Nicole didn’t bat an eye when Val and Bill started sleeping in the same bed, either at his place or theirs. She liked him, she liked Bess, and Bess completely ignored Toffee the rabbit, so that wasn’t a problem. Peggy and Ken liked him too, and so did Sandra and Lynette. He fitted easily into their social circle and Val liked his friends, both the university bunch and the surfers. It all felt so easy; she kept looking for problems but none arose.

Her course had started at the university, and she loved going to lectures, making copious notes, and discussing topics in tutorials. All the other students were much younger, and that made her more confident about expressing her opinions. Who would have thought it? The timid woman who used to be married to Tony could never have done this. If only she could have told her mother that she was happy at last.

One evening she told Bill about her trip to China to find Ha Suran. Tears filled her eyes as she described hearing about her death in a letter.

“That’s tough,” he sympathized. “But thank goodness you had time to get to know each other again. It sounds as if it was very important to you.”

“Yes, it was,” Val agreed. “It changed me. I suppose remembering that there was someone who loved me and believed in me gave me the confidence to build the life I have now.”

“Sounds as if you were always strong, but in the years living with your dad and Tony you needed that strength just to survive.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine what you went through. My parents were always loving. That’s why it came as such a shock when they decided to leave Australia. I took it personally, as if they were leaving me.”

“Where do they live now?” she asked.

He frowned. “I told you about them. Remember? Way back on our first date.”

Val blushed. “I was so nervous that night I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t seem to mind her memory lapse. “They were White Russians who fled in 1918 and went first to Paris, then during the 1930s they moved to Sydney. I was born and brought up here but they always pined for the old country. It was difficult for me three years ago when they said they were returning to Moscow. It was the height of the Cold War, Brezhnev was clamping down on dissidents, and I didn’t want them to end up in a gulag so I argued myself blue in the face. We fell out badly just before they left.”

“You must miss them terribly.” Val had a vague memory of him talking about them as they stood at the garden gate that first night. How awful of her not to have listened. “Have you seen them since?”