Two years with the fearless, godless MacGahan, who goes out of her way to antagonise clergymen, has recalibrated his sense of religion. The papers’ appetite for news shows no consideration for the sabbath; he works every day he needs to. For long stretches of the war, the only food available was meat, butchered filthily in camp, and Kolya has acquired a taste for pork.

Meanwhile, his family has gone the other way. Something has caused them to cling more tightly to their ancient faith. It’s partly how they’ve responded to the loss of him, and partly reflects a wider movement, a religious renewal that’s touched many Jews. ‘You look like a real Russian gentleman,’ his mother says, without joy.

His father sketches out the events of the last two years: the business slackened off after Kolya left; sickness. They wanted to be closer to his wife’s family. In everything the old man says, Nicolas hears an unspoken reproach: this is your fault.

They couldn’t be less interested in his war stories. He tries to tell them about MacGahan, but whatever he says is received with pained incredulity. He feels about thirteen again. His new boots chafe.

The atmosphere in the apartment presages a looming storm. Then, a mere six hours after he’s arrived, a messenger turns up. It’s a boy from the telegraph office who looks with envious eyes at Kolya’s dapper clothes as he hands over an envelope. More than any of his abortive boasts, Kolya’s ease with this strange interruption signals to his parents how much he has changed. He tips the boy and asks him to wait. It’s from General Skobelev. Kolya’s vision grows blurry as he reads the words: MacGahan. Typhus. Istanbul. Regret.

‘This coat was hers.’

Chapan. Vincenzo repeats the word. ‘From Uzbek,’ the old man says, offering him the sleeve to touch, its hem rubbed shiny and soft from decades of use. ‘Too big for me, in fact. I found it in a steamer trunk after her second funeral.’

Margaret Ann MacGahan – Wednesday, of course, was a fiction she devised in part to be eye-catching, in part to obscure her sex from her readers – was buried in the Greek cemetery in Istanbul and reburied in Salt Lake City two years later.