Alex is grateful that he's willing to drop it. She looks over at him and smiles, much more genuinely than before, and shakes her head. "I walked by it once or twice, but I've never been in."

It doesn't take long to get there, and Alex is stunned by how different it is once they're through the gate. She hasn't been in a real park since she was a little girl, when her father used to take her to the old heritage gardens in Moscow or Izmaylovsky Park to let her get lost under the trees.

The trees here are bare, but there's a light dusting of snow on the branches and on the ground that makes the whole place look like something out of a picture book. She stares, open-mouthed, until she spots a small bridge through the trees, and walks towards it. It goes over a little stream, which spills down over the rocks and past bushes and rushes and the trailing branches of a willow tree. In the summer, she imagines, it must be bright green, but even the winter, the ice and snow are still beautiful.

"It's gorgeous." She grins at Kyle.