‘To Rachel!’ echoes Teddy, then Karl and Sorin.
Rachel, however, isn’t feeling well. A painful pressure has been building at the back of her eyes since Vee mentioned the owner of the white goods store. The ringing sound in her ears has returned. This is the first time she has experienced it away from the apartment block. She shouldn’t be here, she thinks. Mykola warned her not to leave her child alone with Elena. She drops her fork on the floor.
‘Hey,’ says Teddy, instantly attentive. ‘What’s wrong? Do you need some air?’ He looks over to Dr Alleyn. ‘She’s kind of pale – do you want to lie down?’
‘I need to go home . . .’ she mumbles.
With some reluctance, Dr Alleyn pushes back his chair.
‘It is a little warm in here.’ He reaches out for her wrist, tries to feel her pulse. Rachel tugs her hand away.
‘I need to go home. Lucas, I have to go now.’ She stands, leaning against the table so that glasses wobble. Lucas stands too. ‘Please. I’ll wave down a car . . .’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Lucas, aware of everyone watching. ‘I’m sorry. We’d better go. I’ll come back later if I can.’ His dismay increases as murmurs of ‘no, stay with Rachel’ pass around the table. Teddy and Vee see them to the door.
‘Call us!’ they urge, as Lucas follows Rachel down the stairs. But Rachel has already forgotten the party.
Her baby. She needs to save him. She needs to reach page twenty-seven before it is too late.
* * *
The tropical rain fell in great drenching sheets. All the way back to Staronavodnitska Street, Rachel mutters under her breath, sentence after sentence, line after line: see the words, count the words, miss nothing. She pays no attention to the driver who is staring in his mirror or her husband, who keeps asking her what’s wrong. When they arrive at the car park she scrambles out before the car has stopped moving and Lucas is still fumbling for the fare. Inside the building the light shows the lift is stuck on the sixteenth floor, but Rachel is already running up the stairs, gasping for breath, lungs breaking, counting and counting, don’t miss, don’t repeat, page twenty-five, three hundred and twenty, page twenty-six, two hundred and ninety-two. Her legs are stronger than she knows, yet weaker than she needs; they crumble on the last flight so that she half crawls, half drags herself to the landing on the thirteenth floor.
The key is in her pocket. She fumbles and almost drops it. Finish page twenty-seven. Finish it. Elena opened the door . . . the lizards crouched like gargoyles . . . the child must be dead . . .
As she enters the apartment Rachel bites her tongue until her mouth tastes of blood. She must be quiet now, so quiet, for the living room door is gaping wide and all the lights are on. The breeze is cool on her face and she knows the balcony door is open on the other side of the net curtain. A figure is out there, diffuse, indistinct against the darkness of the night. Rachel must slow her own heart and the high-pitched ringing in her ear and not raise the alarm. Like a ghost she moves across the floor of the living room. She hears the old woman murmuring to herself, sees her stoop down. A squeaking noise, something scraping on the lino – what is she doing . . .
On the threshold of the balcony, poking through the net curtain, a face appears – a plastic, gurning face from a TV cartoon, rolling on wheels. Rachel stares, first in horror, then bewilderment as an old, arthritic hand pulls the curtain aside. Ivan, her baby, is standing in the doorway, gripping the handle of the Donald Duck baby walker Rachel bought at the universam all those months before. Elena is bending over him, ready to catch him should he fall.
‘Privyet!’ says the old woman, looking up, and then her face falls and her hands shield the child’s mouth and eyes, because Rachel is leaning over, retching and retching, all the sickness pouring out onto the living room floor, spattering across the shiny parquet along with little spots of caviar, pale fizz and some half-digested perch.
Chapter 23
Things happen, dreams Rachel. You say, it was like this, and so it becomes that way. You think something, and then it gets stuck if you don’t blink it away. But the stories you tell yourself, they are not fixed, they can be unmade. Anything might happen, or not, or maybe. Not knowing is something you fall into and falling makes you weightless. It doesn’t hurt – not much. Sometimes when you fall the wind lifts you up like a puff of white dandelion seed and then you are clean again, and new.
