‘To me and Nissa?’ He reached for his glass as if it contained an explanation. Spelled out in the rising bubbles was an orgy of misconception. A couple who knew nothing of each other’s past, who had foreseen a future together that neither of them could hope to possess. ‘She fell out of love,’ Dyer said at last, and took another sip. The beer had a different flavour, as if it was reacting to his memories.

Katya put her glass down. ‘And you?’

He said thickly: ‘Oh, she’d tell you I was never in love in the first place.’

She looked at him, all attention.

‘Then why did you marry?’

‘We didn’t marry. We got engaged, but we never quite pulled the noose.’

‘Noose?’

He made a motion around his neck. ‘What the hangman does.’ After a pause, he said: ‘That was a joke.’

‘You English,’ she mused, shaking her head. ‘I only believe when you are joking.’

‘Really, only then?’

‘Yes,’ with a jolting smile. ‘Only then.’

Before she could go on, he said in a parrying voice: ‘What about you and Gennady? It’s not easy, living in separate countries.’

He thought she was fastening an earring, but she was touching a mark on her neck.

‘How did you both meet?’ he pressed.

Her eyes gleaming, she stared at the glass, its brown unrefrigerated contents. They were at university together in Moscow. He had been an accountant, that was how he had begun, she said.

‘But you’re from Murmansk, I thought …’

‘Murmansk?’

‘You were a beauty queen in Murmansk, is what I heard.’

‘Who told you?’ frowning.

‘Someone in Summertown, I forget.’

She lowered her face. ‘I wasn’t beauty queen.’ She came from Muranovo, thirty miles north of Moscow. ‘I was born on estate of great nineteenth-century Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev.’

‘Did you study accountancy, too?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Poetry?’

‘Physics.’

He sat back in his chair.

She smiled, slightly sorrowful. ‘I’m my father—’

She was interrupted by a young woman with short blue-streaked hair holding a plate, who he knew was slightly deaf, which was why it sounded almost like a shout: ‘Who ordered the baguette?’

‘Me,’ raising his glass. And to Katya: ‘Are you hungry? Why don’t we share this?’

‘I can—’ reaching for her square red handbag.

‘No, no, I’ve paid already. Let this be on me.’

He broke the baguette in two and gave her half. They ate in a silence that neither seemed willing to break. Voices could be heard in the other room. Someone was saying: ‘He lives in a bungalow and has a beard and all the rest of it.’

Dyer waited for her to finish eating. ‘Gennady works for GAZPROM, he told me.’

‘If Gennady says so, it must be true,’ with dulled eyes, pushing the plate away. She tried to smile.

He said carefully: ‘Do you not believe your husband’s every word?’