‘Her privilege is undeniable,’ Eva read, shouting his own words back at him, ‘and it shows her New Age philosophy to be the shallow disguise it really is. Of course she is opposed to change. Those who benefit from the status quo usually are. Money had nothing to do with it! She believes in something. Not that you’d be able to understand that.’

She glared at him, and he just stared back. For once lost for words.

‘At least I can answer the question of how her anti-pouch protests are funded now: out of her own deep pockets. Even the fundamentalist pro-life groups have started to see her as a liability. That’s a lie! She never took their funding, never. She believes in choice. You’re a cheap hack out to discredit my mother for no reason. No reason at all. And you don’t even talk about the pouch!’

Actually it was intended to be the first of many articles – there was research he hadn’t made public, missing details about her background that he’d not spoken about since. It was meant to start a debate; he would have gone on to talk about the care homes, the inequalities. At least that’s what he told himself. At the time he’d taken the article offline and phoned Eva the next day to tell her. Then he’d invited her out to dinner to say sorry in person. She wanted none of it. He hadn’t learned till later that Avigail was on to her second transplant by then. That she was being treated in one of the few remaining independent hospitals. That most of her money was gone. He had no idea how deeply he could be changed, and would be.

He used to think that people didn’t really change their nature. But that was a lazy excuse, Eva always said. And she was right.

It was Eva who’d changed their dynamic on the Trans-Siberian railway, too. Though Piotr liked to think he’d have got there eventually, if she hadn’t done so first. Her actions were so simple. They felt so generous. She stood in front of the basin in their shared cabin, and she didn’t ask him to leave.

As she pulled off her clothes they both knew it was a different sort of thing to the mutual undressing that preceded sex. But equally it was different to the brisk, functional undressing of the past few nights with no intention of sex. It was deliberately done. She took her time with each layer, folded it, as you had to, given the lack of space, and eventually stood, naked, unashamed, conscious but not self-conscious, and turned on the tap. Then, without including him but without excluding him either, she began to wash.