“Not a bit,” Fox says. “Smooth as butter. I couldn’t believe it myself. Once the wheels went in motion, why, there was no stopping them rolling forward.”

For some reason, we still stand outside the apartment door. I suppose we’re all a little nervous of going in to face what’s inside. But a space falls after Fox’s last words, in which there is nothing else to say, so we all turn to the apartment’s interior and perform the exact same pantomime as downstairs at the elevator a moment ago—Digby waving us both in, Fox urging me a half step forward with a hand that just caresses the curve of my spine.

Then I’m inside the foyer, and a small, delicate woman appears—heavily pregnant, dark hair, anxious face—Iris.

“Ruth? Thank you so much for coming.”

I don’t know how it is. I don’t know why I do it, what force urges me forward. Something primeval, I imagine. My feet move by themselves. I open my arms at the last instant and cradle her shoulders and head—my stomach rams the mountain of hers—her dark hair fills my mouth. I have to spit it out to speak.

“Of course I came, pumpkin.”

I WOULD LIKE TO say that we then settle down on a sofa somewhere and trade tender reminiscences until the cows come home, but an instant later the children tumble down the hall and that’s that. I mean, the noise alone. The kids fire questions at me, Iris asks if I want tea or coffee—vodka, I call out—Digby tells Fox what a fan he was, something about a game against Harvard—there’s no time at all for awkwardness. We wind up on a sofa fully half an hour later. The children get bored and wander off to somebody’s room to play a game.

“Not Monopoly, I presume?”

Digby laughs. “No.”

Now, the first thing I notice about Digby, once we’re all arranged in this shabby living room of theirs, is that he drinks coffee instead of vodka, and he smokes a pipe instead of a cigarette. The second thing I notice is that he actually looks remarkably well, for a traitor—older, like I said, but still pink and healthy, not even so much as a fatherly paunch. The room in which we sit is lined with books. Digby’s talking with Fox about his work, how he’s writing a comprehensive study of American foreign policy since the First World War, teaching a class or two at Moscow University—that kind of thing, he says.