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

is being beaten by the man. Some days he hears her crying and, once, a muffled scream.

Mykola will want to know. Mykola wants to know everything.

Chapter 6

Restoran Amadeus doesn’t have a sign – not one that Rachel can see. She steps back across the pavement of the little side street that runs northwest from Khreschatyk and stares up at the stone facade. It looks like all the other downtown apartment buildings in the darkness: everything a little larger than it needs to be with its chunky corner blocks, chiselled grooves and deep, frowning doorways. Like the sets from Batman, she thinks: the mocked-up Gotham of a Saturday night TV show, except this stone is solid, and cold.

‘The new restaurants like a bit of mystery. Gives them an air of exclusivity,’ says Lucas, flicking away his cigarette and pointing down some narrow steps. Rachel leans forward and sees a blue neon treble clef glowing above what must be the entrance. She wants to get Ivan into the warmth. Her husband grasps the front of the pushchair while she grips the handles. The temperature has dropped to minus two or three and a feathering of hoar frost makes the steps dangerously slippery. She is concentrating so hard on conveying her son to safety that she doesn’t see the figure loitering at the bottom until Lucas backs into him.

A short burst of Russian ensues, with some protest from Lucas, who can’t set the pushchair down while the man, hands in the pockets of his bulging leather jacket, bars the way.

‘For crying out loud. He says we can’t take the buggy inside!’

Rachel hauls the pushchair back up the steps. She has already half-imagined a scene of some kind. When she was changing her clothes in the bedroom, tugging her pre-pregnancy silk shell top over her head, adding her blue lambswool cardigan with its slight pilling under her breasts and digging out a pair of dangly earrings that she hadn’t worn since the night she left her job with the travel publisher, it was easy to believe she would never pass muster. Anyway, she knows Ukrainians don’t like mothers. She’s witnessed it herself dozens of times – the stares, the refusal to make way, the casual acceleration of approaching cars when she crosses the road with her son. The men are as bad as the old women. It’s no wonder the population is in freefall.

‘He says the baby is okay, but not the buggy,’ translates Lucas, clouds of breath rising from the stairwell as he huffs his exasperation. ‘How does he think that’s going to work? Fucking ridiculous.’

‘I’m not leaving it outside,’ says Rachel.

‘Absolutely not,’ says a low, lilting voice. Rachel turns to see Suzie looking down into the darkness. ‘It’s all right,’ continues Suzie. ‘Rob will sort it.’

As she speaks, a stocky, square-headed man in a black padded jacket moves past her. At the bottom of the steps he murmurs quietly to the doorman. Nothing concrete is exchanged. Just words. Then they are all waved inside as though the problem has never existed.

‘Nicely done,’ says Lucas, as the four of them introduce themselves in the narrow foyer. The men shake hands. ‘You’ve been here before?’

Rob smiles as he helps Rachel and Suzie off with their coats. He has disconcertingly round blue eyes, freshly barbered hair and thick, short arms. ‘BBC, eh?’ he says, so that Lucas and Rachel both know this is his night and he is in charge of everything that may or may not unfold.

Ten minutes later, the four of them plus Vee, who has persuaded Lucas to invite her, are seated at a central table next to a brick pillar. Rachel had asked Rob if she could tuck Ivan and his pushchair somewhere unobtrusive, but Ivan was having none of it and started crying, so now he is propped up in her lap.

‘Where’s Teddy tonight?’ Lucas asks.

‘Oh, Teddy,’ says Vee, with her faux-mournful, teasing voice. ‘Doing his thing, night-stalking, looking for sleaze . . .’

Rob laughs. ‘I hope he can afford it.’

‘You should see him!’ exclaims Vee. ‘He never pays.’

The restaurant is stuffy, overheated, and the tablecloths are an unappealing shade of brown. A couple of brash abstract canvases adorn the walls. Electric light is supplied by several opaque glass pendants that hang at different heights from the ceiling, making the room feel both too bright and oddly dull. A dark-suited man sits in the corner opposite them and near the door a couple of heavily made-up young women are sipping cokes.

Rob quickly arranges for the lights to be switched off and some candles lit instead. Three half-bottles of Stolichnaya are delivered to the table by a silent young waitress in a tight black dress, along with some imported beer and plates of cured salo and sliced pickle. Rachel sits facing the pillar, Lucas on one side, Vee on the other. Suzie, opposite, rests her hands on the table and smiles. Rob is on her right. Her cheekbones glimmer with powder and her hair is scooped up into a soft pile. She looks beautiful in the low light, thinks Rachel. She can’t see Suzie’s elastic band; her wrists are covered by her creamy angora sweater. She keeps glancing around, first at Rob, then back to Lucas and again across to Rachel. Suzie seems happy to have them all here together.

‘Right,’ says Rob, leaning across and pouring the chilled, oily vodka into five glasses. He is wearing a navy polo shirt with the collar raised up at the back. ‘There’s no menu, but the mushrooms are excellent and they slow cook the pork.’

‘Hey, and welcome to the cuteist baby in town!’ says Vee, laughing each time Ivan clutches at Rachel’s wrist and smiles with his mouth open, his soft chin shiny with drool. ‘This little guy’s got to get out more often!’

As the young waitress brings iron pans of mushrooms in garlicky melted cheese and the others talk about what it is like to work in this city with its excise