The ringing has stopped. There is silence, then there is noise, but nothing is constant. Squeaking from the ceiling, a baby crying, a balcony door opening – these things start, they stop and they start again. Elena is there, bringing peppermint tea. Ivan, her child – she can hear he is near.
Rachel tries to sit up. There is someone she must speak to. The man with the black hat made from unborn baby lambs – where is he?
* * *
Rachel is sick for three days. Her fever is high, her body is wrung out, yet still she leans over the side of the bed and retches into a bowl.
‘Food poisoning,’ says Dr Alleyn, who pops over to the flat on the second day. ‘Not the worst, but bad enough. Call this number if she’s not better by Wednesday.’ He tells Lucas his wife needs a holiday back home and a visit to her GP when she is up on her feet. He leaves his card, together with some sachets of Dioralyte.
‘Must have been some ropey perch,’ murmurs Lucas, from somewhere near the window.
Rachel is too weak to tell him it wasn’t the fish.
* * *
‘Hey,’ says Lucas. He lowers himself onto the edge of the bed near Rachel’s feet. ‘You’re looking better.’
Rachel nods, carefully. It has just taken all her strength to shuffle to the bathroom and back again. ‘I feel empty,’ she says, and it’s true, she is empty – her milk is all gone. She hasn’t nursed Ivan for three days, and now there’s nothing left. Lucas shows her the powdered formula he bought from the pharmacy in Lipki – some American brand she’s never heard of, but the date on the base of the tin is still good and Lucas says he read the instructions, boiled the water for ages, and even found the sterilising tablets Rachel kept beneath the sink.
‘He didn’t like it at first,’ Lucas tells her. ‘But he hasn’t been sick and now he slurps it up from his beaker like a pro.’
Rachel rests her head back against the pillow. Ivan is sitting on the floor by Lucas’s feet, brandishing a rope of cotton reels that Elena has made for him. Her hand reaches through the space until she touches the top of his head. This isn’t how she wanted to wean her son. In truth she hadn’t known how she would do it and the loss leaves a physical ache, as if a piece of string is knotted beneath her sternum and someone is tugging, but it keeps catching between her ribs. Ivan is separate from her now; yet, unexpectedly, the ache of separation is tempered by relief. He survived out on the balcony even though she wasn’t there. If she died now he would live.
‘Where is Elena?’ she asks.
‘Elena? No idea. She was here earlier, though. I know you weren’t sure about leaving her with Ivan, but she’s been a godsend while you’ve been ill. She’s taken the washing away, taken him for walks. Don’t worry – I’ve told her not to take him out on the balcony.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Rachel. ‘I don’t mind.’
Lucas is taken aback. ‘Really? I thought it would upset you!’ He doesn’t know about Mykola’s warning, or the gravity-invoking weight of her own fear and none of this matters to Rachel any more, because Elena has taken her baby out to the edge and proved them all wrong.
‘Look,’ continues Lucas. ‘I’ve been thinking. I said some stupid stuff before you got ill, and I’m sorry. I really am. But you do need to go back to England for a couple of weeks – nothing more, I swear – just a bit of time for a rest and some food that won’t poison you.’ He takes her hand. She doesn’t pull away. ‘Zoya’s been useless – I think a relative died and I’ve got behind with work.
Not your fault, obviously. So I’ve booked you a ticket. For next week.’
Rachel blinks quickly, her old habit, the one she has always used to push away difficult thoughts.
‘Anyway,’ continues Lucas, ‘when you come back my story will be finished and we can take a holiday together, maybe down to Crimea like I promised at Christmas. I could get a feature out of it – make it pay for itself.’
‘I suppose.’ So many other things are stretching, twisting, re-forming into a way of thinking that is as yet unclear. For the first time in months Rachel peers out at a pressing, insistent future. England, and the fact of its continuing existence, is beginning to reassemble itself.
