Алиса Пермякова

There are people you must not tell the truth to. Not only do they fail to take it in, they immediately set about wasting an untold amount of their own precious time on trying to refute it. On the other hand, there is little point in lying to them either, since that only keeps them going. In short, talking them out of an obviously pointless occupation is usually an even more pointless occupation.

Someone once said that there are two kinds of warm relationship: the one where you warm each other's hearts, and the one where you boil each other's nerves. Tellingly, in neither case does the couple think of parting. There are couples where you cannot understand not only how they ended up together, but also why they carry on "ruining each other's lives". Marina and Pavlik were exactly that sort, yet splitting up was unthinkable for them.

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,