* * *
When Rachel was ten, her parents took her to Poppit Sands, at the mouth of the Teifi Estuary. Not for a holiday or anything – just a picnic and a swim. Her mother packed Shippam’s beef paste sandwiches and a thermos of tea, both of which she stowed in a string bag along with Rachel’s vest and knickers rolled up in an old bath towel. Rachel’s father drove; it wasn’t sunny, exactly, but watery shafts of light pointed down towards the bay like God’s fingers and the beach swept round in a picture postcard curve, so that was all right.
The nearer you got to the water, the greyer it became. Rachel faced the sand dunes and inched in to the sea backwards. The wind whipped up the spray and she screamed when a wave crashed without warning across her shoulders. She could see her mother, sitting on Rachel’s coat, watching her, lips pursed against the salt. Her father was busy in the hollows behind. She could only make out his top half, but she knew he was wriggling into his trunks in that special way beneath the towel.
Rachel’s father dived clumsily through the surf. He wanted to teach her backstroke, but his touch was unfamiliar and she didn’t like the way the waves broke over her face, so after a few minutes he left her to jump through the waves on her own. The water lifted her, pounded her, pushed her off her feet. She stayed in the sea for longer than was good for her. Her legs became numb. Her fingers turned blue. At lunchtime she ate her sandwich with chattering teeth.
Later, while her mother thumbed through her copy of Good Housekeeping and batted away the sandhoppers, Rachel followed her father up into the dunes. He hadn’t changed out of his swimming trunks and he wore an aertex shirt that barely covered his thin haunches. His collar flopped open and his wet hair flopped down, which made him look different, like someone else’s dad. He seemed different, too. He pointed and named things, he squatted and peered. She tried not to think about the bald patches on the bulge of his white calves and instead placed her feet in the hollows and landslides left by his salt-marked sandals.
Then, in a muffled incline, downwind of the beach, Rachel’s father turned and said, ‘Let’s make a fire.’ When he stooped to pick up a curved rib of driftwood and produced a box of matches from his breast pocket, she felt a tingle low down in her stomach. The smoke made her cough, the crackle of the dried marram grass made her jump but soon she was running about, searching for anything that would burn and feed the flames.
When Rachel’s mother discovered them she put an end to the nascent conspiracy. Rachel was marched to a public toilet to shake the sand out of her knickers while her father kicked over the embers and jangled his keys. In the car park her feet were checked for tar. They didn’t stop for ice creams; the traffic into Cardigan was already building.
All the way home, Rachel leaned her forehead against the window to cool her burning skin. She remembered the way her father lay down in the sand, frowning with concentration as he cupped his hands, then smiling at her as the fire took hold, his body shielding it from the wind’s worst excesses. She remembered the way the flames licked and leaned, and she tried not to blink.
Six months later, Rachel’s father was gone. This didn’t surprise her. At Poppit Sands she’d learned that people could be more than one thing.
* * *
On their last morning in Yalta, while Rachel and Lucas are eating breakfast in the sanatorium’s cavernous circular restaurant, Lucas is asked to take a call at the central reception desk.
It is Zoya.
‘Elena is dead,’ she says down the crackling, popping line. ‘Please tell Rachel. This morning. Stepan found her.’
‘Christ,’ says Lucas. Then, ‘What happened?’ He readjusts his voice, aware that the young woman behind the desk is listening. He thinks Zoya might have waited until they got back to Kiev.
‘A leak of some type in the apartment building. Down in the basement.’
‘Was it gas?’
‘It would seem so. The police have been there.’
‘Christ.’
‘Please tell Rachel. She will want to know.’
‘Sure – leave it with me.’
It is only when Lucas has replaced the receiver that he thinks of all the things he should have said, like how sorry he is, and will the apartment block be safe, and who the hell is Stepan.
* * *
‘That was Zoya,’ says Lucas, when he rejoins Rachel at their table. ‘Some bad news, I’m afraid.’ He frowns, unsure how his wife will react. ‘The old dezhornaya – Elena – has died.’
Rachel turns her head and looks out of the window, down past the tops of the ornamental yuccas and the oleander bushes of the formal courtyard gardens to the white marble paving below.
