I opened an inn at the edge of a small town, and catered for the passing trade – a good kitchen with hot stew and boiled potatoes, a downstairs room with a fire and high-backed benches where people could warm themselves and eat their dinner. Upstairs there was a dormitory with six plain but sturdy bunks, and for those in search of a little privacy who were prepared to pay me the extra, two more rooms, each with its own carved and painted single bed. I found a local man, Pyotr, to help me with the heavy work, chopping wood for the stove and the fire and lugging it in from the shed, shovelling snow and seeing to people’s horses, repairing their sledges, etc.

I prospered; I didn’t miss Birmingham, I didn’t miss any one from the office, and whenever I found myself thinking about Geoffrey, well, I just busied myself with something that needed doing, like peeling vegetables or polishing the samovar, or shaking out the big floppy mattresses on the beds upstairs.

My new life was calm.

It was uneventful, and even if I wasn’t exactly happy I was at least doing okay. Pyotr was proving himself to be hard-working and reliable and I had settled into a routine; I was enjoying the cooking, my Russian was coming along nicely. I’d started learning the balalaika.

And then, one cold winter’s night, very late, when I had washed down the tables and wiped the greasy remains of the meat from the wooden board in the kitchen, when everything was quiet – the six guests who’d come earlier were asleep in their bunks in the dormitory upstairs, the young lawyer who was on his way to Vladivostok was tucked up in one of the single beds, an elderly insurance salesman from Irkutsk in the other – I heard the sound of a sledge, drawing softly to a halt outside the front door.

Pyotr swore; he had just finished tying on his hat, ready to go home. ‘It’s all right, Pyotr,’ I said. ‘You go. I can do the fire.’