These situations are never my favourite: the fact is that at least one of you might be risking your life by turning up. And yet the appearance of relaxed confidence is all. Nine people inside, five staff, four customers: two men talking Italian at the counter; a man and a woman in dark suits at a window table, poring over designs for what looked like a nightclub. Lace curtains on a brass pole divided the window in half. Above them, the sky was getting dark. Streetlamps caught fresh flurries of snow in the air.

She entered a moment later. The fur of her hood framed her face, sparkling with tiny diamonds of ice. I got up and hugged her, feeling for wires or weapons. Then I kissed her cheek. It was cold.

‘I’m so glad you could come. You must be freezing. Sit down.’ She placed her bag in her lap, looked around.

‘Been here before?’ I asked, in Russian. ‘Never.’ She spoke English. That was fine with me. You didn’t truly get to know someone unless they were speaking their first language, but if English made her feel safe, or want to show off, English was fine.

‘It’s okay, a little eccentric. Forgive the cushions.’

‘I forgive them. You have the word “kitsch” – is that right?’

‘Borrowed off the Germans, yes.’

‘Kitsch.’ She tried the word in her mouth. Her make-up was fresh, her drop earrings caught the light.

‘How was your day?’

‘Fine.’

I passed her the menu. ‘Go wild.’

‘You take all your women here?’

‘Only the ones that write such superb fiction.’

She considered this. ‘Is it obvious?’

‘To me.’

Aliya ordered hot chocolate with cream. I ordered sbiten, a Russian drink with honey and spices. When the waitress left I said, ‘I thought the story was quite brilliant. The way you used such clarity of language to describe confusion, both lucid and utterly at sea.’

‘At sea?’

‘Lost. You say, in the story, there is clarity in being lost. That is the heart of it, for me. The magazine I’ve mentioned it to – The Walbrooke Review – are very interested. I know the editor there, Jack Morley. He’s a nice guy. The magazine’s small but read by influential people. They’ve published Anna Starobinets, Guzel Yakhina, I believe she’s of Tajik origin.’

‘Really?’

‘You know her work?’

‘Of course.’

‘What do you think?’

‘It would be amazing.’

‘What are you working on?’ I asked. ‘At the university.’

‘My thesis.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘I don’t think you’d be interested. It is not to do with business.’

‘I have interests beyond business.’

‘I am looking at the idea of authentic literatures, the invention of folk cultures. A lot of it is fantasies, sometimes made by the communist party. Many of our heroes were selected by the Soviets – secular poets and thinkers.’

‘But is it not true that you had “bards” here?’