‘Rachel?’
‘How did it happen?’ She turns her head back to her husband, her thoughts separating, re-grouping. ‘Where was she found?’
‘Basement,’ says Lucas. ‘Do you think she did it herself? Someone called Stepan discovered her.’ He checks his watch. ‘It’s shocking news – I’m sorry. I know you’d become fond of her. Did she have any relatives?’
‘I don’t know,’ replies Rachel, her voice far off, like an echo. Then she changes her mind. ‘I heard she had a baby, but she lost it.’
* * *
When Rachel and Lucas return to Staronavodnitska Street there is nothing to show that a death has occurred. The basement door is shut, as is the door to the flat where Elena had been staying. All that time, thinks Rachel, she’d been so fearful of a fall or a push or a chance letting go from the balcony on the thirteenth floor until Elena had shown her how foolish she’d been. Perhaps Elena had always known the threat came from somewhere else.
She doesn’t find the package until the evening, as she puts Ivan to bed. It is tucked in the drawer between the nappies – a brown padded Jiffy bag, addressed to her in her mother’s insistent scrawl. When she looks inside she finds a circular pot of face cream. The silver lid gleams as she takes it out. Her mother has sent her a jar of Visibly Different. She sits down on the bed, rubs her thumb across the raised EA for Elizabeth Arden, then twists off the lid. It has been opened already; the surface bears the mark of someone else’s finger, but it doesn’t matter. The scent of her mother’s skin rises until once again Rachel is a nine-year-old girl, standing in the bathroom doorway of the bungalow, watching her mother dab small dots along her cheekbones, pulling at the slack folds beneath her jawline, her lips drawn tight to keep the cream out of her mouth, those fierce eyes in the mirror, angry with ageing, with her daughter, with herself.
Rachel puts the jar down and studies the package’s postmark – the fifth of December. Her mother sent it in time for Christmas. There is no card to accompany the gift, nothing for Ivan or Lucas. While the three of them have been in Yalta it has arrived here amongst the nappies.
‘Only for grown-ups,’ Rachel’s mother had scolded her.
Elena had a key. Lucas gave her a spare when Rachel was ill.
Truth flashes and shimmers like a fish in the reeds. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you may grasp it.
* * *
‘Mum,’ says Rachel, when her mother answers the telephone.
‘Rachel – is that you?’
Rachel catches the notes of an advert’s upbeat jingle before her mother turns off the television. ‘Yes Mum. It’s Rachel. I’m coming home. On the third of September.’
‘I see. You are sure, this time.’ A pause. ‘I’ll have to make up the spare room . . .’ Her mother’s voice wavers with questions.
‘I got the face cream, Mum. It was delayed – in the post. But I’ve got it now.’
The line pops softly like a bronchial chest.
‘Well, it was meant for Christmas. The cold weather never did your skin any favours.’
‘Thanks Mum.’ Rachel, pressing the receiver to her ear, waits, and at last she hears the sigh that is not an ending, though it is a release.
/> ‘I’ll make the bed up. And the cot – it’s still up in the attic. For Ivan. We can put him in your old cot.’
* * *
The next day Rachel carries Ivan downstairs on her hip and goes outside in search of Stepan. She can’t find him at first, but eventually she spots him squatting in the long grass near the fence by the military academy. He is red-eyed, still dressed in the football shorts and grubby plastic flip flops he’d been wearing the last time she saw him. He doesn’t move when she approaches.
‘You found Elena in the basement,’ she says, at a loss for a better way to begin.
Stepan looks down. He is scratching in the dirt with his finger.
‘That must have been awful for you,’ she adds.
Silence.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Ivan wriggles in Rachel’s arms. She sets him down, feet on the ground and grips his hand to keep him steady. ‘Stepan?’
Now she sees that Stepan’s shoulders are heaving. He makes a high-pitched sound through clenched lips; he buries his head between his knees and his child-sized t-shirt rides up to reveal an inflamed patch of eczema across his ribs. His distress is so pitiful, so raw, that for the first time she aches to put her arms around him, this troubled youth who has no one to comfort him.
