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Auditors were usually sent to Siberia in single-sex teams; there was an unwritten recommendation to that effect at the firm. Two months of sorting through invoices and snow that lies until May or June otherwise led to entirely predictable, if unplanned, consequences in the form of office dramas and departures on maternity leave. But that year a most improbable combination of large projects and sick leave meant that the only people who could go were Nina and Kolya. There was simply nobody else. A

Long, long ago, in stern patriarchal times, when women went about in long skirts, people rode to their business on horseback or in carriages and all food was organic because you had to grow it yourself, life was harder. There were no single-mother benefits, no maternity payments, no pension savings, no decent medicine and none of the many other pleasant features of modern life. People had to survive, and together that was far easier than apart. To provide at least some sort of social guarantee,

It was love at first sight. They only had to see each other and the world took on entirely different shades, gained colour and meaning... And it all happened in a canteen.

I do not know whether he really was that famous, but to her he was a star, the sun without which everything alive on earth would die. And to him she was the earth that the sunlight warms — otherwise, what would be the point of shining? And it was also a misalliance.