During the short period, just a couple of hours, before the papers were removed, Sylvie crouched down and read the floor. The top layer was mustardy with age, and stained with mysterious splotches, but the lower sheets were well preserved. She was shuffling through the pages, reading headlines and paragraphs, when she spied some handwriting, almost completely covered by a page of newsprint. She moved the newspaper aside to reveal a letter written on blue onion-skin paper. She scanned the contents, then knowing the floorer would soon be returning, quickly lifted and stacked all the sheets of newspaper. She found several more letters: some, like the first, written on blue onion-skin paper, others covering both sides of high-quality, no-longer-white parchment, but if she held the pages up to the light, she could still make out the watermark. By the time the floorer returned to remove the underlay, she had completed the job: old papers arranged in neat stacks for him to take to the incinerator, while she took possession of the letters.

She lost the baby, and began her letter collection. And she did not stop, not even with the pregnancy that produced the miracle of Andrew — the George Eliot pregnancy, and another female author like Virginia Woolf without children. (As were the Brontës and Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson. Someone with the education and the ability should investigate this disturbing pattern, Sylvie thought.) As her son grew, so did her collection. Now, after nearly thirty years, she had over two hundred letters, all in English except the single Russian letter with the 1951 stamp of the happy lemon-pickers. For the first time she wished she had not collected that letter, or rather, had not shown it to Leonard. Her letters, a subtle larceny that did no one any harm, were her own business.

Posted on the wall in her room was a quote from the poet Byron: Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company. The observation greatly appealed to her, even more so with her extension: Reading a letter is the only device for combining solitude with good company. So what was she now doing, traipsing up to her room with this girl in tow?

She stopped on the narrow stair: she couldn’t go through with it. She twisted around and looked down at Galina. Her expression must have said it all, for Galina reached up and placed her hand on the bare skin of her wrist. ‘Perhaps another time,’ the girl said. She turned and led the way back down the stairs into the body of the house, and Sylvie followed, the print of Galina’s hand sparking on her skin.

An understanding had passed between them.