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

‘Thanks Mum.’ Rachel, pressing the receiver to her ear, waits, and at last she hears the sigh that is not an ending, though it is a release.

‘I’ll make the bed up. And the cot – it’s still up in the attic. For Ivan. We can put him in your old cot.’

* * *

The next day Rachel carries Ivan downstairs on her hip and goes outside in search of Stepan. She can’t find him at first, but eventually she spots him squatting in the long grass near the fence by the military academy. He is red-eyed, still dressed in the football shorts and grubby plastic flip flops he’d been wearing the last time she saw him. He doesn’t move when she approaches.

‘You found Elena in the basement,’ she says, at a loss for a better way to begin.

Stepan looks down. He is scratching in the dirt with his finger.

‘That must have been awful for you,’ she adds.

Silence.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Ivan wriggles in Rachel’s arms. She sets him down, feet on the ground and grips his hand to keep him steady. ‘Stepan?’

Now she sees that Stepan’s shoulders are heaving. He makes a high-pitched sound through clenched lips; he buries his head between his knees and his child-sized t-shirt rides up to reveal an inflamed patch of eczema across his ribs. His distress is so pitiful, so raw, that for the first time she aches to put her arms around him, this troubled youth who has no one to comfort him.

‘Where is your – uncle?’ she asks. ‘That man you live with?’ She reaches forward and rests her free hand lightly on his wrist.

‘Not uncle,’ he mutters, pulling back his arm and wiping the snot from his nostrils. ‘You not my mum. Go leave. I don’t know why Mykola think you special.’

‘What?’ Rachel has been worrying about how to raise the subject of Mykola. She isn’t expecting Stepan to do it first.

Stepan makes a strange sound like a hiccup or a bark. ‘Elena, she give me money, then Mykola, he give me more. But I tell you, Elena is better.’ He rocks backwards, then knocks his head against his knees. ‘She say you not special.’

Rachel squats down, still holding Ivan’s hand. Stepan’s words are muffled, difficult to hear, though she feels them like a stone thrown at her face. All the same, she knows what she must ask.

‘Stepan, tell me, does Mykola know Elena has died? Was he there when it happened? I think he’s got something to do with it. You heard them that day in the car . . .’

‘You not my mum. Go your mum. Go away.’

Ivan, sensing an opportunity, lurches towards the boy, who has curled up like a woodlouse. There is dog mess everywhere, so Rachel reaches forward and scoops him onto her knee. Ivan arches his back, not wanting to be held. Rachel must rise to her feet if she is to keep her balance. She wills Stepan to look at her, but he won’t move his head because there is a river between them, one she has never attempted to cross until now, when it is too late. After a minute of standing there with her son amongst the ragweed she retreats across the waste ground and returns to the apartment.

When she peers out of the kitchen window she thinks she can see him: a dot by the chain-link fence.

Half an hour later he is gone.

* * *

‘You have been sitting in the sun,’ says Zoya, scrutinising Rachel across the little table in the café along Lesi Ukrainky where they meet. ‘You should wear a hat, like Ivan. You will have brown spots. Skin cancer.’

Rachel rubs her nose and fishes the camomile teabag out of her waxed paper cup. Ivan is sitting on her lap testing his teeth on the cap of the plastic bottle of mineral water he is clutching. She called Zoya to see her one last time on her own – to say goodbye – but as always there is so much that remains unspoken.

‘I like your sunglasses,’ she says. ‘Very Marilyn Monroe.’

Zoya, poker-faced, touches the shades perched on top of her head. ‘So, will you stay with Lucas, or divorce? I think you will divorce.’

‘Zoya!’ Rachel tries to sound outraged, but what comes out is an uneasy laugh. ‘Don’t you ever hold back? Bite your tongue?’

‘Often,’ says Zoya. ‘More than you know.’

Rachel sips her tea. It tastes of sticks. ‘Well, you don’t know everything. I can’t think about the future in Kiev. I need to go home, let things settle. Then we will see.’

Zoya snorts. ‘Oh yes. You will see. Already you know what you will see.’

‘He needs me, I think. He wants to make plans. I never expected—’

‘He needs you to know when to go.’

Rachel wonders if anyone else in the café can hear them. She glances around, but the café is nearly empty apart from a young woman sitting by herself at a table near the door, her arms folded, legs crossed, one foot pushing against the base of the table as if she has been waiting just a little too long. Rachel lowers her voice. ‘Well, I didn’t come to talk about Lucas and me. I want to ask you something. Will you keep an eye on Stepan? Look out for him, I mean.’

Now Zoya leans back and stares out of the window. ‘That boy? He knows how to look out for himself, don’t you think?’

Rachel follows her gaze, half expecting to see Stepan’s face pressed against the glass, peering in from the pavement. Instead she sees a kvas truck with one wheel stuck in a pothole. It is blocking a lorry that is trying to turn left across the boulevard. A horn blares but the kvas truck won’t shift. Cars are backing up.

‘Elena really cared about him,’ she says. ‘And he cared about her. He’s just a child. He needs someone to protect him. I should have helped—’

‘So!’ Zoya taps her packet of cigarettes on the table