Quite a lot of the women started cocktails at four, but she hadn’t, not yet. And neither would she, Ann determined. That would be giving in and she didn’t give in. She hadn’t given in to her family nor to the unpleasantness of Eddie’s divorce… Ann stopped, examining the word. Had Eddie’s divorce been unpleasant? Of course it had, on the surface. The tight-lipped meetings with the lawyers and the financial arrangements and the division of property, the dismantling of years together. But there hadn’t been from Ruth anything like the sort of reaction that had come from her family. And from Ruth it could have been expected. She was, after all, the abandoned wife, saddled with two bewildered sons and an empty house and empty memories, wondering where she went wrong which wasn’t a question for her, because Ruth hadn’t gone wrong anywhere. She hadn’t had affairs and she hadn’t drank and she hadn’t failed and she hadn’t, when Eddie announced he’d fallen in love with someone else, railed against him or fought him or hated him. Eddie said he’d imagined her behaving like that, because that was the sort of woman Ruth was, but Ann didn’t believe that, either. She was surprised – another uncertainty – and she knew Eddie was, as well. No sneers and no reproaches. It was Ruth who initiated the letters, more often than not: always chatty, always friendly. And always ‘love to Ann’. The discarded wife could send love to the woman who had replaced her and the best her father could manage was regards and that a lie, Ann thought bitterly.

She returned, to the beginning of the reflection. The honesty had cost a lot, for them both. So had it been worth it? Another part of the ritual. Increasing, too. Of course it had been worth it, she decided, in familiar reassurance. She loved Eddie as much – more – as she ever had and she knew he loved her. It was just Moscow. If it been any other posting to any other embassy, somewhere where they could have had outside friends and outside interests and driven a hundred miles out into the country on Sundays, if they’d felt like it, then Ann was positive everything would have been all right.