So it happened that a couple of minutes later, Sylvie was making her way towards her little workroom at the top of the house, with the Russian girl following, to show what had been seen by no one except Leonard, and even with him it was just the occasional interesting acquisition like the Russian letter. And in that instance it was the stamp she had wanted Leonard to see, a stamp depicting happy women picking lemons. It was dated 1951, the year he had moved from Perth to Melbourne, the pivotal year that ultimately led to his meeting her. She couldn’t explain why, but she believed in the happiness of the lemon-pickers and the happenstance of the date, and she wanted to share these with Leonard. Now she wondered if, in fact, 1951 had been a happy time in Russia. The girl would know, but she didn’t want to encourage her.

There were times she had shown Leonard a letter because of the curious handwriting, or the plush paper, features she knew would interest him, but the power of letters to reach across time and country, the stories they told, and all the lives and possibilities they triggered, these remained hers alone. She shared the twin desires common to all collectors of wanting her collection to be admired, but, at the same time, feeling compelled to protect it — and not just the collection, but the passion of the collector, too, the naked heart after all — from people who would damage it by indifference, or derision, or outright contempt.

And what would this girl think of her letter collection? This girl from a culture so foreign it was impossible to assume or predict anything, who might well fade out of Andrew’s life before long — although she hoped this wouldn’t be the case. What to think about this stranger now following her up the stairs to the room into which no one but she entered, her own private space from the time she and Leonard had bought this house? In the early days, her use of the room was assumed to be temporary, but miscarriage after miscarriage meant it remained hers. Leonard, too, had his own private retreat in what should have been another child’s bedroom; Sylvie went in there to clean, but did so with eyes averted. Not that she thought Leonard harboured any significant secrets; he was simply not that sort of man.

Leonard had offered to swap his room for hers, given his was far more comfortable and within the main flow of the house. But that was the crucial factor: in her eyrie she was far removed from the domestic domain, far removed from everyday life. She would climb the creaky stairs to the solitude of her room, and work on her letters — transcribing, cataloguing, or searching for background material. Or she would read, hours every week spent in the pages of books. And sometimes she would just sit, her hands idle, her mind conjuring up other lives — fully imagined companions, if she so desired — while her own life lay quietly to one side.