Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

She shivered, not that she was cold, quite the reverse in fact. The blood in her veins was hot and in a hurry, but her body wouldn’t keep still. It was restless. Her skin felt hungry. It wanted his touch the way it used to long for the balm of ice on a hot summer’s day in Junchow market. It wanted to be beside him. To see his face. To watch his slow smile spread up into his eyes. She’d thought the kisses today would be enough but they weren’t. She was greedy. She wanted more.

She dropped her head against the window pane and sighed. She’d been in a state of waiting for so long, she had forgotten how exhilarating it was to live in the here and now. To have what you want. To want what you have.

‘Chang An Lo,’ she whispered, as if he could hear her.

She touched the glass where her breath had clouded it and wrote his name in the mist. She smiled and studied the flow of letters intently, as if it could magically conjure up Chang himself, her heart banging on her ribs. As she stared at it, her own reflection took shape around it, merging the two, and she shifted focus to examine its features. What did he see when he looked at it? The hair, the eyes, the cheekbones, all seemed the same to her. But was that what he saw? The girl he’d fallen in love with back in China? Or someone else?

And Kuan? There like a spider at his side with every step he took, a living breathing invitation in each hotel room he stayed in. No, not that. Don’t think like that.

Send me the boy. That’s what he’d said. She turned away from the window and noticed it was almost dark in the room.

‘You eat too fast. The pair of you.’

Lydia was seated in the chair. The boy was still on the floor, stuffing bread into his mouth, and beside him the dog had its muzzle in a bowl of kasha , neither coming up for air. She’d heated Edik some soup and warmed the porridge for Misty, then prodded the sleeping boy in the ribs and plonked the bowls in front of them. Edik had gone from deep sleep to eating in less than a blink of an eye. He held the bowl close to his chest, hunched over it, guarding it as he swallowed, and the sight had disturbed Lydia.

‘Edik,’ she asked, ‘what happened to your parents?’

He gulped down two more mouthfuls of soup. ‘Shot.’ He crammed in more bread.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Four years ago.’

‘Why?’

She waited again. Didn’t push.

‘They read a book,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘A book that was banned because it was anti-Soviet.

‘What book?’

‘Can’t remember.’

She left it at that. His hair hung in a pale limp curtain round his face as he started to lick the bowl.

‘Have you lived on the streets ever since?’

‘ Da.’

‘That’s tough.’

‘It’s not so bad. Winter is hardest.’

‘Thieving is dangerous.’

He lifted his head for the first time and his muddy blue eyes brightened. ‘I’m good at it. One of the best.’

I’m good at it. She’d said the same words herself not so long ago. Her stomach knotted when she thought of the risks.

‘Where do you sell the stuff you steal?’

‘I don’t.’ He gave her a scornful look as though she were stupid. ‘The vory do.’

‘Who are the vory?’

He rolled his eyes in exaggerated disgust, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and gave it to the dog to lick.

‘There’s this man,’ he explained slowly, as if talking to a simpleton. ‘He runs a gang of us street kids. We steal and hand it over to him. He pays us.’ The boy thought about what he’d just said and scowled. He made as if to spit on the floor but stopped himself just in time. ‘Not much though, the bastard. Just a few measly kopecks. Some of the other vory bastards pay better, but I got to take what I can get.’

Lydia leaned forward. ‘Are there many boys like you on the streets of Moscow?’

‘Yeah. Thousands.’

‘And are they all run in gangs by vory men?’

‘Most of them.’

‘Who are these vory?’

‘Criminals, of course.’ He grinned and ruffled the pup’s ears. ‘Like me.’

‘Edik, what you’re doing is dangerous.’

‘And what you’re doing isn’t?’ He laughed, an open childish laugh that made her smile.

She wanted to go over and wrap an arm round his skinny shoulders, to give this tough young kid the kind of hug his small frame was crying out for, but she didn’t. She had a feeling he would bite her again if she did. She scraped her hair back from her forehead as if she could scrape from her mind the doubts about what she was about to ask.

‘Edik.’

‘Yeah?’

She reached into her pocket, pulled out a ten-rouble note and waved it in the air. His eyes followed the white note hungrily, the way Misty’s followed a biscuit.

‘Here,’ she said, screwing it up into a ball and tossing it to him.

It was in his pocket before she could blink.

He grinned. ‘What now?’

‘I need you to go to the Hotel Triumfal again and watch out for the same Chinese man. He will pass you a note for me.’

‘Is that all? For all this money?’

‘Take care, Edik.’

He jumped to his feet, grabbing his new coat under one arm and his dog under the other. ‘The trouble with you, Lydia,’ this time his smile was shy, but it leapt the gap between them effortlessly, ‘you’re too easy to please.’

She laughed and felt the guilt shift a fraction under her ribs. ‘Don’t-’

A sharp knock on the door silenced her.

It was Dmitri Malofeyev. He was standing in the doorway of the shabby room in his elegantly tailored leather coat, a white silk scarf at his neck. In one hand he carried a large brown paper bag, in the other a bunch of flowers that looked as if they might be lilies. Where the hell he’d got them in the middle of winter she couldn’t imagine.

‘Hello, Lydia.’

‘Comrade Malofeyev, this is a surprise.’

‘May I come in?’

‘Of course.’

But she hesitated. To let this man with his shiny shoes and polished white teeth into her home was like inviting a crocodile into her bed.

She smiled at him, matching him tooth for tooth. ‘Come in.’

He walked in, his male presence filling every corner of the drab room. ‘So this is where you hide.’

Hide? Why did he use that word?

‘It’s where I live, yes. How did you find me?’

‘Not hard.’

‘No, I bet it wasn’t. For a member of the Party elite, nothing comes hard.’ She said it with a smile.

He returned the smile and with a gallant bow presented her with the flowers. As she accepted them she bent her head to inhale their fragrance and realised they were made of silk. Stupidly, she felt cheated.

‘Thank you.’

Her guest looked round the room with interest. His gaze settled on Edik and registered surprise. Whatever he’d gleaned from the concierge’s tittle-tattle a boy and a dog were clearly not part of the picture. He nodded a greeting of sorts, then reached into the paper bag under his arm, pulled out a pack of biscuits and tossed it across the room.

‘Here, young man,’ he said, ‘take this. And get out.’

It was said so politely that it was impossible to judge how serious he was.

The boy didn’t put out a hand to the biscuits. He just let them spin through the air and fall to the floor with a crunch. He didn’t even give Malofeyev the courtesy of looking at him. Instead he focused on Lydia.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ he muttered.

She loved him for it and at that moment he seemed to become part of her family. Like Chang had said, you don’t need the bond of blood.

‘No,’ she answered and gave him a grateful smile. ‘You can go. I believe you have an errand to run.’