She was speaking too bluntly, and with an implied criticism of Westerners; she should stop, but it seemed she couldn’t stop. ‘Even if Gorbachev wanted to bring the Soviet system to an end — and I do not believe for a moment he does — it will take far more than one man to do that. The system has been in place for seventy years, it has shaped every aspect of life, and it has shaped desire and expectation too. Its roots go very deep. Democracy for the Soviet Union is a Western dream. It’s your dream.’

She was about to move on to the subject of a free-market system within the Soviet context, how everyone wanted an easier life with ready access to material goods, but they had come to rely on the state to look after them, when she saw Leonard’s gaze shift to the door. A man, much the same age as herself, had entered the café. Slender and athletic, dressed in slim-fitting black jeans and a tight black T-shirt, he might have been a ballet dancer. His hair was dark and curly, his face was pale and angelic, his eyes were huge and dark. He was a truly beautiful man.

Leonard’s gaze alighted on him momentarily and then flicked back to her. He was trying to listen to her, trying to concentrate, but his gaze was pulled back to the beautiful man waiting at the counter.

Leonard’s gaze could not help itself.

10 OWLS OF THE DESERT

10

OWLS OF THE DESERT

Leonard rolled over and propped himself on an elbow. With his free hand he pulled the sheet over their hips.

‘What do you think of Andrew’s Russian girlfriend?’

It was the day after Galina had come to the office.

‘I like her.’ And after a pause, ‘But it’s what Andrew thinks that matters.’

‘It’s not an easy question for a father to ask a son.’

‘Patience, Leo, patience. For as long as Andrew keeps seeing her, you can assume he’s interested.’

Leonard lay back and closed his eyes. He had to stop worrying about Andrew. He wasn’t a child anymore — another couple of years and he’d be thirty. And it wasn’t as if he had anything really wrong with him: he wasn’t blind, he wasn’t deaf, he had no chronic illness, no degenerative disease. He was just shy. He was also achieving a name as an artist, he was financially independent, he travelled widely, he had friends and now even a girlfriend. To any impartial observer, his son was a successful young man.