How different it would be if her mother were with her and they could, with their shared past, tread this slippery sprawling present together. And again she found herself wondering, as she had so many times before, whether the loss of her mother was shaping all the other losses. She wasn’t missing Leningrad, she was missing the city she had lived in with her mother. She wasn’t homesick for Russian, she was homesick for conversation with her mother. She wasn’t pining for Russian food, she was pining for meals with her mother. She wasn’t suffering the absence of landmarks, she was suffering the absence of her mother. She wasn’t struggling in foreign Australia, she was struggling with foreign grief.

She glanced at Andrew and wondered if he would ever be the sort of friend with whom she could discuss these issues. In different circumstances she would have allowed herself to hope he was, but now she did not grant herself that kind of licence. It would, she believed, save her from future disappointment.

He had made a U-turn, and it seemed to her that he was heading back the way they had just come. After a couple more kilometres and a few more turns, he was parking alongside the Botanic Gardens.

‘Here’s my favourite place in Melbourne.’ He was blushing. ‘Excluding my favourite mosaic places.’

She had visited these gardens with Zara and Arnold. So different from gardens at home, there were flowers in both winter and summer, and such a variety and lushness of growth that she wondered if there was something other than heat to make the Australian air so much more productive than the Russian variety. Zara and Arnold had favoured the huge multicoloured camellia section, and the azaleas, too, whose blooms were so abundant they glazed the entire bush with colour. Andrew, in contrast, headed straight to the oak lawn.

There were oak trees at home, both in the city and the nearby countryside, and several times she and her mother had made an autumn visit to Tsarskoe Selo to see the colours. These oaks at the Botanic Gardens were huge by comparison — an introduced species, according to Andrew, but they clearly thrived in the Australian climate. She should take lessons from oaks.

‘This is my favourite tree,’ he said, stopping by one of them. It was not the largest, nor the most shapely. ‘Look.’ He was pointing at the exposed roots. A hollow about the size of a man’s fist had formed, and it was filled with rainwater. ‘I’ve seen birds drinking here,’ he said.

Not sure how to respond, she chose silence. He, too, remained silent, and a minute or two later led her back to a path, around the lake and up a steep, green slope on the far side of the gardens.