Galina is lying in a stink of urine and ancient filth. She wants to fade out, she wants not to be here. Where is oblivion exactly? she is wondering. And what is it about Leningrad paving that prises the bricks from their cement beds? Might there be tiny earthquakes occurring all over the city?

A strange man is hovering over her. His hands are flapping, and a barrage of Russian mixed with English is spilling out of him. Life as she has known it stopped this morning, and now, in full view of everyone, she’s the target of a hysterical foreigner.

‘Please.’ She manages to find some English. ‘Please, I am all right.’

The man is crouched over her, she can smell onions. ‘Please, sir, move away. I need air.’

He utters a stream of apologies, grabs a scarf from his neck, rolls it into a sausage and places it under her head. He stands back, his face bright red. He’s clearly embarrassed, and so he ought to be. Not that she cares; and it occurs to her she doesn’t really care about anything anymore. She turns her back to him, closes her eyes, and curls up small. The whoosh of tyres, a blitz of car horns, the stop-start wheeze of a bus come to her muffled, as if through water. It’s not unpleasant, a sort of holding bay for life, and she tries to insert her mother — her healthy, vibrant mother. But the bed-ridden figure of the past terrible weeks, with the face shrivelling over the skull, the twisted mouth, the perpetual drool, refuses to be dislodged. And suddenly the abysmal thought: it might never be.

You’re on your own, she tells herself again. You’re lying on the filthy ground, a blizzard could be on the way, there’s a foreigner fussing over you, and you’re on your own. And as much as she wants to stay right where she is, she makes herself move. The stranger is watching her. The flush has left his face; his skin is smooth and unmarked — healthy skin, which for some reason makes her think of oranges.

He steps towards her. ‘Let me help you.’

Tall and unmistakeably Western, he is dressed in Levis and a sheepskin jacket; his blond wavy hair, clean and lush, is swept back from his forehead, he wears no hat. She guesses he is much the same age as she is, although Westerners always look younger than their years. It’s impossible to know who or what he is, whether friend or foe. Not that it matters. In kindergarten, in school, in the Pioneers, in the Komsomol, at university, at work, wherever you are in the Soviet system, you’re told that all foreigners are suspect, and all are to be avoided. Although now, at this moment, if anyone is watching her — and all prospective émigrés can expect to be watched — she’s simply too exhausted to care.