‘It was my mother’s suggestion,’ he said.

Inviting strangers to your home and feeding them was a Russian gesture, not an Australian one, and Galina wondered why the mother would invite her. What could she possibly want?

‘She thought you might welcome a home-cooked meal.’

As so often happened in this new life, Galina didn’t know what she wanted to do about this dinner invitation, nor what she should do. Exasperated with herself — why did everything have to be so complicated? — she decided to take the invitation at face value.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Tell your mother I am happy to accept.’

Andrew proposed a number of dates. Galina chose an evening a couple of weeks away to give herself time to prepare — not that it helped, because when the day finally arrived she was more rattled than she would have thought possible. It was a simple dinner, she told herself, and while it was at an Australian home with strangers, she had managed far more difficult situations in the past. She needed to calm down.

Andrew said he’d pick her up early to show her some of Melbourne — ‘My Melbourne,’ was the way he expressed it — and at exactly five o’clock he arrived. She had bought a new dress for the occasion. It was a colourful Asian design, light and pretty, and typical of what Australian girls were wearing this summer; she had teamed the dress with a pair of red sandals. (She had tried the thongs so popular here, but the bit between the toes might have been a tree trunk, for all the discomfort it caused.) As soon as she opened the door, she realised she would need a jacket; the sun was still bright but the wind had swung from north to south and it was quite chilly. Too bad about the summery casual Australian look she was aiming for. She had given up on her hair, having first tried it loose (it reminded her of a giant dandelion), then half of it tied back (like a giant dandelion half blown away), then a plait (too Russian), and a bun (too severe), and in the end bundled it loosely in a clasp at her neck. She grabbed her coat from the hook — not what she had planned at all — and locked the door.

Andrew, stiff and silent during the walk to the car, started talking before she had belted herself into the seat. He talked as if he couldn’t stop. Today, less than an hour ago, a lone gunman had marched into the central post office and killed eight people.

‘Here, in Melbourne, in 1987, for God’s sake. We’re not fighting a war, we don’t have ethnic disputes. Yet eight people are dead. The gunman, too. Jumped from a window. It’s a massacre. Eight innocent people. Random targets.’

His words were boiling over. It was hard to make sense of them.

‘Listen,’ he said, turning up the volume on the radio.