The protagonists of Anna Matveyeva’s stories persistently search for their time and place. A teacher in love with a high-school senior dreams of England. A boy hopes his parents will be together again, and that, instead of the invented lake on stage, the real one will return — with it, his former life. A girl who has grown up unnoticed regrets the past that never happened; an old maid still waits for her impossible future. The wife of an unsuccessful writer is fooled by dreams of the literary Parnassus, while he sees himself as young among old friends. “After all, there is no st…”