‘Where is your – uncle?’ she asks. ‘That man you live with?’ She reaches forward and rests her free hand lightly on his wrist.
‘Not uncle,’ he mutters, pulling back his arm and wiping the snot from his nostrils. ‘You not my mum. Go leave. I don’t know why Mykola think you special.’
‘What?’ Rachel has been worrying about how to raise the subject of Mykola. She isn’t expecting Stepan to do it first.
Stepan makes a strange sound like a hiccup or a bark. ‘Elena, she give me money, then Mykola, he give me more. But I tell you, Elena is better.’ He rocks backwards, then knocks his head against his knees. ‘She say you not special.’
Rachel squats down, still holding Ivan’s hand. Stepan’s words are muffled, difficult to hear, though she feels them like a stone thrown at her face. All the same, she knows what she must ask.
‘Stepan, tell me, does Mykola know Elena has died? Was he there when it happened? I think he’s got something to do with it. You heard them that day in the car . . .’
‘You not my mum. Go your mum. Go away.’
Ivan, sensing an opportunity, lurches towards the boy, who has curled up like a woodlouse. There is dog mess everywhere, so Rachel reaches forward and scoops him onto her knee. Ivan arches his back, not wanting to be held. Rachel must rise to her feet if she is to keep her balance. She wills Stepan to look at her, but he won’t move his head because there is a river between them, one she has never attempted to cross until now, when it is too late. After a minute of standing there with her son amongst the ragweed she retreats across the waste ground and returns to the apartment.
When she peers out of the kitchen window she thinks she can see him: a dot by the chain-link fence.
Half an hour later he is gone.
* * *
‘You have been sitting in the sun,’ says Zoya, scrutinising Rachel across the little table in the café along Lesi Ukrainky where they meet. ‘You should wear a hat, like Ivan. You will have brown spots. Skin cancer.’
Rachel rubs her nose and fishes the camomile teabag out of her waxed paper cup. Ivan is sitting on her lap testing his teeth on the cap of the plastic bottle of mineral water he is clutching. She called Zoya to see her one last time on her own – to say goodbye – but as always there is so much that remains unspoken.
‘I like your sunglasses,’ she says. ‘Very Marilyn Monroe.’
Zoya, poker-faced, touches the shades perched on top of her head. ‘So, will you stay with Lucas, or divorce? I think you will divorce.’
‘Zoya!’ Rachel tries to sound outraged, but what comes out is an uneasy laugh. ‘Don’t you ever hold back? Bite your tongue?’
‘Often,’ says Zoya. ‘More than you know.’
Rachel sips her tea. It tastes of sticks. ‘Well, you don’t know everything. I can’t think about the future in Kiev. I need to go home, let things settle. Then we will see.’
Zoya snorts. ‘Oh yes. You will see. Already you know what you will see.’
‘He needs me, I think. He wants to make plans. I never expected—’
‘He needs you to know when to go.’
Rachel wonders if anyone else in the café can hear them. She glances around, but the café is nearly empty apart from a young woman sitting by herself at a table near the door, her arms folded, legs crossed, one foot pushing against the base of the table as if she has been waiting just a little too long. Rachel lowers her voice. ‘Well, I didn’t come to talk about Lucas and me. I want to ask you something. Will you keep an eye on Stepan? Look out for him, I mean.’
Now Zoya leans back and stares out of the window. ‘That boy? He knows how to look out for himself, don’t you think?’
Rachel follows her gaze, half expecting to see Stepan’s face pressed against the glass, peering in from the pavement. Instead she sees a kvas truck with one wheel stuck in a pothole. It is blocking a lorry that is trying to turn left across the boulevard. A horn blares but the kvas truck won’t shift. Cars are backing up.
