“I’m going to do something salady. You can chop if you like. Wait a bit though. Here.” Her mother throws a greasy box of Cook’s Matches over to her. Lissa catches them and wanders over to the door, which is propped open to the late summer air.

The garden is the nicest thing about this place. Her mother is a fine gardener, and what feels like chaos inside the house makes sense when you step outside—her mother’s sensibilities; everything poised just on the edge of the wild. Lissa strikes a match and smokes. “I got the part,” she says softly, to the lavender and the honeysuckle.

“Sorry, darling?” her mother calls from inside. “What did you say?”

“That part.” She blows out smoke in a thin line, turns back to the kitchen. “The one I told you about?”

“Tell me again.” Her mother’s face is in shadow.

“Chekhov. Yelena.”

“Oh, wonderful. That’s wonderful.” Her mother comes to embrace her, and Lissa inhales her smell of paint and herbs, the dry crackle of her hair.

Lissa laughs, feeling again the bubble of excitement she has been carrying in her stomach since she heard the news. “Thanks. It is. The director—she’s a woman. She’s good, I think. Tricky, they say, but good.”

“But how wonderful. We must celebrate!”

Before she can object, her mother is rooting in the cupboard where she keeps the booze. “Hmm. White wine. Lidl Pouilly-Fuisse. Supposed to be OK. Not cold though. Or there’s a bit of Gordon’s, what about a gin and tonic? Hang on. Not sure I’ve got any ice. I can chip a bit off the roof of the freezer. Shall we start with that? See how we go?”

“Sure.”

“Throw me a lime, would you?”

Her mother hums as she pours out large measures of gin and splashes a bit of tonic on the top. “Bit flat but it’ll have to do. Here.” Sarah hands her the glass with a flourish. “Come and sit in the garden. The salad can wait.”

Sarah leads the way down a crooked stone path, through lavender bushes, past tomatoes and squash and herbs to where a small weather-aged table and chairs sit beneath a wooden trellis.

“You’ve gone out, darling.” Her mother leans forward and relights Lissa’s cigarette. “Cheers. Goodness. Here’s to you.” She raises her glass. “Here’s to Chekhov. So Yelena—that’s . . .”

“Vanya.”

“Vanya. Marvelous. Hang on, remind me, is that the one with the gun?” Her mother picks a stray strand of tobacco from her lip.

Sarah taught English before she retired. English and art at the local secondary school; a good North London school, the sort that middle-class parents fought with their elbows out to get their kids into.

“That’s The Seagull.”

“Ah yes. The Seagull. The one with the failing young actress. So—Vanya?”