Chapter 24
On the morning of Rachel’s departure she wakes early and stands in the kitchen in her bare feet. The sun is already high above the river. She can feel its warmth on her face as she sips her tea. Her suitcases are packed. Ivan’s changing bag is ready. The cupboard is full of dried pasta and tinned tomatoes so that Lucas won’t starve. Soon she will wake Ivan, give him his morning milk and dress him for the journey, but she won’t move until she hears Lucas pull the light switch in the bathroom. Her own stillness calms her. In a few hours she will be in England, knocking on her mother’s door. She hasn’t told her mother she is coming. Neither has she mentioned this fact to Lucas. Baby steps, she thinks. First one foot, then the other.
Lucas, however, doesn’t go into the bathroom. Instead he steps in behind her and stands just an inch or two away. She can feel his bed heat between them. She can smell his morning breath. He can’t take her to the airport, he tells her. Lukyanenko has called a breakfast press conference. Lucas wasn’t given any warning; he has to go. He is sorry, but this is big. Soon he is dressed and gone, leaving only an awkward kiss next to her ear and a plea that she will call the office number from Heathrow when she lands.
Rachel watches from the window as he strides across the car park. Soon he is a tiny figure like the other tiny figures moving across the road, milling at the tram stop, combining and separating, impelled by some law of mutual proximity. She stows her copy of Jurassic Park in the bottom of Ivan’s changing bag and waits for Zoya.
* * *
When Zoya arrives, Rachel tells her how sorry she is to hear about her bereavement.
Zoya is wearing a green shirt today, tucked into the high waist of her jeans. She looks different – the outfit is more casual than her usual skirt and boots as if she was dressed for a stroll in the park.
‘My grandfather was old,’ she says, with a quick shake of her head. ‘Dying was all he had left.’ She spots Rachel’s suitcase. ‘Let’s go. You have your passport, your ticket, money?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Rachel clips Ivan into his pushchair and loops the changing bag over the handles. When she closes the front door behind them and rattles it to make sure it is locked a shiver passes through her, a sense of severance, as if the time she has spent here is shaking itself out. She will be back in two weeks, she tells herself. Nothing will have changed.
Downstairs in the foyer Elena is waiting to say goodbye. She bends forward to give Ivan a kiss and a squeeze. When she straightens up she is smiling, but her eyes are watery with tears. Zoya speaks to her quickly in Ukrainian and Elena bows her head.
‘What did you say to her?’ asks Rachel, as they exit through the door.
‘I told her to stay out of your flat.’
‘What?’ Rachel looks back at Elena, who is already retreating up the stairs.
Zoya sighs. ‘Your flat. She has a key. Lucas gave her one while you were ill.’
Rachel thinks about this for a moment. ‘I don’t mind if she lets herself in for a bit,’ she says. ‘Lucas wouldn’t like it, but he gave her the key. Imagine – he comes home, and Elena is sitting on the sofa watching Simplemente Maria!’ She starts laughing, surprising herself, while Zoya rolls her eyes to hide her smile.
* * *
Rachel’s mood changes as they drive out of the city. She sits on the back seat of the car with Ivan on her knee and winds down the window. Zoya glances in her mirror and tuts, but Rachel takes no notice. The day is calm and warm, with a high blue sky. The smells of scythed grass and tar compete with the exhaust fumes as they drive along the boulevards. The trees are in full leaf now and the sun is glancing off the empty windows of the shops announcing Khleb or Kneegi or Myaso, so that people walking past in the shade look blurry, like the figures in Victorian photographs who moved while the plate was exposed. Everything in Kiev is alien to Rachel – the cars, the people, the noises, the language, the smells – yet it feels more real to her than anywhere else.
‘I don’t want to go back to England,’ she says softly, to the back of Zoya’s head.
Zoya studies her in the rear view mirror.
‘Then don’t go.’
The wind is blowing Rachel’s hair across her face. She pushes it away. ‘What are you doing today? I mean, after you’ve dropped me at the airport. Are you going to the office?’
‘No.’
Rachel is used to Zoya’s curtness. She adjusts her son’s legs – he is falling asleep and she tries to make him comfortable. However, just as she resigns herself to silence, Zoya takes one hand off the wheel and winds down her own window a little way.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she says, ‘I am going to my grandfather’s place in the country.’
‘Oh.’ Rachel tries to imagine Zoya in the woods; she struggles to picture her anywhere but the city. ‘Do you grow things there? Can I come with you?’
