She spun around. He stood before her, every inch the student she remembered. He wore black jeans, a dark blue T-shirt and a black leather jacket, with expensive-looking suede loafers on his feet. He hadn’t shaved, the stubble along his handsome jaw the same lustrous black as the thick, wavy hair on his head. He was wearing glasses for the first time, with a tortoiseshell frame. ‘Nice shoes,’ she said, looking down at his feet. His love of expensive footwear had been a private joke between them as students, since he’d once admitted to stealing more than a few pairs on his trips to the West.

‘Tod’s,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘And what is more, I paid for them myself.’ He glanced at a bar in the corner. ‘Come on, let’s celebrate.’ He moved to a steel table, dropped his bag on the floor and leant over the bar to order a bottle of vodka.

‘What are we celebrating?’ Kate asked.

‘Our reunion. Here in Russia. After all this time.’ He smiled again. ‘You must be mad to come here.’

‘Or desperate,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘Let’s not go there.’

He poured two glasses. They toasted each other. ‘Nostrovia,’ they said together, downing the shots in one.

‘You look well,’ he said.

‘I look knackered, clapped out and old, but nice try.’

‘You haven’t changed.’

‘Liar.’

‘Same smile, same angular cheekbones, same delicate nose.’

‘More lines, more bags and a hell of a lot more baggage.’

‘That makes two of us.’

‘Oh, yeah? Do you have an ex-husband?’

‘No, you have something on me there.’ He refilled her glass. They drank again.

‘Are we going to carry on like this all night?’ she asked.

‘Why not? Moscow always looks better with a hangover.’

Kate glanced up at the board above her. ‘Why are you taking the train?’

‘Have you flown Aeroflot? Besides, I love the night sleeper. It reminds me of childhood holidays in Yalta. The romance of the long journey, the sense of freedom in time suspended . . .’

‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I remember you invited me.’

‘Balmy nights, ethereal light, the magic of old Russia. I was convinced you would finally succumb.’

‘Perhaps I would have done.’

‘So close and yet so far.’

This time it was Kate who refilled the glasses. She suddenly had an overpowering urge to get wildly, blindly drunk. ‘Do you ever think of what might have been?’ she asked.

‘Not as often as I used to. I mean, not more than once a month.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘Leading you on. You would have had every reason to hate me.’