‘What is it? Do you hear his sleigh?’ asked Lena, now agitated.

Edith shook her head and took her friend’s hand. Lena, thrown by such kindness, began to weep.

‘I have no one to tell,’ she said.

Edith made tea and listened to the silence, to the gaps in the words, then she began to understand that Lena had come to her because her heart was broken.

‘After I married, all my friends boasted of their pregnancies,’ said Lena. ‘Maria was having her second, and I wanted a baby so badly. I wanted a child more than I wanted a husband.’ Lena twisted her handkerchief in her fingers. ‘I used to think you could get pregnant from kissing. Stupid, I know. But no one told me. My mother said I would find out soon enough. You have to bear it and from it comes children. When we were first married, we kissed a lot, and nothing happened. Then Maria told me what she and her husband did to make babies. But when we tried it…’ She stopped, put her handkerchief to her mouth.

‘He couldn’t…it would go limp. He said it was enough, and it was unpleasant. He would get out of bed and wash. I didn’t know what to do. I thought there must be something wrong with me. My mother kept saying to me, “Lena, when will you do your duty and give me a grandchild?” Then my husband began to go more and more to the town, he would never say why, except it was to do with his father’s business. When he told me he would be gone for a week, I asked if I could go with him. He said no. I asked why not, and he grew angry, said my duty was to have a baby and look after the house. Nothing more.

‘When he left, I thought, this is my life, and I will never have a child. I will just have this dull man. He had been gone for three days. I’d had no visitors – our house, as you know, is out of the village. I felt so alone. Then one evening, as the sun was setting, I saw him, Misha, all golden, and an idea came to me. I thought even if he spoke about it, no one would believe him – after all, he is the village idiot. I took him up the stairs, I told him what he had to do. I lay down on the bed, pulled up my skirts. I lay still just like my husband said I had to and I didn’t move.