Beijing, 2004

I had just emptied my sixty-litre rucksack onto the hotel floor when Kirill offered to change my money downstairs: the rate was good today. Half asleep, I handed him all my four hundred dollars. The door closed behind him, and I broke into a cold sweat. I was eight thousand kilometres from home, with no money, a few tins of stewed meat, clothes that made me look like a cosmonaut, and a return ticket in twenty-five days. We had met on an internet forum; this was our first day together.

He came back with more than three thousand yuan. Later I understood I had simply wound myself up. Everything about this man inspired trust.