Fifteen minutes and an apologetic phone call later, they were in the car on the way to the Barkers’. Fortunately, Sylvie had a very sensible gauge of what was worth being annoyed about, so her usual sweet temper was already restored. If she’d been a man, Leonard thought, she would have made an excellent politician. He had made this observation just a couple of weeks ago, the night Galina had come to dinner, and the girl had been quick to point out that with a handful of women already in the House of Representatives — ‘Nine, to be exact’ — Sylvie could become a politician without requiring a sex change.

This was not the only occasion that evening, nor during their lunch together, that Galina had produced information about Australia of which he was ignorant. ‘How do you know that?’ he had asked yesterday when she made a reference to the Petrov case.

‘Immigrants have to construct firm ground under their feet, or else they can easily drown in all the newness,’ she had said. ‘So they have to be better informed than ordinary citizens.’ The situation was further complicated by something she called ‘unskilling’. ‘For émigrés like me, the qualities that kept us afloat in our old country do not work in the new. We find ourselves unskilled.’

Galina was a wise young woman. He really hoped that something lasting would come of her relationship with Andrew.

‘I’ve been thinking about Christmas,’ Sylvie said, stretching her arm along the back of his seat and letting her hand rest on his shoulder. ‘Winston as usual — you’ve asked him, I hope.’ Leonard nodded. ‘Maggie, and whoever of her children happen to be around, and,’ there was a brief pause, ‘Galina. I’d like to invite Galina.’

‘She’s Jewish,’ Leonard said. ‘Well, I assume she’s Jewish.’

‘Not so Jewish that Christmas would be a problem. I think she’d like to come.’

‘Have you asked Andrew?’

‘It was his suggestion, although I’d already thought of it.’

Leonard welcomed a variety of guests at their Christmas table: family, friends, and, from the time he joined the business, Winston.

‘It’s an excellent idea,’ he said. ‘I hope we haven’t left it too late.’

‘I think Andrew raised it because he suspected she had nowhere to go. But that’s not the reason I’m asking her. I want her to come, I like her.’

Leonard nodded, and they settled into a comfortable silence, and would have continued that way if not for the billboard, just a few minutes from the Barkers’ house. It was enormous, it was unmissable. It displayed a still shot from that dreadful TV advertisement about AIDS: ordinary people, women and children as well as men, huddled together while a terrifying Grim Reaper knocked them down like skittles.