They walked throughout the day. The sun shone, but not too hot, and the hats protected them from the flies. They followed tracks over grassy slopes peppered with wild flowers; they ate their picnic lunch in a wooded glen, and when they’d finished they walked some more. It was a day marked by contentment, and she decided not to spoil it by raising the issue of their relationship.

On the second morning, Galina woke at quarter to five and rose immediately. She pulled on clothes in the dark and tiptoed in her socks to the kitchen. The kettle was cold. She made herself coffee, slipped on her shoes, and took herself outside to the low fence where Andrew had sat yesterday. She positioned herself in the exact same spot, staring out at the mountains, sipping her coffee. She was willing him to watch her, as she had watched him. She couldn’t explain it, was not interested in explaining it, just wanted him to be there by the window, watching. And he was, she knew he was. She felt his gaze on her back, felt the kindest touch in the early-morning stillness.

This presence, Andrew’s presence, absorbed a strange seepage from her Russian past as lines of poetry filtered through her mind. Mandelstam’s I have studied the science of departures, Akhmatova’s The paths to the past have long been closed, and Mayakovsky, from a poem she loved as a girl, Surely, if the stars are lit there’s somebody who longs for them. She heard this relay of Russian as she sat on a low fence, with a summery Australian mountain in front of her and the gaze of an Australian man behind. And when she returned to the flat, when she found him standing next to the window, when he turned to her and she saw the smile on his face, when all this happened, her resolve to speak to him again collapsed.

They read through the morning, then after lunch they went for a walk. An hour later, on a path that twisted around one of the peaks, they arrived at an impasse, a rock fall. Andrew sat her down on a boulder while he went to investigate. The minutes passed. She started to worry. Where was he? What had happened to him? She was on her feet, she was about to call, and at that moment he appeared from around the bend.

‘I think we can make it,’ he said.

He took her arm and guided her over the precarious ground. His touch was firm and secure. And so it remained, even when the rocks gave way to grass, and the worst of the journey was over.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS