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

the money. This is the man who made her pancakes with cherries when she came home from school; the man who made up stories about a mysterious underwater world and who washed her knitted tights when she started menstruating. He tried to hide her grade papers when she told him she wanted to study English at the university, because English meant American and those people were lascivious, not to mention dishonest and duplicitous with their claims about who won the war. He had fought with the Red Army at Zaporozhye in the autumn offensive of ‘43. No one leaves a man like that with a nurse in white clogs. He belongs with his granddaughter at home.

The car door has already frozen tight. Zoya rams it with her elbow until it flies open and she almost falls out. She collects her cleaning materials and kicks out the bag with the soiled nylon seat covers so that it lands in the snow at some distance from the car. If the car smells in the morning, there’s nothing more she can do. She can always blame it on Lucas’s baby. He should never have brought his child to this place.

Chapter 10

Rachel leans her head against the cold kitchen window and looks down towards the car park. The sun is bright for early January, glancing off the broken glass in one of the dump bins and burnishing the snowbanks. She has been standing like this for the past hour, waiting for the caretaker to leave the building and make her midday pilgrimage across the tramlines, then up the lane that rises between the cottages of Tsarskoye Selo. Only then can Rachel go out without being intercepted. This is how spies operate. You watch, you are patient, you learn your mark’s routines. Then you do what you must. The new year has brought new resolve. She will source a supply of Pampers via Suzie, she will finish the survey and she will recover her copy of Jurassic Park.

The problem, of course, is that no one with a baby could ever be a spy. When the caretaker finally leaves the building, Rachel lowers Ivan into the new baby carrier. She almost tips sideways as she swings it across her shoulders and picks up her gloves, but already she is learning to bend her knees and take the weight across her hips. Outside, as her breath condenses in pale clouds and she picks her way past the empty bottles of new year vodka strewn like curling stones between the vehicles, her son’s legs find the ledge of her hips and he bobs up and down in his padded snowsuit, murmuring his appreciation.

All the same, when Rachel spots the boy from upstairs she wavers a little. He is loitering on the steps to Suzie’s apartment block. He stares at her, his hands in his jeans pockets, shoulders hunched inside a hooded nylon anorak. Then, suddenly, he leaps in the air and executes a kind of pirouette, before sliding away from her like a figure skater on a rink. He’s just a child, she tells herself. He’s bunking school, vulnerable and adrift. Lucas thinks the old man is his pimp. The thought horrifies her, yet the boy still gives her the creeps.

Rachel takes the lift up to Suzie’s. When she knocks, the door opens almost straight away.

‘Hello, Suzie—’

‘God, I thought you weren’t talking to me.’

Suzie is wearing a dove grey suede skirt and a pale silky blouse. Her eyes are accented with mascara and her hair is arranged in a perfect French plait that reminds Rachel of the souvenir snow maidens with their doe eyes and New Year pouts in shop windows along Khreschatyk. Suzie pulls Rachel inside and shuts the door.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Rob’s out. By which I mean to say, he didn’t come home.’

All at once, Rachel is sorry she hasn’t followed through with Suzie. She abandoned her after that night at the restaurant; she’d been frightened, but Suzie on her own is a different person: open, self-deprecating. Suddenly Rachel wants to sit down on her soft leather sofa, drink her coffee, chat and laugh about how stupid things are and how they might be.

‘I’m sorry I’ve not been in touch,’ she says. ‘Lucas went away, and I’ve had this survey to do and then it was Christmas—’

Her excuses sound hollow, though Suzie doesn’t seem to notice. She is busy helping Rachel with the baby carrier and then taking her coat. Rachel kicks off her snowboots and pads after Suzie into the living room, carrying Ivan in her arms.

‘Shall I get a blanket for Ivan to lie on?’ asks Suzie.

‘Oh, no thank you.’ Rachel sets Ivan down on the rug. ‘Look, he’s sitting now. If I just put a couple of cushions behind him . . .’

‘He’s growing up so fast!’ exclaims Suzie. ‘Look at you, wee man!’ Ivan is leaning forward, clutching at the long fibres of the rug, tugging them towards his mouth. Suzie goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on and while she’s gone Rachel wipes the drool off his chin.

‘Wee man!’ she whispers, trying to make the words fit.

When Suzie returns she sits down on the sofa and smiles. ‘Rob can be a prick sometimes, but I don’t want that to stop us being friends.’

Rachel takes a deep breath. ‘He goes to Finland quite a bit, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, though I hope you don’t feel we can only see each other when he’s out of the country!’

‘No, no, what I meant was, do you think he could do something for me?’

Now Suzie is surprised.

‘Like what?’

‘I – well, I really need some Pampers – Ivan needs them. A dozen packs would be great. I brought some with me but they’re too small now, and the local brands . . .’

‘What size?’ asks Suzie, quickly.

‘Oh, well, the large ones – one size below Junior. I’ll pay whatever it costs, plus the shipping . . .’

Suzie smiles and nods. For the next half an hour the two women