With her limited funds she’d had no choice but to settle for the cheapest compartment, the obshchiy. She had counted on the blur of the passing countryside to tranquilise her during the journey, but discovered she’d not been allocated a window berth despite having requested it. There were no doors to the obshchiy, she had no view, she had no privacy. She wanted to insist, she wanted to demand, but had to stifle her protests, knowing she mustn’t draw attention to herself. There were three other places in the compartment, and she hoped her fellow passengers would make the journey bearable. But when a husband and wife and their daughter, an overdressed girl of about twelve, arrived, she quickly realised there would be no joy from them. After a brief nod when they took their places, they ignored her. With neither window nor distracting company, she rummaged in her bag for her mother’s copy of Chekhov, her literary equivalent of comfort food.

Soon after the journey began, the family laid out real food — so much expensive food that she wondered why they were travelling in an obshchiy. There were hard-boiled eggs, pickles, cheese, bread, sausage, smoked fish — a huge array, and far too much for the three of them. They ate slowly, tauntingly, or so it seemed to Galina. She was hungry, very hungry; with so much to think about, it had not occurred to her to prepare food for the journey. She knew she could buy food at the stations, but she didn’t want to get off the train just in case it departed without her, leaving her stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no possessions and hardly any money. And why, she wondered, was she dogged by these worst-case scenarios? As if she didn’t already have enough to be anxious about.

She put her book aside and watched the family eat. She willed them to share their food, but she might as well not have existed. When they were finished, they cleared everything away except a tin of montpansiez placed where they could all easily help themselves. The bright, fruity sweets fanned her hunger. She swallowed over and over, surprised that the body, usually so adaptable, would keep up saliva production when the enterprise was so obviously futile.

The tin of sweets gradually emptied, the train rattled through the countryside, the air grew hotter and stuffier, the man’s feet stank. Galina tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate, just stared at the page. With each stop she hoped the family would disembark, and when finally they did, she had barely enough time to be relieved when their place was taken by another equally unfriendly family. It was as if she gave off a message: I am emigrating; I am a traitor to Mother Russia.