Nicolas is touched in spite of everything. He misses home, the mess and familiar smells of the family kitchen. Part of him yearns for contact with his former world, with people who really know him. Having gone to such trouble to create a new identity, he finds himself longing for the old one. The people to whom he entrusted important parts of himself – MacGahan, Bessie, even in some way Rachkovsky – have all died or become estranged. All the secrets he’s kept have started to feel corrosive. And this shiny-booted shopkeeper is a mask he can’t remove.

Today it’s Saturday, and he’s off to pick out kitchen floor tiles. Standing in the showroom, weighing up the claims of a piece of Spanish slate and some Umbrian terracotta, Anya tearfully reveals she’s pregnant again. This is more than a surprise. As far as Nicolas is concerned, it’s a biological impossibility. Back at home, he confronts her about it.

She’s defensive at first, then guilt-stricken. ‘You just never showed any interest in me. You were always at work. You never let me feel like I was part of your life. It was just the once. So soon after the birth that I didn’t think I could conceive. I hadn’t even started my periods again and I was still breastfeeding.’ Nicolas holds out a box of tissues for Anya to dry her tears. He’s thinking it was that Viennese piano teacher, Günther, the sneaky little shit.

‘I was feeling very vulnerable and lonely. Why couldn’t you have just included me a bit more? And anyway, we’re Parisians, we’re French.’ She dissolves into tears as her heart strains to accommodate the rationalisations of free love. She can’t bring herself to say it: what’s wrong with a little adultery?

Cuckold. He never saw that coming. ‘That’s it,’ he says, ‘no more piano lessons!’

Puzzlement is etched on her weepy red face. ‘Piano lessons? It wasn’t Günther, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Who then? I need to know. Surely not Boris Volchkov?’

‘Oh, gross! No way.’

‘Anya, don’t make me guess. This is bad enough as it is.’

She’s so distressed that he’s not able to be angry with her. He knows he’s not the husband he ought to have been. He knows that he hasn’t loved her in the way she deserves. But he’s still a man and his male pride is in tatters.

‘It’s not even about him,’ Anya pleads. ‘It’s about us. I just wanted to know what was going on with you. I wanted to know about the man I fell in love with. I wanted to know why he was so distant, so secretive.’

‘And you slept with someone else to do it?’