She didn’t forgive him, but that was not the right answer, or perhaps Leonard’s was the wrong question. In the long silence that followed, she tried to work out exactly what she did feel. Forgiveness didn’t seem particularly relevant to what had happened to them. And how useful would it be anyway? Forgiveness by itself would change nothing. And if Leonard had told her at the beginning that he had these tendencies, told the young, sheltered nineteen-year-old she was, she probably wouldn’t have married him. And what a great loss that would have been. He had been a loving and attentive husband, he’d been an involved father, he’d been a good provider. She had loved him for more than thirty years, and she still loved him.

At last she answered. ‘I accept you, Leonard.’

He did not move. The room was silent. The second hand of the kitchen clock jerked through the seconds. She saw the tears well up. Never before had she seen her husband cry; men like Leonard didn’t cry. She left her chair and moved around to the back of his. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him. She felt him shudder, she heard his deep sigh.

‘Tell me about Rilke,’ she said.

Across town, Galina and Andrew were admiring the window display of the Readings bookshop in Carlton. Arranged in tiered rows were the new releases, together with the Christmas titles. In the middle of the display was a copy of When Melbourne Meets Leningrad.

‘What a splendid sight,’ Andrew said.

Her first book, published and for sale in a shop; it was hard to believe, despite what her eyes were telling her. And it did look splendid, even to her hyper-critical gaze. Not only its central position in the window, but its eye-catching cover. She had wanted a painterly, impressionistic design, but the publishers had overruled her. And seeing her book among all these other books, she realised the publishers had been right. The cover’s style now struck her, not without humour, as a fine tribute to Soviet Realism. The illustration depicted a Soviet girl in her Pioneer uniform framed by the Church on the Spilled Blood, holding the hand of an Australian boy standing in front of a Melbourne tram; the colours were bright, the lines were sharp. Soviet Realism taking pride of place in a Melbourne shop window, and she smiled: it wouldn’t have happened without her.

Andrew produced a camera. ‘Posterity calls,’ he said.

Galina wanted a photo of her book on display, but she didn’t want to make a show of herself. Andrew must have seen her hesitate, because he leaned in close and spoke directly in her ear. ‘This is a special occasion,’ he said. ‘A unique occasion. It’s your book, your day, and we need to mark it for all eternity.’