There was more of this sort of talk over lunch at the Turkish restaurant, all about the play’s supposed relevance to the present. Everyone was there except Genevieve. People said Brexit-y things, speaking about the fear of being reduced to a province, of people beginning to leave the UK in dribs and drabs. A TV in the corner was playing a news update. It showed the Brexiters’ march from Sunderland, people trudging beside a road in unremarkable countryside.

‘Where are they up to now?’ asked Holly.

‘I don’t know. Aldfield?’

‘Which is where when it’s at home? My geography is shit.’

Regrouping after lunch, they rehearsed the final scene, in which Sofya shoots Platonov with a revolver. This was Miles’s chance to do blood and gore, his favourite thing; it was the only bloody bit in the play. Before they got going, he spoke to Genevieve, prepping her.

‘Platonov has pushed and pushed,’ he said. ‘He’s pushed Sofya to her limit. He’s flattered and courted her, then resorted to bullying. He’s humiliated her. And what does he care?’

‘He doesn’t,’ Genevieve retorted. ‘He doesn’t give a toss.’

‘So she seizes the gun. It’s a moment of reckoning.’ Miles looked around soberly, script in hand. ‘A reckoning means the avenging of an act of wrongdoing; it comes from the word for settling a bill.’

Holly was half listening. Her thoughts were all of Anna and how to play her in the scene. When Platonov died, Anna would be the one to cradle his body, to hug him tight with disbelief.

‘Alright,’ said Miles, clapping once. ‘From Sofya’s line. Enough…’

And it was over to Genevieve, who entered from stage left. In the last few days, her performances had been gradually improving – she was gaining confidence in the role, and Sofya was starting to seem more like a living, breathing woman. But no one was expecting the performance that followed. Genevieve snatched up the revolver, radiating fury. She appeared completely transformed. The effect was disconcerting.

‘“Enough!”’ she cried. ‘“It can’t be allowed!”’ And, with an involuntary sob, she fired at Platonov. She missed, but moved to shoot him again, point-blank in the chest. He fell to the ground. Her arms shook as she lowered the gun. Then, looking ashen, she dropped the weapon and stepped back.

‘Wow, Genevieve,’ everyone said. And even Holly was impressed.

This should have told her something, she realised later. Genevieve’s ashen face that day was a clue of sorts. But she, Holly, carried on oblivious, unseeing. She might never have realised what she was missing, the piece that made the rest of the puzzle fit together. (She’d kicked this piece under the sofa, out of the reach of a vacuum nozzle or the most determined fingers.)