Sylvie’s heart is pounding, as if these haiku are for her. She reads again, this time aloud. She reads as Lucien, she reads as Sophie, she feels the hot tension, she feels the new love. And she marvels at such passion. She wonders what happened to Lucien and Sophie. The letters end as they begin, full of love and plans for their future together. What kept these lovers apart? And in her mind’s eye, she sees Sophie’s mother, Mrs Herbert, a pillar of the eastern suburbs, a woman who would never welcome a foreigner into her family, much less a Catholic one. She sees Mrs Herbert walking to the letterbox to collect the mail, there to find in the bundle an airmail letter addressed to her daughter. Mrs Herbert checks the sender details, she breaks open the envelope, she reads the letter, she realises what her daughter is up to, she determines to stop it. She destroys the letter and all the ones that follow.

Poor Sophie doesn’t understand. She rereads Lucien’s old letters searching for clues. She pines for him, she plans to go to Lyons, see him, persuade him of their love. But as the months of silence stretch into a year, she decides that Lucien must have met someone else, someone close by, someone easier. When her mother arranges with her friend Mrs Payne to introduce her to Mrs Payne’s son, Sophie acquiesces. She doesn’t care what happens to her now. Mrs Payne’s son courts her; it helps ameliorate the pain. A few months later, he proposes; a few months more, they marry.

It is a shocking betrayal by a mother, Sylvie thinks. She would never do such a thing to Andrew — and girls don’t come much more foreign than Galina. But even if Galina were from a tribe in Outer Mongolia, as Andrew’s chosen she’d be Sylvie’s too. Love is not such a common commodity that you’d toss it away.

As it happens, she likes Galina, admires her too. How can she not? The girl has lost both parents, has fled oppression, is living in a foreign country, is speaking a foreign language, is supporting herself financially, physically and emotionally. This girl, half her own age, has experienced so much. Sometimes it seems to Sylvie as if life, the full-flavoured kind, has brushed past her on its way to juicier game.