Ann wondered if it was because of the break-up and knew he would, too. It wouldn’t have been possible here in Moscow, of course, but elsewhere he would have taught the boys to cook-out and ride and hunt and fish and have gone camping with them, at week-ends and on vacations. He missed the boys, she knew. His guilt – the guilt he sought to minimise, despite the undertakings about no secrets – was as much for abandoning them as it was for abandoning Ruth.

‘Ruth’s been getting out,’ he said, still reading the letter. ‘Guy called Charlie Rogers. Someone she knew at high school. Friend of the family, apparently.’

‘How do you feel about that?’ she said, wishing immediately she hadn’t.

Blair frowned up at her. ‘Pleased for her, of course,’ he said. ‘What else should I feel?’

‘Nothing,’ she agreed at once. He could have made an argument out of it if he’d wanted to. Thank God he hadn’t. She was still nervous of arguments, in their relationship.

‘She’s sent some pictures,’ said Blair. He looked at the prints for several moments and Ann stared at him, alert for any facial reaction. There wasn’t any. ‘Here,’ he said, offering them to her.

Paul was the older, fourteen in two months’ time. John was nine, dark-haired like Ruth. Paul had his father’s blondness and would be big, too: already he had to be almost five feet. She guessed they’d posed specially for the photographs to be sent to their father: their lips were barely parted, in reluctant indications of a smile. They were standing against Ruth’s car, in the driveway of the Rosslyn house. If Eddie got the headquarters posting he expected, he’d be very near to them, Ann realised.