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

his cot and runs a bath while Lucas steps out for a smoke. Lying in the tepid water with the door locked, the back of her neck against the unforgiving rim, she takes up her book and turns the pages, her lips mouthing the numbers as she counts the words, the now-familiar see-saw of anxiety and release pulsing across her synapses.

After forty minutes, when the letters start jumping and the terror of dropping Ivan over the balcony is temporarily in retreat, she is almost too cold to stand up and rub herself dry. She shivers on the edge of the toilet seat with a towel wrapped around her and closes her eyes.

Things happen for a reason, she reminds herself. You see a man. You find your book. Mykola is a real person, though sometimes she imagines him. Perhaps she ought to watch for him again.

Chapter 14

The cold snap breaks at the end of February. Grey clouds barge across the sky, northwards now, and the mounds of shovelled snow soften like ancient boulders worn smooth by the passing of millennia.

Lucas is relieved that Rachel seems more settled. Every Sunday, news permitting, he takes his wife and son on an outing. Family time, he calls it, and laughs at how they have arrived at something so suburban. Sometimes they take a trip in the car to the Architectural Park where they stroll around the little wooden huts and the drinks kiosks and show Ivan the life-size blue whale made of concrete. At Respublikansky Stadion they wander past the displays of cheaply made t-shirts and sweatshirts boldly proclaiming ‘Hugo Boss’ or ‘Gucci’ beneath drooping plastic awnings, or they hop on the 62 bus that runs along the river, then take the stately funicular past the Barbie sign and up the hill to St Andrew’s or St Sophia’s. When Lucas catches Rachel staring into crowds or turning her head towards strangers, he assumes she is merely curious. The two of them talk about Ivan, or about Lucas’s work, but they don’t discuss the future or their shared past. Those places are fraught with danger. Sex is a rare midnight fumbling; Rachel goes to bed before Lucas gets home and she’s up with Ivan at six. Anyway, Lucas needs his sleep. The agencies want news of disarmament treaties and the Black Sea Fleet, but instead there’s just rumour, stalling and a nudge off a sub-editor’s schedule. Each short bulletin takes its toll. He tells Zoya he’ll hold back his feature about Lukyanenko’s film until A Golden Promise is released. Then he can tell the whole story, rounded off with reaction from the premiere.

Rachel, meanwhile, sticks to her routine. After breakfast she soaks the washing in a bucket with water boiled on the stove. Next she takes Ivan out to the universam or rides the trolleybus down to the shops along Khreschatyk, trawling the Bessarabsky market or the empty booths of the central department store within its grand carapace on the corner of Bohdana Khmel’nyts’koho Street. She marks her path across the city by tearing off the little handwritten slips from notices pasted to lampposts and walls. She doesn’t know what they say: they could be adverts for language lessons or prostitutes or pleas for lost children. Soon her pockets are full of telephone numbers.

After lunch, Ivan naps while she keeps him safe by counting her words from Jurassic Park at the table in the kitchen until Elena knocks on the door for their daily dose of Simplemente Maria. Sometimes Elena brings a gift for Ivan – a musty-smelling balloon, a teething ring made from hard, unyielding plastic or, once, a pair of red nylon socks with a border of little yellow hens. Rachel wishes she could speak Russian or Ukrainian. She’s learned a long list of nouns, but conversation is much harder. There are things she wants to ask the caretaker.

One afternoon in early March Lucas comes home for dinner with twelve dark red roses in a crackly cellophane bouquet.

‘Happy International Women’s Day!’ he says, kissing Rachel on the mouth with the tang of his last cigarette still strong on his breath. The roses aren’t fully opened, yet already their heads droop on flaccid stems, petals browning at the edges. ‘I couldn’t move on the trolleybus – wilting flowers everywhere. The woman who sold me these swore they’d been flown in from Tbilisi this morning! I bought chocolates for Zoya. She’d have sulked for a month if I hadn’t arrived at the office with a box of cherry liqueurs the size of a small table, and you can bet the dezhornaya was watching to make sure I’d remembered flowers for you. I suppose I should have bought some for her.’

Rachel unwraps the roses and trims the ends from the stems before placing them in a tall jug of water. ‘They might revive,’ she says, as several petals fall to the floor. She is surprised to find she cares about a custom in which scowling, sheepish men do their once-yearly duty by their mothers and wives and female employees.

Lucas tickles Ivan in his bouncy chair and peers into the fridge.

‘We should go out really, but I’m working again tonight. There’s interest in my Golden Promise feature from Radio Four. I’ve been speaking to a couple of programme editors. They all say I should go on a camera course. Start filming my own stuff. Become an all-rounder.’ He pokes at a tray of eggs. ‘Have we got enough eggs for an omelette? Good to see the washing machine has finally been taken away—’

Rachel turns, sharply. ‘What?’

‘The washing machine. It’s gone.’ Lucas straightens up, a carton of UHT milk in his hand. ‘Didn’t you notice? Your dodgy salesman must have had second thoughts – or found a buyer.’

Sure enough, when Rachel hurries along the hallway and pulls open the front door, there’s nothing next to the doormat except a square of unwashed lino. Has Mykola been here to remove his troublesome gift? The space left behind