Spread in front of her was the new stationery. But still she worried, wanted to shield the booty — how else to think of it? At the same time, why would Neil, who, after all, had taken items from the cupboard for himself, want to get her into trouble? Trust: such a Western value and regarded as a virtue in this country. Never would it be for her.

Again, Neil saw how anxious she was, and again he reassured her: she should have been introduced to the stationery cupboard on her very first day. He co-opted the other Merridale artists for confirmation. They all nodded and smiled and offered encouraging comments, and finally she concluded they simply could not all be in league against her.

The stationery cupboard was, she decided, one of the wonders of Australia, perhaps of the entire Western world. How she wished she could share it with her mother. A cupboard from which you could take what you wanted, the supplies of which were constantly replenished. It reminded her of an old Russian fairytale in which a bowl of food never emptied, no matter how much was eaten.

For twenty-five years she had lived in a society where you took what you could get; you took because you were always in need, you took because tomorrow things might be worse. When she arrived in Australia, she took the clothes, she took the shoes and food, she took the cinema and concert tickets, she took the two-for-one deals at cafés and shops, she took because tomorrow conditions might worsen. And when they did not, when the food spoiled in the fridge and the milk turned sour, when the clothes hung unworn and the entertainments became too plentiful, she learned to restrain herself. But it felt unnatural to refuse such abundance.

Sally, one of the artists at Merridale’s, was a very big woman; privately, Galina thought of her as fat. One day, Sally confessed she never had the feeling of fullness, that the only way she could stop eating was to make herself stop when her plate was empty, or after a small second helping, or when her companions had finished their meals: she made herself stop before she was satisfied. This was how Galina felt about Australia’s abundance.

While Neil removed trees and replaced them with low-slung bushes, Galina spent the afternoon shading — dots on this wall, cross-hatching on that, zigzags on the roof — each type of shading selected from a special catalogue of marks. The work required little thought, yet it occupied her entire attention. It was nearly six o’clock when she again found herself in the street. The cool change had not arrived.