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

Kiev for most of the summer, though I can recommend a good private clinic . . .’ He hesitates, but Rachel is in control of herself now and her grasp, when he holds out his hand, is swift and firm, as if to say you do not know me, I am not what you think and now I am going to step back outside the frame.

Outside on Desyatynna Street Rachel breathes in the freezing air. Ivan is still grasping the copy of Time, the top corner damp and ragged where he has mouthed it. She takes it from him and taps on the window of the security guard’s concrete booth.

‘For Doctor Alleyn,’ she says, pushing it under the glass.

The guard looks at her strangely.

‘Your baby is bleeding,’ he says, touching his own lips.

Rachel checks her son. There’s no blood, just flecks of red magazine paper round his mouth.

She wipes them away with the back of her glove.

Chapter 13

Lucas once told Rachel that he loved her for her secrets. They were lolling beneath a tree on a prickly stretch of New Forest heath, gazing at the clouds piling up like over-yeasted dough and eating cherries from a bag. He said that Rachel had hidden depths and he wanted to be the one to plumb them.

Rachel had laughed. ‘My head is empty,’ she said. ‘I’m just an airhead. Any thoughts pass straight through me, and out the other side.’ But even as the words slipped from her lips, both knew this was a lie.

* * *

One afternoon, just after lunch, the telephone rings in the apartment. Rachel, folding washing in the bedroom, thinks it must be Lucas. It isn’t Lucas. It is Zoya, her voice flat and tinny on the poor local line.

‘A driver wishes to deliver six boxes of nappies. I told him we cannot take them at the office.’

Rachel’s grip tightens on the receiver. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. Suzie has done what she asked.

‘I said,’ repeats Zoya, ‘a driver wishes . . .’

‘Sorry,’ says Rachel, collecting herself. ‘Sorry. Are they Pampers? Is Lucas there?’

‘Yes, and no,’ says Zoya. ‘Lucas has an appointment at the Ministry of Finance. This is why I am calling you.’

‘Right.’ Rachel is already imagining the nappies with their neat folds and self-sealing fastenings, their soft elastication and velvety, leak-proof coating. She wants to touch them. Count them. ‘Can you ask the driver to send them up to Staronavodnitksa Street? And pay him, please – use Lucas’s emergency dollars. I’ll pay it back.’

‘I have told the driver to return tomorrow. He has no paperwork. No invoice.’

‘Zoya!’ Rachel tries not to shout. ‘I need them now! Tonight!’

‘Then I tell him to come back. Lucas can drive them up later.’

Rachel is still absorbing the fact that the nappies have arrived at all. Lucas doesn’t know about the order. He’ll hate the fact that she’s buying them from Rob, but she won’t let him refuse to take them as he refused the washing machine.

‘Zoya, listen. Lucas is trying to save money, but I need those nappies and I ordered them without telling him. Please can you drive them here for me? I –’ she hesitates – ‘I can give you ten dollars if that helps.’

Zoya doesn’t reply and the phone goes dead. Rachel assumes she has gravely offended her and weeps at her own stupidity, until forty minutes later the doorbell rings and she spies Zoya standing on the landing with several cardboard boxes balanced on top of the washing machine.

‘I have done this for Ivan,’ says Zoya, when Rachel opens the door, still blowing her nose. ‘Clearly, if you don’t receive Pampers, you will become insane.’ The two women stare at each other, Zoya frowning as she always does, her plucked eyebrows a line of rebuke, a line that will not stand a challenge, yet perhaps can bear a truce.

‘Thank you,’ says Rachel.

* * *

At four o’clock Lucas returns home with a slab of pork wrapped in newspaper. He seems buoyant in the way he used to be, before he and Rachel came to Kiev.

‘I’m going to the Dovzhenko studios tonight,’ he says, jiggling Ivan’s bouncy chair. ‘They’re doing some voice edits for A Golden Promise.’

‘For what?’ Rachel looks up from the button she is sewing on to an old denim shirt.

‘A Golden Promise. That’s the title of the film. The one I’m writing about. Keep up, Rach!’ He grins, too fired up to care that his wife doesn’t remember. ‘It’s the perfect time to get some background sound for my feature, and Sorin says the director has guaranteed an interview. He’s been hard to pin down, so I’m not going to miss him. I’m sick to death of churning out bulletins from Parliament, when all London thinks it needs is the nuclear story.’

Sorin, remembers Rachel. This is the man who took Jurassic Park.

‘Will he – Sorin – be there?’ she asks.

‘Probably. I bet he’d love to hook up with an actress or two. Hey, why don’t you come with me?’

Rachel considers the possibility that she might recover her book. ‘What about Ivan? We can’t take him to a sound recording.’

‘Why not?’ Lucas opens the fridge door and pushes the meat inside. ‘It’s a huge place. You can wander round with him while I get what I need. I’ve got the car tonight. Zoya says she’ll meet us there.’ He sucks his lips into a pretend pout and puts on a fake Russian drawl. ‘You, baby, should be star of blockbuster film – screen goddess and wife of Hetman!’

Rachel has just secreted sixty-four perfectly pure Pampers nappies in the drawer under the bed and hidden the other four boxes under a blanket on top of the wardrobe. Their value is incalculable to her; they help keep the danger at bay. If she could only get her book back – if she could complete the ritual – then all might be well.

She looks at her husband. Go with him, she tells herself. Don’t overthink it. In fact, don’t think anything at all.

* * *

Lucas is