Despite the purpose in her voice, he hears the undercurrent of nerves. He looks at her now, properly, for the first time since his release, taking her in fully. Her hair, which he remembered as brown and gleaming, is shorter now – a shingled bob, like a 1920s flapper’s – and coloured orange. She is still small, her figure beneath the silk wrap dress has remained trim, although there is something stoutish about her now, as if the softness of her flesh has hardened over the years, grown tough and sinewy. Her bare arms are wild with freckles, a sort of joined-up mass of them making her look tanned, her legs too, cerise-pink toenails peeping out through silver sandals. In this brownish room, she is a blaze of colour – her red dress, her copper hair – but there is something artificial about it, like a flower too vividly bright to be real or lasting. Just as the expression in her eyes seems falsely bright.

‘We promised we’d wait for each other,’ she’s telling him now. ‘Don’t you remember? “Good things come to those who wait.” That’s what you said to me. “Be patient,” you said, and I have been. All these years, your words have sustained me. The memory of them, of what we had, of all we shared. The love between us made it worth every day spent apart, every month, every year.’

‘What are you talking about?’ he asks, bewildered.

‘Our last night together, your parting words to me. You told me you would find a way for us to be together. You said there was no obstacle that could not be moved. You told me that, no matter what happened, I was to hold firm and be patient. I have kept faith with that, Anton, throughout that night, and everything that happened since.’

Her loud and vivid presence makes it impossible for him to think straight. With her words, she’s dragging him back into the past, back to a night he does not want to return to.

‘I cannot …’ he begins, but she steps forward suddenly and presses her mouth to his.

For that instant, he feels the firm mass of her body against his, the sticky sweetness of her lips on his mouth, her nose pressed into his cheek. This sudden onslaught of sensation overwhelms him, as if she’s pushing through his skin, her breath invading his lungs.

A wave of revulsion comes up through him and he shoves her away, disturbed by the violence roused in him. She stumbles backwards, her eyes widening with shock.

‘No!’ he shouts at her. ‘Christ, what are you thinking?’