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

restrictions and corruption and the petty vendettas in parliament and the catastrophic inflation that is screwing the population to the floor, Rachel sips her vodka and feels the liquid burn her throat. While Vee entertains Ivan, she wonders at how all this might actually be real – restaurants, meeting people, talking and eating and drinking. Why shouldn’t it be real? She smiles across at Suzie and nods and composes her face as if she belongs here, at least for a while.

Lucas and Vee are describing their latest visit to Chernobyl.

‘It’s a kind of hyper-reality,’ says Lucas, stabbing at a mushroom. ‘Pripyat more so than the reactor itself. I’m not saying it’s surreal, because we’re all tired of that cliché, but it’s weird to walk through those buildings and look out over the old playgrounds, the schools with everything either shattered or looted. Silence and stillness aren’t great for radio, mind you. I recorded some footsteps walking through one old gastronom, through snow, then broken glass, then stopping and talking so you get this great echo in the old Hall of Sport and Culture.’

‘What about safety?’ asks Suzie in her soft Edinburgh voice. ‘Was it safe?’

Lucas shrugs. ‘We had all the gear on. Overalls and slip-on shoes and disposable caps. I took the Geiger counter and they keep tracking the hot spots. One Russian guy – some kind of scientist – told me he wore a lead undergarment. I didn’t ask to see it, but maybe I should have – must’ve chafed!’

‘You’ve got to change vehicles when you reach the restricted zone,’ says Vee. ‘That’s the funny part. We all totter off the rusting press bus and get allocated seats in the limos that haven’t been allowed to leave the area. So I’m being driven through Pripyat in this crazy fucking Zil – the only time I’ll ever get a ride in one of those.’

Rob is wiping his mouth with his napkin.

‘That restricted zone is a waste of time,’ he says. ‘They can’t agree on its boundaries but it’s arbitrary, out of date and it’s holding back my trucks. There’s a good road cuts round to the east from Belarus and then straight down to Kiev, but because of some Ministry knee-jerker they set up a new layer of checkpoints and now we have to live with it.’

Rachel pushes away her mushrooms, worried suddenly about where they were grown. Has Lucas been careful? Has he brought back any radioactive dust to their flat? Don’t be selfish, she tells herself, as the vodka washes through her. The damage is done already – those children in bleak hospitals, those sick little babies being born, those recent spikes in thyroid cancer that Lucas tells her people have been protesting about. Their mothers had been trapped in that monstrous toxic cloud.

‘Well, I’m not sure I’ll go back,’ says Lucas, as the dishes are cleared and the pork cutlets are delivered, each bearing a garnish of limp dill. ‘Not unless I get a commission. Anyway, interest will most likely die down now until the tenth anniversary, unless there’s another fuck-up. That’s the trouble with this place. Everyone looks backwards – to Chernobyl, to the Soviets, to the Great Patriotic War. There’s a line between real news and digging over old bones dressed up as analysis that frankly, sometimes, feels gratuitous.’

Vee rolls her eyes, comically. ‘It’s your job, you dick. You love it, so stop pontificating.’

Lucas leans forward. He won’t be put off. He’s out to impress one of the new breed, thinks Rachel. He is making it up as he goes along.

‘I’m after a story that looks to the future,’ he continues. ‘Something to develop, get my teeth into, something that’s not already being recycled by every junior anchor on the ten-day tour of former satellite states.’

He stops to pour himself another vodka. Vee flicks her hand. ‘Hey,’ she teases. ‘Mister Loo-cas! Forget Bosnia! Forget the Middle East! Dontcha geddit? History’s all we got!’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ says Lucas. There’s a hint of petulance about him, as if he has been caught trying out different versions of himself. ‘I’m looking ahead. I’ve got some leads.’

‘Great!’ says Vee. Then, widening her eyes for Ivan and raising her voice to a cartoonish pitch: ‘Whaddya know, little buddy – your daddy’s gonna scoop us all!’

Half an hour later, once the vodka has numbed their nerve-endings and the plates have been cleared, the two men are telling stories. Rob recounts some trouble with the Hungarian border police over a shipment of chrome bar stools he had to dole out as bribes. Lucas makes everyone laugh with a tale about an angry old man shouting ‘knees!’ in his underpants. It takes a minute or two for Rachel to realise he is talking about the encounter with the boy and the man from the flat on the fourteenth floor. The old man had been wearing trousers, remembers Rachel, but when Lucas tells the story, it sounds like something else – a story about an idiot or a pimp. He makes it sound funny.

Vee has moved her chair over to the top end of the table so that she can smoke away from the baby. Rachel, meanwhile, is trying to nurse Ivan. She has draped a shawl around her shoulders in an attempt to be discreet, but he keeps waving his arm and pushing it away. It doesn’t seem to matter. The women by the door have been joined by a trio of pasty-faced young men dressed in shiny nylon shell suits and branded trainers. They order a bottle of Chivas Regal and drink it with frowning intensity.

‘So,’ murmurs Suzie, leaning forward to catch Ivan’s flailing hand. She pats it a little. ‘I’m dying to know. What is it like to have a baby?’

Rachel looks up, pulled out of her reverie. Rob, she remembers, won’t let Suzie have a child.

‘Oh,’ she says, warily, ‘you know. Pretty amazing. Tiring. And amazing.’

Suzie smiles, frowning at the same time, as if she’s puzzling over something.