“You look positively dreadful,” she said in her English accent. It was a combination of London and Essex but without a trace of Moscow. “What happened?”

“It was a skiing accident.”

“You don’t strike me as the sort to ski.”

“It was my first time.”

A faintly awkward moment followed as she invited him to enter his own home. She hung her coat on the hook next to his and went into the kitchen to make tea. She filled the electric kettle with bottled water and pulled down an old box of Harney & Sons from the cupboard. Gabriel had picked it up a hundred years ago at the Morrisons in Marazion. He sat on his favorite stool and watched another woman inhabit the space usually occupied by his wife. The London newspapers lay on the countertop, unread. All featured lurid coverage of the Brompton Road bombing and the infighting between Britain’s intelligence services. He looked at Madeline. The cold sea air had added color to her pale cheeks. She seemed content, happy even, not at all like the broken woman he had found in St. Petersburg. Suddenly, he hadn’t the heart to tell her she was the cause of all that had happened.

“I was beginning to think I’d never see you again,” she said. “It’s been—”

“Too long,” said Gabriel, cutting her off.

“When was the last time you were in the UK?”

“I was here this summer.”

“Business or pleasure?”

He hesitated before answering. For a long time after her defection, he had refused even to tell Madeline his real name. Defectors had a way of becoming homesick.

“It was a business venture,” he said at last.

“Successful, I hope.”

He had to think about it. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I suppose it was.”

Madeline lifted the kettle from its base and poured the steaming water into a chubby white teapot that Chiara had picked out from a shop in Penzance. Watching her, Gabriel asked, “Are you happy here, Madeline?”

“I live in fear you’re going to evict me.”

“Why would you think such a thing?”

“I’ve never had a home of my own before,” she said. “No mother, no father, only the KGB. I became the person I wanted to be. And then they took that away from me, too.”

“You can stay here as long as you want.”

She opened the refrigerator, removed a container of milk, and poured a measure into Chiara’s little beehive jug.

“Warm or cold?” she asked.

“Cold.”

“Sugar?”

“Heavens, no.”

“There might be a tube of McVitie’s in the pantry.”

“I ate.” Gabriel poured milk into the bottom of his cup and poured the tea on top of it. “Are my neighbors behaving?”

“They’re a bit nosy.”

“You don’t say.”

“It seems you made quite an impression on them.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“No,” she said. “It was Giovanni Rossi, the great Italian art restorer.”

“Not so great.”