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

her from across the street. He runs over to her, dodging a truck with flapping tarpaulin sides. It beeps its horn and makes Ivan shriek.

‘Hey,’ he says, planting a kiss on her temple. ‘Raspberries! The first of the season. I want some.’

‘Do you think they’re safe to eat?’ asks Rachel, who knows that if she asks the stallholder he will swear they’ve been grown in the Caucasus.

Teddy smiles. ‘I hope so. I’ve given up worrying.’ He glances at Ivan. ‘Seriously, it’s too early in the season for them to have come from the exclusion zone. Don’t they smell fabulous?’

They both pause for a moment, waiting as the man at the front of the queue refuses the little newspaper cones offered by the stallholder and instead opens up his peeling vinyl briefcase so that she can heap the soft fruit inside.

‘I should have brought a bag,’ says Teddy. ‘Those cones are going to leak.’

Rachel pulls a pastel blue nappy sack out of her handbag. ‘Would you like one of these? They’re quite hygienic. I use them all the time.’

‘Rachel,’ exclaims Teddy, ‘you are beautiful and resourceful! We must have raspberries with ice cream. And meringue – Karl loves a Pavlova. I’m going to tell Vee that’s what I want at my leaving dinner. Not cherry dumplings. Dumplings are for winter.’

Rachel feels a little unsteady on her feet. She grips the handles of the pushchair.

‘Are you leaving?’

Teddy looks down at her, surprised. ‘Didn’t Lucas tell you? That boy is something else! Well, I’m off to Bosnia with Karl. New adventures! Hey, don’t look so sad! We’re having a last supper at Vee’s. Next Saturday. You better come – I refuse to sit next to anyone else!’

‘Dinner is difficult . . .’ murmurs Rachel. ‘With Ivan – now he’s older it’s harder to take him out at night.’

‘So let’s find you a babysitter,’ says Teddy. ‘How about that caretaker – the one who’s retired with a suitcase of cash. She’s fond of Ivan, right?’ He smiles, rueful, sympathetic. ‘Lucas needs to show you off.’

‘Lucas wants me to go back to London.’ The words rush out of Rachel before she can stop them; for a moment she doesn’t recognise the woman discussing her husband with a man she barely knows. But this is Teddy, she reminds herself. Not Mykola.

Teddy rubs his chin.

‘Then please come for my sake, and yours.’

* * *

Rachel thinks about Teddy’s suggestion as the trolleybus rattles up the broad boulevard of Lesi Ukrainky. She doesn’t want to leave Ivan with someone else, but neither does she want Lucas to visit Vee’s flat without her. Teddy knows something; he’s just too loyal to pass it on.

As she pushes Ivan across the waste ground she spies Stepan. He is lounging in the grass; she can just see his shorn head and shoulders through the tangle of stems and weeds. He is with that horrible man, his minder. That they are outside is not, Rachel reminds herself, so unusual. These days she often encounters bodies sprawled in the sunshine. Sometimes she passes lovers grappling silently, like molluscs, or she steers the pushchair round a pair of mottled legs sticking out across the path. Old men slump on the benches and chat softly or stare down at their hands. Young girls with their skinny arms and bright hair accessories sit cross-legged and play clapping games or chalk neat rows of sums on the concrete, and several times she has seen the same middle-aged couple enjoying a picnic of gherkins and sausage laid out on a blue handbag amongst the dandelions.

She could skirt around Stepan. She could remain out of sight, but she has things she wants to ask him and it is better to do it here, out in the open, than down in the basement or in the shadows on the stairs.

As she approaches, she wonders what the pair are looking at, for Stepan’s shorn scalp and the older man’s bulging neck both bend towards the ground. She is almost upon them when she sees the chick. It is golden brown and fluffy and it makes little cheeping sounds as it shuttles between them in the space they have flattened out in the grass. Yet what strikes her most is not the chick itself, but the way the two of them use their bodies to fence in the tiny bird. Stepan makes a wall with his legs, while the older man is squatting like a broody, dishevelled hen.

‘Ciao!’ says Stepan, raising his head. ‘Cik cik!’

‘Hello,’ says Rachel. She is facing the sun and puts her hand up to protect her eyes.

‘You want to look?’ he asks. ‘Show your baby?’

Rachel glances down at Ivan, who is nodding off in the shade of the pushchair’s canopy. ‘He’s sleeping . . .’

The older man doesn’t acknowledge her. He is wearing a grey vest and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The flesh below his jaw sags and glistens. He mutters a few words, then puts his hand to the ground, palm up. The chick obligingly steps on to it.

Rachel grips the pushchair handles. She hasn’t spoken to Stepan for weeks – not since she found him in the basement eating the Angel Delight her mother had sent. She wants to make sure he hasn’t stolen anything else, but her courage is quickly fading.

‘Have you seen Elena today?’ she asks.

Stepan shrugs.

‘Well, if you do see her, will you please tell her I need to talk to her?’ Rachel hopes the boy thinks she is going to tell Elena about the intercepted parcels. Stepan breaks off a stalk of grass and sticks it in his mouth; he looks like a drawing she once saw of Huckleberry Finn.

‘Okay Mum. You want baby-sit?’

Rachel frowns. He must have spoken to Teddy. She hates the way he knows what she wants. Before she can contradict him, however, the older man lifts his hand off the ground and curls his fingers around the chick.

‘Don’t!’ says Rachel, stepping forward, imagining the crushing of its tiny breast and bones.

Stepan’s companion takes no