Judith Heneghan - Snegurochka

She flicks the light switch, but the fluorescent tube spits and dies so she fumbles her way over to the desk lamp Elena keeps on the workbench and turns that on instead.

The bare bulb’s glow illuminates Elena’s sheets of old newspaper and neat coils of twine. It reaches into the shadows, exaggerating concrete uprights and draped washing and the warm, humming bulk of the boilers. Almost immediately Rachel knows she and Ivan are not alone.

‘ Allo… ’ she says cautiously, as something swings backwards and forwards near the base of the far wall, half-obscured by a pillar. Then she hears the sound of tearing paper. Elena must be here somewhere. ‘Elena?’

‘Good morning,’ replies a strange voice – a boy’s voice. It lingers over the first syllable of ‘morning’ as if savouring its unfamiliarity. ‘ Ciao baby!’

Rachel blinks for a moment, gripping Ivan so that he wriggles and complains. She knows this voice: it belongs to Stepan, the boy from upstairs, the boy who stares at her in a way that seems too old for his years. He’s been sitting in the darkness.

‘I’m sorry…’ She takes a step backwards. ‘I didn’t know anyone else was down here.’

Stepan doesn’t speak for a moment. Instead Rachel hears a rustling sound, and then the sudden sheesh of a sneeze. Now she can see him; he is sitting on a tall metal stool, swinging his legs and fiddling with a paper packet in his hands. As she watches he lifts the packet up to his mouth and shakes it to dislodge its contents. She can smell something, too – a sickly strawberry smell, a synthetic tang that takes her back to the formica kitchen table of her childhood.

‘Baby, want some?’ he asks, offering the packet.

‘No thank you. I’m – I have to go.’

‘Why go, Mum?’ The boy swings himself off the stool and strolls towards her. He passes three of Ivan’s vests dangling from a line and she wants to leave, she wants to tell him not to call her ‘Mum’, but she also wants to take the clean laundry with her. ‘You bring clothes here I think,’ he continues. ‘This is your – ah, steeralnaya mashina .’ He nods at the washing machine, its tubes attached to the taps of the sink like a cow in a milking parlour. ‘I know that shop. Okay for shop, but no for Elena Vasilyevna. She like machine, she don’t like shop. She don’t like man in shop.’

Mykola, thinks Rachel, remembering how Elena had spat at the delivery man.

‘You seem to know Elena Vasilyevna quite well…’ She dips quickly under the line and bobs up next to the vests.

‘Quite well .’ Again, the boy lingers over the second word, as if he is tasting it in his mouth. Rachel, uncomfortable, changes the subject.

‘And you aren’t rollerblading today?’

‘No. It is difficult. Before I train in Soviet system, compete with many countries. Learn English! Now, no money. No papers. No compete.’

Rachel is still holding Ivan. She tugs a vest from the line with her free hand.

‘What about school?’

‘No school. I leave school.’

‘But your uncle?’

‘He not my uncle. He, ah – coach.’

Stepan continues to stare, though his cheeks slacken for a moment. Lucas is right, thinks Rachel. The old man is his keeper, or worse. She tries to imagine how difficult Stepan’s life must be and how abandoned he must feel. She’d like to reach out to him, to show him she cares as she truly wants to care, even while he is reverting to his habitual brazen smirk.

‘What will you do?’ she asks, but Stepan is stretching out his arm, offering Ivan the packet he’s been holding. Before she can stop him, Ivan grabs it and brings it towards his mouth. It is only as she pushes it away that she recognises English words, the branding of Bird’s Angel Delight, the same pudding her mother used to make every Saturday, whipping the pink powder with milk until the lumps disappeared and the mixture thickened. There were other flavours – chocolate and butterscotch – though her mother only ever bought the strawberry.

‘From UK,’ he says, ducking beneath the last row of pegged washing. ‘Nice gift.’

‘Stepan!’ she calls sharply but the boy is through the door and gone.

Rachel wants to believe that Angel Delight is another of those out-of-date consumables that wash up, by some circuitous route, in the kiosks by the war memorial. She has never seen it for sale though, and she has scoured the city for western goods. No. Already she understands, she knows that this boy is stealing packages sent from England by her mother.

The line crackles and pops. Rachel pushes the receiver closer to her ear.

‘Mum?’

‘Who’s that?’ The voice, so familiar, makes Rachel’s breath catch in her throat.

‘It’s me, Rachel.’

‘Rachel? What a terrible line. I’m watching the one o’clock news.’

‘Mum… Thank you for sending me things. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I didn’t know.’

A pause.

‘Someone else was opening them. They didn’t reach me.’

‘I see. I thought you must have given me the wrong address.’

‘No, they arrived, but – I had no idea you were sending packages.’

‘Well I thought perhaps Customs were stopping them. You can’t tell.’

‘I’m sorry Mum. How are you?’

‘I’m very well. How is my grandson?’

‘Fine! He’s got long legs, and a gorgeous smile, and he’s sitting! He sits in front of the washing machine, and if I leave the hall cupboard open he pulls all the shoes out.’

‘He ought to be crawling.’

‘He is, sort of–’

‘You’d better bring him home soon. I don’t know what you do out there. I never see your husband on the news.’

‘He’s not that kind of journalist, Mum. He’s radio. Not TV.’

‘Well you know what I think; you should never have gone.’

Now it is Rachel who says nothing. Instead she makes pictures in her mind’s eye, the old habit from childhood, in case her mother can still invade her head. The fifteen hundred miles between them really isn’t so far. Here I am going to lots of parties. See? I have friends here. I am living a grown-up life.

‘Is this call expensive?’ asks her mother. ‘It must be expensive.’

Rachel clears her throat. ‘Thank you for the Angel Delight…’

‘I shan’t send any more. Not if someone else is opening it. Is that the baby I can hear? He sounds fretful. You’d better see to him.’

‘What? Okay – well, bye-bye Mum…’

‘Bye-bye.’

There is silence, then a click as her mother replaces her receiver. Rachel can almost hear her sighing as she reaches for her cup of tea and settles back to watch her programmes. She stares at her three reflections in the mirror above the telephone, at her sagging corduroy skirt with its creases across her hips. Ivan is sitting at her feet, reaching for the edge of the low table. His fingers grip the veneer as he tries to pull himself up, a bubble of saliva shining on his lip.

‘That was your grandma,’ she says, scooping him up before he knocks his chin. There is something about his wide eyes, open, trusting, that reminds her of the hand-written notices on the lampposts on the road up to the monastery: all those flaps of paper, waiting to be torn off, waiting for someone to call the number on the slip, waiting for a connection. ‘She used to be a mind reader,’ she whispers, into his soft ear. ‘But not any more.’

A couple of days after Vee’s party, Rachel wakes up to a ringing sound.

‘Do you hear it?’ she asks Lucas, as he sits on the side of the bed to pull on his socks.

‘That’s tinnitus,’ he says. ‘I used to get it on night shifts when I was subbing. Like a worm in your ear. Bloody annoying.’