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

She stops, looks back.

Mykola is still gazing towards the house, arms loose at his sides.

‘She might have loved you,’ she says. ‘If she’d known who you were. You should have told her!’

‘She did know – at the end.’

‘How?’ Rachel is almost shouting. ‘Were you with her when she died?’

‘She was leaving your flat.’

‘And you followed her? You should have left her alone! So what if she visited? We gave her a key! She was returning something that belonged to me!’

‘You did not listen to my warning. I have struggled to forgive you.’

In the silence that follows, in no more than a moment, the truth rises, clear and cold.

‘You killed her,’ murmurs Rachel.

Mykola’s head drops; he won’t look at her now. He is shrinking back into the depths of his abandonment.

‘At the end she did not need me. Even for that.’

* * *

This is how Rachel will remember Mykola, his head turned away, his gaze fixed on the things she cannot see. But first she must make her way home.

As shock takes hold she stumbles as she half-runs along the lane. She still hasn’t reached the turn in the road when a horn blares, short and sharp. Ivan’s nails dig into her arm as he starts to wail. A black jeep sweeps in from Panfilovstev Street. The stones beneath its tyres make a cracking sound like cap guns.

The jeep fills the narrow lane. As it slows to a crawl and its chrome bumper inches level with her thigh the wing mirror snags an overhanging branch. Rachel shields Ivan’s head with her stung hand and presses herself against the hedge that pokes through the fence to her left. The vehicle’s windows are tinted; she can’t see the driver, but the passenger window glides down and a woman removes her sunglasses.

‘Hello! Where are you going?’

It is Suzie. Her eyes have a pinkish tinge; the skin beneath them is puffy and grey. Rachel shakes her head, too overcome to explain about her throbbing knuckles, about Mykola, about Ivan’s distress.

‘I came to pick windfalls. From your garden.’

‘Oh – you should have called . . .’

Now Rachel sees Rob in the driving seat. His broad shoulders and square head fill the space beyond his wife.

‘Sounds like trespassing,’ he mutters sourly, his shades mirroring the sun’s glare. He flicks off the air conditioning and leans forward over the steering wheel. ‘Who the fuck is that on my driveway?’

Rachel looks at Suzie, at her strained face, at the elastic band peeping out from her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, apologising for the trouble that will come; trouble that it is too late to halt now. She must concentrate on the narrow gap that leads round the back of the jeep towards Panfilovstev Street beyond.

‘Who is that?’ persists Rob, thick thumbs pushing on the horn so that Rachel jumps and Ivan stiffens.

‘Mykola Sirko,’ she says, yanking her skirt free of the hedge.

‘Mykola Sirko – that cunt. I told him to stay out of my way . . .’

Ivan is struggling to get down. Rachel realises she has left the pushchair by the gate, but there’s no going back. ‘He’s Elena’s son. Your new landlord!’ she shouts, her hand pressing against the rear window as she clambers round the bumper. The street ahead curves away to the right. Its trajectory pulls her forward – her tired feet, her arms that ache and throb, but which now she knows are strong.

I am leaving, she thinks, and the two windfalls in her pockets bump like soft fists against her thighs.

* * *

Once Rachel has passed the old houses, once she has crossed the tramlines at the bend on Staronavodnitska Street and avoided the dogs idling beneath the rowans, she slows down and takes several deep breaths. The smell of warm concrete fills her nostrils, along with exhaust fumes and a hint of dry leaves. There is the apartment block ahead of her, its shadow stretching past the dump bins. Ivan has stopped crying, so she sets him on the pavement and lets him walk a little. His fingers grip hers as he struts and goose-steps across the car park. With every stride he seems more confident of the ground beneath his feet.

When they reach the entrance, she lifts him up and carries him through the heavy doors, nods quickly at the new dezhornaya peering out of her cubicle, then directs her son’s hand so that he can summon the lift.

‘Adeen, dva, tre, chitirye,’ she counts, right up to thirteen, in a funny voice that makes him giggle.

Upstairs on the landing, in the open doorway of the apartment, she pauses. Lucas is out, packing up his equipment at the office, shredding old files. The rooms are silent; the ceiling is silent above her head. She closes the front door behind her and settles Ivan on the parquet before moving to the kitchen to bathe her hand. Only then does she slide the stolen pears from her skirt pockets, sniff their musty sweetness and take a knife out of the drawer to cut away the bruised flesh. She saves the pips in a saucer, thinking she might plant them by the fence on the waste ground or leave them on the windowsill for the birds. The rest she slices into slivers, pale and glistening with juice.

‘Tea time, Ivan,’ she murmurs as she carries the plate through to the living room and sets it on the sofa for her son.

The afternoons are growing shorter already. Soon the women spilling from the trams will dig out their winter hats, but for now the warmth lingers. Rachel stands at the balcony window long after the fruit has been eaten, listening to the slap of Ivan’s bare feet as he cruises down the hallway. He will want his milk soon, she thinks, as she gazes at the trees and roofs of Tsarskoye Selo, as the sun draws itself over the back of the apartment blocks, as the silver ribbon of the river, the gold domes of the monastery and,