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of Russia, I can’t be held accountable for that. The first point where I calculate I have to accept responsibility was on the night train from Moscow to St Petersburg.
    I’d been looking after Sam ever since he’d landed at Sheremetyevo airport two days before. I hadn’t seen him smile in all that time. He’d lectured lugubriously at the university, glumly addressed a gathering at the British Council library, done depressing signings at two bookshops and sulked his way round a reception at the Irish embassy. Even the weather seemed to reflect his mood, grey clouds lowering over Moscow and turning April into autumn. Minding visiting authors is normally the part of my job I like best, but spending time with Sam was about as much fun as having a hole in your shoe in a Russian winter. We’d all been hoping for some glamour from Sam’s visit; his Channel Four series on the roots of biography had led us to expect a glowing Adonis with twinkling eyes and a gleaming grin. Instead, we got a glowering black dog.
    Over dinner on the first evening, he’d downed his vodka like a seasoned Russian hand, and gloomed like the most depressive Slav in the Caucasus. On the short walk back to his hotel, I asked him if everything was all right. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘My wife’s just left me.’
    Right, I thought. Don’t go there, Sarah. ‘Oh,’ I think I said.
    The final event of his Moscow visit was a book signing, and afterwards I took him to dinner to pass the time till midnight, when the train would leave for St Pete’s. That was when the floodgates opened. He was miserable, he admitted. He was terrible company. But Rachel had walked out on him after eight years of marriage. There wasn’t anyone else, she’d said. It was just that she was bored with him, tired of his celebrity, fed up of feeling inferior intellectually. I pointed out that these reasons seemed somewhat contradictory.
    He brightened up at that. And suddenly the sun came out. He acted as if I’d somehow put my finger on something that should make him feel better about the whole thing. He radiated light, and I basked in the warmth of his smile. Before long, we were laughing together, telling our life stories, swapping intimacies. Flirting, I suppose.
    We boarded the train a little before midnight, each dumping our bags in our separate first-class compartments. Then Sam produced a bottle of Georgian champagne from his holdall. ‘A nightcap?’ he suggested.
    â€˜Why not?’ I was in the mood, cheered beyond reason by the delights of his company. He sat down on the sleeping berth beside me, and it seemed only natural when his arm draped across my shoulders. I remember the smell of him; a dark, masculine smell with an overlay of some spicy cologne with an edge of cinnamon. If I’m honest, I was willing him to kiss me before he actually did. I was entirely disarmed by his charm. But I also felt sorry for the pain that had been so obvious over the previous two days. And maybe, just maybe, the inherent Doctor Zhivago romance of the night train tipped the balance.
    I don’t usually do this kind of thing. What am I saying? I never do this kind of thing. In four years of chasing around after authors, or having them chase after me, I’d not given into temptation once. But Sam penetrated all of my professional defences, and I moaned under his hands from Moscow to St Petersburg. By morning, he swore I’d healed his heart. By the time he left St Pete’s three days later, we’d arranged to meet in London, where I was due to attend a meeting in ten days’ time. I’d been out of love for a long time; it wasn’t hard to fall for a man who was handsome, clever and amusing, and who seemed to find me irresistible.
    Two days’ later, I got his first e-mail. I’d been checking every waking hour on the hour, wondering and edgy. It turned out I had good reason to be