3.At three in the morning my phone began to vibrate, a shrill siren rupturing the night-time silence. I pounced on it to shut it off. Should I take the call or not? If I answered, still sounding sleepy, Frank would realise that I’d just woken up. If I ignored it, would he call me back? There’s a seven-hour time difference between Paris and Irkutsk. That meant Frank thought my day had begun and that it was ten o’clock in the morning for me. I took the plunge. For all these weeks I’d been waiting just for this moment. My index finger pressed the phone’s touchscreen to connect the call.
‘Hello…’
On the other end, the sound of a receiver hanging up was replaced by silence. There was no answering echo to the sound of my voice. I’d thought about it too much, dithering, before deciding. I’d mis
