’ll sit in today,’ she heard him add in English to the waitress. ‘I’m meeting someone here later.’

She had just taken a mouthful of her lunch, a string of mozzarella hanging between her mouth and the fork, when she felt him in front of her.

‘Do you mind if I—’ He paused, smiling amusedly. ‘Sorry, terrible timing …’ he added, acknowledging her full mouth, and then, ‘There are no free tables … I’ll move when one comes up …’

She blushed and dabbed at her mouth with the linen napkin, her smile tinged with apology.

Pointing to the chair in front of her, she said, ‘Of course not.’

He was the sort of man she could see in the street and feel completely unmoved by: good-looking in that self-assured manner of the very rich, his coat and buffed fingernails putting hers to shame. And yet there was something about him that made her cheeks flush as he sat in front of her, while she attempted to make delicate the act of stuffing her face with mouthfuls of oily cheese.

It was a relief when a moment later his phone vibrated on the table and he picked it up, tentatively. ‘I’m sorry, do you mind if I take this?’

‘Of course not,’ she batted her hands at him.

‘Allyo?’

The moment he spoke, she felt the colour in her cheeks rise again.

When he hung up, a moment later, he looked at her and smiled. ‘Sorry about that’.

‘You’re Russian?’ The moment she said it, she felt stupid.

‘Ty govorish’ po-russki?

‘Da,’ she shrugged, before reverting to English. ‘I mean, not perfectly, but I worked there for a while.’

‘Really, in Moscow?’

She nodded.

‘What do you do?’

The question took her by surprise. The lie formed on her lips so easily. Besides, what did it matter? It wasn’t like she would ever see this man again.

‘I was working for a charity.’