Zoya snorts. ‘I have things I must do. You have a plane to catch.’
‘Well, you said, “Then don’t go,” and I don’t want to.’ Rachel leans forward, gripped by the possibility that she might be allowed to change her mind. ‘We could go back and fetch Elena. She’d love a day in the country – she must be missing her little house in Tsarskoye Selo!’
Zoya says nothing for a while. She drives around a pot hole, then pulls over beneath a hoarding and eases up the handbrake.
‘You don’t belong here,’ she murmurs, not unkindly.
‘You may be right,’ says Rachel, as a flush burns across her cheeks. ‘But you aren’t the one who decides.’
* * *
The little Zhiguli sways and bumps along the track around the edge of an untended field and on into the straggle of birch wood, where the light flickers through the leaves and the air smells of moss and something vaguely medicinal. Elena sits beside Zoya in the front, while Rachel remains in the back with Ivan dozing in her lap and Stepan beside her. No one says very much. Perhaps, thinks Rachel, they are as surprised as she to find themselves here together on a jaunt to the country. Once again, Elena almost cried when they drove back to fetch her, and Stepan – well, he was loitering by her door and Elena said he must come too, despite Rachel’s head-shaking and his insistence on going back upstairs to fetch his anorak. Zoya stopped at a roadside kiosk a few miles out of Kiev to buy a picnic of kvas, rye bread and sausage, but otherwise they’ve come as they are. Elena is wearing a heavy cardigan around her shoulders, Stepan a blue tee shirt and his skimpy footballer shorts. He has bunched up his anorak to make a pillow. His narrow thighs jut outwards so that Rachel must point her knees towards the door. He has grown in the past few months; his shoulders seem more angular. There is new hair on his lip.
‘Are we nearly there?’ Rachel asks, breaking the silence. Her words echo memories of childhood trips to the seaside, never knowing whether the blue-grey plate of the English Channel lay just beyond the next hill or whether, in fact, she would never arrive, lost in the chasm between home and away. It mattered to her, as a child. It still does.
Zoya doesn’t answer – no surprise there. As Rachel looks about her, the track widens and the spindly trees thin out. A wooden dacha comes into view. It has pretty carved shutters, but they don’t stop beside it; neither do they stop at the others t
hat follow, all in varying states of upkeep, all with panelled fences and low, drooping roofs. The place seems deserted, despite a couple of rusting Tavrias parked up along the roadside and the crowing of a cockerel in someone’s backyard.
Just as the little settlement begins to peter out, Zoya slows to a halt and turns off the engine. She says something to Elena, then opens the door and steps on to the verge.
‘There are ticks,’ she says, eyeing Rachel through the open window. ‘It is good you are wearing trousers. Push the legs inside your socks.’
‘What about Ivan?’ asks Rachel. ‘And Stepan? They’ve both got bare legs!’
Zoya is tying a scarf around her head. It makes her look like a woman in a Soviet propaganda poster – a factory worker or a peasant. ‘You will see if something crawls on to your son,’ she says.
‘I burn them so they pik, pik!’ adds Stepan, flicking his fingers.
‘I will take tweezers and pull them out,’ warns Zoya.
Rachel tries to open her door without waking Ivan. ‘Where is the house? Is it far?’
Zoya sighs. ‘If you get out of the car, I will show you.’
* * *
Rachel sits Ivan on her hip and picks her way along an overgrown footpath. Stepan follows behind with the bottles of cloudy kvas while Zoya walks ahead with Elena, who treads carefully, shuffling along in her outdoor shoes and nursing the newspaper-wrapped sausage. After a few minutes they leave the line of trees behind and descend into a valley. A tin roof protrudes beyond some reeds, and now Rachel can see that the house is not a house at all. There are no shutters, there is no veranda, no mansarded roof, no quaint fretwork. To Rachel it is a shed: a single room dwelling raised on concrete blocks. Its windows are made from thick plastic sheets and the metal door has clearly been salvaged from somewhere, cut and welded to fit. There is no sign of a toilet, no plumbing, not even a pump.
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