‘But I loved you. And I still do.’ His megawatt grin – its evident sincerity, the way it seemed to transform his face – still had the ability to floor her. ‘But it has been so long. I’m not saying I have been waiting for you. There have been other women. Just none who matched up.’

Kate stared into her glass. ‘Damn,’ she said.

‘Is that what you came all this way to hear?’

‘I don’t know why I came.’ She looked up at him. His gaze was locked on to her. She dived for safer territory. ‘It was good to see your mother,’ she said.

‘She was overjoyed. She always thought I should have proposed to you and gone to live in the West.’

‘I’m sorry about your father. He was an incredibly kind man.’

‘He could be. Especially to strangers, who might think well of him.’ Sergei’s relationship with his father had always been complicated, a consequence, Sergei had once said, of the old man’s thwarted ambition. But he had been only kind and charming to Kate.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It had just gone a quarter past eleven. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We’d better board.’ He took the bottle of vodka and the glasses with him.

Sergei led her out of the station concourse to the platform. The Red Arrow train bound for Moscow was a long, sleek machine in red and grey livery to match its name. Women in red coats with black felt and fur hats stood on the platform waiting to welcome their passengers to first class, and Sergei seemed to know where they were heading. He presented their tickets, climbed aboard and led her down the narrow corridor. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but I booked us into the same cabin. I figured after all this time we would spend most of the night talking anyway.’

Kate didn’t risk an answer.

The first-class cabins were a resplendent rich red, from the bunks to the curtains to the velvet seat backs. Sergei stored his case and Kate her slender gym bag, careful not to bump into each other, and then they sat on opposite bunks. Sergei poured two more glasses of vodka. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Now we really begin. Nostrovia.’

‘Nostrovia,’ she replied, and they drank again. Her head was starting to spin.

The train shunted a few times, forwards and back. And then it began to move slowly away from the platform, the urban grime beyond it softened by a thin dusting of fresh snow. ‘I was sorry to hear about Stuart,’ he said.

‘Were you?’

‘Yes. I know how important your family is to you.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘In Moscow?’ He shook his head. ‘By all accounts, he cuts a sad figure. The officers of the SVR don’t have a great reputation for looking after their agents and defectors.’