And that was the crucial difference. She didn’t have a choice. When she received her exit visa to leave the Soviet Union, she forfeited any right of return. Ever. But there was something else. Imprinted in the semantics of exile was a desire to return, and the assumption that when things had improved, you’d be permitted to return. She’d seen refugee camps on TV, huge tented cities established for people seeking sanctuary from persecution for a few months, perhaps a year, before returning home. But ten years, even twenty years on, there was a second generation of displaced people in these camps, and they, like their parents, dreamed of a time when it’d be safe to go home.

Perhaps you stopped being an exile when you no longer wanted to return home because you were home.

‘Where is home for you now?’ she asked Winston as they made their way back to the office.

He did not hesitate. ‘At the moment it’s here, Australia. But as soon as I return to Hong Kong, my home is there.’

They arrived back in reception just as Leonard exited his office. He greeted her with a kiss. ‘Have you eaten lunch?’

She hadn’t, but neither did she want him to feel obliged to buy her a meal. He silenced her protests. ‘We can talk business over a sandwich at my local café.’

It was indeed local, only about twenty metres up the street. Leonard ordered his ‘usual’ — a hot roast-beef sandwich with English mustard — and she settled for a home-made meat pie with tomato sauce. She’d taken a great fancy to the Australian meat pie; so Russian in consistency, carbohydrates and salt, she suspected that the original recipe had come from the kitchen of a Russian Australian.

The business was settled quickly. She had thought she was to be interviewed for the job, but Leonard simply flipped through her folio, pausing at some of her work for Merridale Graphics — ‘I occasionally see Ralph Merridale at the commerce club’ — asked a couple of questions, and the job was hers.

Leonard laid out the roughs for the catalogue, and took her through what he was after. ‘Four pictures,’ he said, ‘painterly, and portraying a variety of library users sitting at our desks, in our carrels, browsing our shelves, searching in our catalogue drawers. And one of the pictures needs to feature teenagers in school uniform as we want to increase our penetration into the private-school market.’

They discussed style and size, they settled on a timeline, and by the time their food arrived, the business was finished.