Life without her mother is not about to wait any longer. She shoves her pains aside, stretches out her hand, and the foreigner grasps it. As he leans down, she sees the skin of his throat. It is bronzed and unblemished, and there is a scent about him — not the onions, but something fresh and spicy; she breathes it in. He keeps his arm about her until she has regained her balance. His apologies are profuse, his touch gentle, and to her horror, she feels tears; she swallows hard, takes her time to find a steady voice, insists she is not hurt. But no amount of reassurance will placate him.

‘I could have caused you a serious injury,’ he says.

‘You have not hurt me.’ She is surprised at the ease of her English when everything else is in tatters. ‘It is not your fault. The paving is a mess, and I was not watching where I was going.’

‘Neither was I.’ The man pauses a moment before adding, ‘I’d stopped to look at the snow.’

Not simply a foreigner, but a mad one to be lingering in freezing temperatures gazing at a few miserable snowflakes.

‘I’ve only seen snow once before.’ His face is again bright red.

‘In your entire life?’ This man is clearly no spy, no enemy of any kind.

He nods.

‘Where on earth are you from?’

She hears him say Austria. But no, he repeats it, Australia, the big country at the bottom of the world. ‘Not much snow down there,’ he says. And after a moment he adds, ‘Most Australians respond to snow as you Russians do to kangaroos.’

She feels the muscles around her jaw protest: it has been a long time since she smiled. Her very first English-language book, which was also her mother’s first English book, was called Babies at the Zoo; and of all the baby animals in the book, the kangaroo was her favourite. Accompanying each illustration was a short poem written by the great Samuil Marshak. She can still recite the one about the kangaroo.

And suddenly she sees her mother, pre-stroke Lidiya, sitting with her younger self, and the two of them are reading this book together. She is so tempted to prolong the image, to grasp her mother’s aliveness, but knows she can’t, not right now. But tomorrow and next week and next year this image, and she desperately hopes others too, of a healthy Lidiya will come back to her. For the moment she distracts herself with busyness. The bag has spilled its contents; she thrusts them back, smooths herself down, twists her hair under her scarf, and starts on her way.

‘Can I walk with you?’ The Australian speaks in a rush, like someone out of practice.