Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan (best ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📕

pencils. She was too scared to phone the children’s parents because they were sixty miles away and a call would have repercussions that she didn’t want to contemplate. She would have to manage on her own.

She sat down on the floor, leaned her head against the door and made a loud sobbing sound. It wasn’t difficult; she was close to tears anyway. After some minutes, Alice turned the key. She opened the door and stared down at Rachel.

‘Why are you crying?’ she asked.

Rachel took the key and placed it on top of the fridge in the kitchen. When morning came, the father drove her home in silence. She was never asked to babysit at the old rectory again.

* * *

Zoya drops Lucas at the office and returns Rachel and Ivan to Staronavodnitska Street. All the way up Lesi Ukrainky, Rachel leans against the window and mutters syllables under her breath. Kee-nee-gee, ree-nok, kee-no-tay-ah-ter, sok-ee . . .

Back at the flats, the sky has darkened like a child’s charcoal smudge. Rachel walks quickly up the steps with Ivan in her arms, willing herself not to look up towards the blank windows and the balconies. Inside, the foyer is gloomy; she can’t see if the caretaker is sitting in her cubicle, though she feels the old woman’s judgement upon her: her contempt for Rachel’s presence and her baby’s foul detritus.

As Rachel passes the pock-marked metal mail boxes she smells burning paper.

‘Adeen, dva, tree, chityrie, pyat,’ she counts as she waits for the lift.

Later, when Ivan is asleep, Rachel pulls the empty After Eights box out of the bin in the kitchen, sits down at the table and opens the lid. She removes the corrugated lining and stares at the dark waxy sleeves, lined up like gills, still smelling faintly of peppermint.

She plucks out one of the sleeves, rubs it between her fingers, then, gently, squeezes its sides. The opening gapes a little. She wants to put something inside.

Slowly, frowning, she picks up a biro and writes some words on a scrap of squared paper.

The tropical rain fell in great drenching sheets.

She knows these words. She read them in the book that Lucas lost. She puts down the biro and folds the piece of paper three times, scoring the edges with her thumbnail. Then she slots it into the little sleeve and tucks it between the others. There.

The note is well hidden, but all the same it bothers her. After a few minutes she picks up the box and carries it into the hallway. Out on the shared landing, she shivers. Her reflection looms in the window by the rubbish chute. The iron handle is cold to touch and even before she pulls it towards her she can smell the sweet stench of rotting vegetables and the soiled nappies she threw away earlier. As the dark interior gapes, a rush of cold air blows up from below. The chute door clangs and she frowns as her deposit tumbles all the way down to the bin at ground level, to the caretaker who will no doubt finger it in the morning, sniff its strangeness, then toss it on the little fire she tends beside the cracked concrete path.

Back inside the flat, pipes grunt and cough. Girders stretch and creak and the squeaking, rolling sound like trolley wheels has started up again. Ivan murmurs in his cot, awake and round-eyed, but as Rachel bends to pick him up she sees her hands letting go of the After Eights box. This is what they do, she thinks. They let go. And because she must protect her child she carries him to the kitchen instead of the living room, then pulls up a chair and stares through the darkness down to Staronavodnitska Street where a shrieking, sparking tram makes its way towards the river and tail lights wink between the trees of Tsarskoye Selo. Across the valley, up on the hilltop, the floodlit steel bulk of the Motherland statue raises its sword to the heavens. Yes, thinks Rachel as she lifts her shirt and grits her teeth when her son’s gums clamp on: that statue is another hollow thing in this black night.

* * *

‘Dyed, kak tyi?’

Zoya’s voice carries across the tiny hall and into the dimness beyond. Her grandfather doesn’t answer. No one answers. For the past seventeen years it’s been Zoya’s name on the papers for this left bank apartment across the river on the outer edges of the industrial zone in Darnytsia, yet even now she cannot enter without calling out, as if asking for permission. She closes the door behind her and sniffs the sharp scent of the blackberry leaf tea her neighbour brews to disguise the smell of urine. As she unzips her boots by the coat stand and removes and hangs up her skirt, she considers making a cup for herself, but instead pushes open the door to her left. Beyond is the flat’s only room, apart from the cramped cubby holes that serve as kitchen and bathroom. There is no sound from the bed that takes up most of the floor space, although the dull glow from the fringed lamp on the table shows a figure lying motionless beneath the covers.

‘I’m home, Grandpa,’ she says. ‘I’ll just wash my hands.’

In the bathroom, Zoya switches on the light and counts the sheets bunched up on the cracked tiles by the toilet. Two. It used to bother her that Tanya, her neighbour, wouldn’t rinse them out. Now she doesn’t think about it. Tanya might drink her tea and forage in her drawers, but without the woman’s daily appearances Zoya wouldn’t be able to go to work at all. She unhooks the shower head and turns on the tap. Water trickles out; at least it is warm this evening. She breathes in the chemical smell of the soap powder and stands there in her nylon slip, eyes closed, water pattering on the sheets as if they are a row of blackcurrant bushes outside a rural back door.

When the sheets