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

Rachel, however, isn’t feeling well. A painful pressure has been building at the back of her eyes since Vee mentioned the owner of the white goods store. The ringing sound in her ears has returned. This is the first time she has experienced it away from the apartment block. She shouldn’t be here, she thinks. Mykola warned her not to leave her child alone with Elena. She drops her fork on the floor.

‘Hey,’ says Teddy, instantly attentive. ‘What’s wrong? Do you need some air?’ He looks over to Dr Alleyn. ‘She’s kind of pale – do you want to lie down?’

‘I need to go home . . .’ she mumbles.

With some reluctance, Dr Alleyn pushes back his chair.

‘It is a little warm in here.’ He reaches out for her wrist, tries to feel her pulse. Rachel tugs her hand away.

‘I need to go home. Lucas, I have to go now.’ She stands, leaning against the table so that glasses wobble. Lucas stands too. ‘Please. I’ll wave down a car . . .’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Lucas, aware of everyone watching. ‘I’m sorry. We’d better go. I’ll come back later if I can.’ His dismay increases as murmurs of ‘no, stay with Rachel’ pass around the table. Teddy and Vee see them to the door.

‘Call us!’ they urge, as Lucas follows Rachel down the stairs. But Rachel has already forgotten the party.

Her baby. She needs to save him. She needs to reach page twenty-seven before it is too late.

* * *

The tropical rain fell in great drenching sheets. All the way back to Staronavodnitska Street, Rachel mutters under her breath, sentence after sentence, line after line: see the words, count the words, miss nothing. She pays no attention to the driver who is staring in his mirror or her husband, who keeps asking her what’s wrong. When they arrive at the car park she scrambles out before the car has stopped moving and Lucas is still fumbling for the fare. Inside the building the light shows the lift is stuck on the sixteenth floor, but Rachel is already running up the stairs, gasping for breath, lungs breaking, counting and counting, don’t miss, don’t repeat, page twenty-five, three hundred and twenty, page twenty-six, two hundred and ninety-two. Her legs are stronger than she knows, yet weaker than she needs; they crumble on the last flight so that she half crawls, half drags herself to the landing on the thirteenth floor.

The key is in her pocket. She fumbles and almost drops it. Finish page twenty-seven. Finish it. Elena opened the door . . . the lizards crouched like gargoyles . . . the child must be dead . . .

As she enters the apartment Rachel bites her tongue until her mouth tastes of blood. She must be quiet now, so quiet, for the living room door is gaping wide and all the lights are on. The breeze is cool on her face and she knows the balcony door is open on the other side of the net curtain. A figure is out there, diffuse, indistinct against the darkness of the night. Rachel must slow her own heart and the high-pitched ringing in her ear and not raise the alarm. Like a ghost she moves across the floor of the living room. She hears the old woman murmuring to herself, sees her stoop down. A squeaking noise, something scraping on the lino – what is she doing . . .

On the threshold of the balcony, poking through the net curtain, a face appears – a plastic, gurning face from a TV cartoon, rolling on wheels. Rachel stares, first in horror, then bewilderment as an old, arthritic hand pulls the curtain aside. Ivan, her baby, is standing in the doorway, gripping the handle of the Donald Duck baby walker Rachel bought at the universam all those months before. Elena is bending over him, ready to catch him should he fall.

‘Privyet!’ says the old woman, looking up, and then her face falls and her hands shield the child’s mouth and eyes, because Rachel is leaning over, retching and retching, all the sickness pouring out onto the living room floor, spattering across the shiny parquet along with little spots of caviar, pale fizz and some half-digested perch.

Chapter 23

Things happen, dreams Rachel. You say, it was like this, and so it becomes that way. You think something, and then it gets stuck if you don’t blink it away. But the stories you tell yourself, they are not fixed, they can be unmade. Anything might happen, or not, or maybe. Not knowing is something you fall into and falling makes you weightless. It doesn’t hurt – not much. Sometimes when you fall the wind lifts you up like a puff of white dandelion seed and then you are clean again, and new.

The ringing has stopped. There is silence, then there is noise, but nothing is constant. Squeaking from the ceiling, a baby crying, a balcony door opening – these things start, they stop and they start again. Elena is there, bringing peppermint tea. Ivan, her child – she can hear he is near.

Rachel tries to sit up. There is someone she must speak to. The man with the black hat made from unborn baby lambs – where is he?

* * *

Rachel is sick for three days. Her fever is high, her body is wrung out, yet still she leans over the side of the bed and retches into a bowl.

‘Food poisoning,’ says Dr Alleyn, who pops over to the flat on the second day. ‘Not the worst, but bad enough. Call this number if she’s not better by Wednesday.’ He tells Lucas his wife needs a holiday back home and a visit to her GP when she is up on her feet. He leaves his card, together with some sachets of Dioralyte.

‘Must have been some ropey perch,’ murmurs Lucas, from somewhere near the window.

Rachel is too weak to tell him it wasn’t the fish.

* * *

‘Hey,’ says Lucas. He lowers himself onto the edge of the bed near Rachel’s feet. ‘You’re looking better.’

Rachel nods, carefully.