Masters – by Andrei Seleznev

The novel was in Russian, that was the problem. Everyone else in my book club had a translation, but I’d wanted to show off, not realising my mother tongue had atrophied. I wasn’t even halfway through. The other problem was that reading Russian on the train felt suspect. What if passengers clocked on to the Cyrillic? I imagined absurd scenes: is that really and how dare you, angry calls to my employer. Only my train crush, two seats ahead in impeccable slacks, wouldn’t care. She’d be unflappable.