‘Elena really cared about him,’ she says. ‘And he cared about her. He’s just a child. He needs someone to protect him. I should have helped—’
‘So!’ Zoya taps her packet of cigarettes on the table for emphasis. ‘You feel guilty. Well, I don’t. Stepan betrayed Elena. He will do anything for five dollars, or ten. He spied for Mykola Sirko, and,’ she barely hesitates, ‘I will tell you something now – something you need to know. Mykola was telling a lie when he told us what Elena had done – a very big lie. She was not a mother when the Germans invaded. But later she did have a son – Oleksandr – born in 1952. She couldn’t keep him – the father was a local Party boss who caused a problem for the high-ups in Moscow. Well, he was removed. Shot on the street one day not far from here. Probably Elena thought she would be next. Her family did not survive the famine and she had no one else. So Oleksandr grew up in a home for children whose parents are dead.’
‘An orphanage.’ Rachel, as if nodding might help her absorb what she is hearing.
‘An orphanage, yes – across the river. They gave him a new name.’
‘Mykola Sirko . . .’
‘And when he was a young man Mykola traced his mother. He must have paid a bribe for the information or blackmailed an official, but he never told her who he was. Instead he taunted her. He left cruel messages and rented empty flats for his businesses right under her nose. Then you moved in to the apartment block. Well, Elena did not know what he was saying when he stopped us in the car, but I think he told you that lie to make you hate her.
‘She didn’t guess who he was?’
‘I don’t think so. He was registered at the orphanage when he was six weeks old.’
‘That’s terrible.’ Rachel whispers the words. ‘Do – do you think she killed herself?’
Zoya shrugs.
Rachel presses her free hand across her eyes, shutting off the tears that are forming beneath her lids. Elena’s child did not die in those Nazi murder pits on the edge of the city. Mykola’s lie had been unspeakably cruel.
‘How did you find out?’
‘Elena told me she had a child,’ says Zoya. ‘One afternoon while we were folding sheets. I think the burden was too much. So I started looking. It was difficult, but I know who to ask. And this man was following her. I made the connection that Elena could not. He left horrible things on her doorstep. He tied dogs together to make them bark all night, or paid Stepan to do it for him.’
‘Stepan?’
‘Stop repeating. Yes, Stepan. He does anything for money. He is spy!’ Zoya makes a sour face. ‘Well, I have Elena’
s rent money, she left it in a box under her bed, five thousand dollars, and you know what I am going to do with it? I am going to buy a lawyer who will dig up the crimes that Mykola Sirko has done. He does not deserve your pity, you understand?’
‘Shh, Zoya, please . . .’ Rachel sees a baby in her mind’s eye, falling, falling. Maybe it is Mykola, or maybe another. She blinks. ‘It is Stepan I wanted to talk to you about. Look after him. Elena loved him, like a grandson. We can’t abandon him.’
Now there is a glint of triumph in Zoya’s eye. ‘But you can – you are disappearing! Poor little Snegurochka!’
Rachel’s heart is thumping. She fights back the urge to count the cars, count the passers-by. In three days she will be on a plane. In four days she will visit her own mother, still the same daughter, now with different knowledge inside her. She takes a breath. ‘Sometimes you say I have no business being here; then you say I am wrong to leave. Well, I didn’t ask for things to happen, but there are consequences, they pile up even when I do nothing. And if I ask for your help, that’s something, isn’t it? It’s not everything. I am leaving. But it’s something.’
Zoya turns her head and looks out of the window. She is frowning, as usual, and in the glare of sunlight Rachel sees a woman who might be thirty, or fifty, with dark roots showing through her bleached yellow hair.
‘I won’t give him Elena’s money,’ says Zoya.
‘That’s not what I meant—’
‘So you might as well know. Stepan is already sleeping at my flat. In my grandfather’s bed.’ Zoya covers her mouth with her hand, but her glistening eyes betray her. ‘The little rat tells me it smells of piss. Ha! I tell him it is better than the other.’
Chapter 27
The day before Lucas and Rachel are due to leave Kiev, Rachel goes for a walk. It is the first day of September, a Sunday. The summer has been hot and dry since the early rain in June; already the horse chestnut leaves are starting to curl at the edges. There is a tang in the air, almost acidic – a whisper of coolness. Ivan doesn’t want to be in the pushchair, but it is after lunch and he will sleep soon – precious time she ought to use for packing. She isn’t ready to leave, though. Not until she has taken one last stroll. The pavements and footpaths are woven through her now, their circuitous routes bound to her nerve-endings.
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