Within a month of moving into the saddlery her clothes seemed tighter; after two more weeks there was no denying it. If she didn’t make some changes she’d soon look like a twenty-five-year-old babushka. She cut down on the food, but still she was eating too much and, as Zara pointed out, eating the wrong sort of food. But it was all so delicious, she simply could not resist.

‘You need to eat more vegetables,’ Zara said on one of her visits to the saddlery, inspecting the fridge and shelves.

Galina bought tinned peas and tiny potatoes: there was something so secure and comforting about canned food. She bought more and more cans until her cupboard was full.

‘Fresh vegetables,’ Zara said on her next visit.

This was, as it turned out, Zara’s last visit, and despite numerous invitations, Galina had not been back to her home. She wanted the warmth that Zara and Arnold offered, and she wanted the closeness. But their affection reminded her of her forever-absent mother — a painful reminder that she was alone in a strange place, alone in all the world, and she had to learn to manage on her own.

Every night at half past six she would watch the news on the multicultural TV station, switching to the government broadcaster at seven. It was an evening ritual just like in Leningrad, when she and her mother and two hundred million other Soviet citizens tuned into Vremya. In her Australian saddlery, seated on her Australian couch, with the news playing on her Australian TV, Galina, having transposed this familiar habit, would experience a contented hour.

And she read her Russian books. These evoked only the good of her Soviet life. They were her childhood, they were her mother, they were home. Home and language: how very connected they were. Even after a year in Australia, Galina felt like a renter of English, and feared she might always be.

With other émigrés, it didn’t matter how little she had in common with them, there was a sense of connection just in speaking Russian together. And yet she felt she must ration her time with other émigrés, in the same way she had with Zara and Arnold. As much as she hungered for Russian, she responded to a fierce and uncompromising imperative that she learn to manage alone.

Nothing was simple, nothing was clear, nothing was easy. She read about Australia’s history and geography, its flora and fauna, the Great Barrier Reef, the Aboriginal people; she even read books about Australian cricket and football. So many books, but what she really needed was a manual on how to be an Australian.