It took Stuart almost an hour to reach her and her first thought was again how incredibly well he looked. He was wearing a dark green T-shirt, but the same black jeans and leather jacket as when he had met her in Venice only a few weeks – or was it days? – ago. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The traffic is horrendous at this time of the morning.’

It was all Kate could do to prevent herself throwing her arms around him. He looked so . . . safe. Just like he always had: her Stuart. For a moment, they didn’t know whether to kiss or hug. Kate eventually put him out of his misery by brushing his cheek. ‘Can you take me to your apartment?’ she said. ‘I just need some time . . .’

‘To what?’

‘Please don’t ask any questions.’

‘Of course.’

He led her to his car, a battered old white Fiat. A man in a dark North Face raincoat, jeans and trainers stood just beyond it, smoking, as if waiting for something or someone. Her, she assumed.

They got into the car and pulled out into the morning traffic. Kate glanced in the side mirror. She watched a black BMW 5 Series saloon turn out behind them. ‘Everything all right?’ Stuart asked.

‘Fine,’ she lied.

Their progress was slow. The capital’s roads might be filled with many more shiny new cars since her first visit as a student in the early nineties, but they didn’t move any faster. Kate kept a nervous, watchful eye on the side mirror. The BMW dropped back, but never out of sight. She bit her nails.

‘Everything all right?’ Stuart asked again.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

Stuart’s apartment was out in Taganka, on the twenty-third floor of a concrete block that looked forbidding against a dark grey Moscow sky. The landing smelt of urine, and the wind had gathered rubbish into its corners. Kate glanced over the railing to see that the BMW had parked outside the block opposite. She averted her gaze before Stuart could remark upon it.

He let her into a small flat that had all the antiseptic appeal of a serviced apartment. It was clean and newly painted, but spartan and infinitely depressing. There was a small kitchen, with cheap Formica cupboards and a tiny table pressed up against the window, a single bedroom and a small sitting room at the end, with a cream leather sofa and two chairs in front of a large widescreen TV. ‘It’s not much,’ he said, ‘I know.’

Kate felt like bursting into tears, for him, for them, for the mess she was in. But the warmth of his smile stalled her. ‘I can stretch to tea, though,’ he said. ‘English Breakfast or Earl Grey?’