Judith Heneghan - Snegurochka

She could skirt around Stepan. She could remain out of sight, but she has things she wants to ask him and it is better to do it here, out in the open, than down in the basement or in the shadows on the stairs.

As she approaches, she wonders what the pair are looking at, for Stepan’s shorn scalp and the older man’s bulging neck both bend towards the ground. She is almost upon them when she sees the chick. It is golden brown and fluffy and it makes little cheeping sounds as it shuttles between them in the space they have flattened out in the grass. Yet what strikes her most is not the chick itself, but the way the two of them use their bodies to fence in the tiny bird. Stepan makes a wall with his legs, while the older man is squatting like a broody, dishevelled hen.

‘ Ciao !’ says Stepan, raising his head. ‘ Cik cik!’

‘Hello,’ says Rachel. She is facing the sun and puts her hand up to protect her eyes.

‘You want to look?’ he asks. ‘Show your baby?’

Rachel glances down at Ivan, who is nodding off in the shade of the pushchair’s canopy. ‘He’s sleeping…’

The older man doesn’t acknowledge her. He is wearing a grey vest and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The flesh below his jaw sags and glistens. He mutters a few words, then puts his hand to the ground, palm up. The chick obligingly steps on to it.

Rachel grips the pushchair handles. She hasn’t spoken to Stepan for weeks – not since she found him in the basement eating the Angel Delight her mother had sent. She wants to make sure he hasn’t stolen anything else, but her courage is quickly fading.

‘Have you seen Elena today?’ she asks.

Stepan shrugs.

‘Well, if you do see her, will you please tell her I need to talk to her?’ Rachel hopes the boy thinks she is going to tell Elena about the intercepted parcels. Stepan breaks off a stalk of grass and sticks it in his mouth; he looks like a drawing she once saw of Huckleberry Finn.

‘Okay Mum. You want baby-sit?’

Rachel frowns. He must have spoken to Teddy. She hates the way he knows what she wants. Before she can contradict him, however, the older man lifts his hand off the ground and curls his fingers around the chick.

‘Don’t!’ says Rachel, stepping forward, imagining the crushing of its tiny breast and bones.

Stepan’s companion takes no notice. Carefully, gently, he places the chick behind him in the long grass and lets it topple off his hand.

‘Cik cik! ’ repeats Stepan as the chick shakes itself off and scoots out of sight.

Now Rachel wants Stepan to go after the chick and rescue it, because she knows it won’t survive alone in the killing fields of the waste ground with its starving strays and sharp-beaked crows. But Stepan doesn’t move.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ she says, trying to sound self-assured. ‘Why did you open that parcel addressed to me – with the packets of pudding mix? Have you opened other parcels, too? I don’t understand why you would do that.’

Stepan sticks his tongue between his bottom lip and his teeth.

‘Someone tell me to,’ he says.

This is not what Rachel is expecting.

‘Who? Who told you?’

‘I don’t say,’ says Stepan. ‘Not someone. I make it up, like story.’

Don’t lie , thinks Rachel. She is still distracted by the lost chick, still looking for movement in the weeds behind him. ‘Was it someone called Mykola?’

Stepan shrugs. ‘No one!’

‘Him?’ she presses, nodding at the older man. ‘Did he make you? What else have you stolen?’

For the first time Stepan looks surprised.

‘Not stolen, Mum. I looking.’

Rachel feels the heat spreading across her neck. ‘Don’t call me “Mum”.’

‘Okay,’ says Stepan. ‘Queen Mum. Mrs Mum. Not you. You not Mum. I tell Elena Vasilyevna you want baby-sit.’

Sensing she is being dismissed, Rachel stares, exasperated, as Stepan lies back in the long grass and drapes his arm across his face. The older man grunts and rolls on to his side.

It isn’t until she regains the path that she sees a small thing skitter through the grass towards the dump bins and hears its plaintive cheep.

Elena is walking up the hill to the universam when she notices the car slowing to a crawl beside her. She doesn’t turn to look; rather, she does her utmost to ignore it. It is a foreign car – silver, with a long sloping bonnet and windows you can’t see through. A gangster car.

Elena isn’t feeling so well today. Her hips ache and now her stomach is upset. She doesn’t want to be out for too long in case her bowels loosen. It’s the new flat, she tells herself, with its strange echoes and hard floors. She keeps the windows open despite the flies, because she knows how the vents work in these apartment blocks and she doesn’t want to breathe in air that has incubated its germs in the lungs of a stranger.

The lights are green at the busy intersection, but the silver car doesn’t accelerate. Instead it continues to creep forward beside Elena, keeping pace with her slow shuffle, holding up the traffic behind so that other drivers lean on their horns. When the lights turn red it doesn’t brake, staying abreast of the pedestrians as they flow across the street.

Elena keeps walking. She needs oil and scouring powder, and may perhaps buy a bag of bread rings for the little boy, but the afternoon is warm and her feet feel swollen and heavy. She turns right down a side street and the car glides right too, hugging the curb, nosing level with her legs.

Now she is beginning to feel breathless. The city is full of fumes and each day the walk to the universam gets a little harder. She stops for a moment and steadies herself beneath a plane tree. The car stops moving, too. The passenger window slides down with a soft electric hum, though because of the shadow cast by the tree she cannot see who sits inside. It doesn’t matter. She never sees, never looks. She bends down as if she is about to pluck a weed out of the soil, but instead she scoops up something in her hand and quickly, awkwardly, throws it into the car: a dog turd, not as fresh as she would like, yet still stinking.

On Saturday night, when Elena taps at the door of the flat on the thirteenth floor, Rachel is having second thoughts about going to Vee’s without Ivan. She arranged the time with Elena the day before, holding up seven fingers and repeating ‘ syem! ’ but now she has more or less decided to send her away. However, as she opens the door Elena thrusts a small carton of peach juice at her and slips quickly inside, divesting herself of her thick cardigan and shoes. The old woman smiles and shuffles down the hallway as if she is the housekeeper or Ivan’s elderly godmother.

‘Ivan is sleeping,’ whispers Rachel, cutting Elena off at the kitchen, miming and pointing to the closed bedroom door. Lucas is in the bathroom so she switches on the television, keeping the volume low. Elena nods and sits down at the table while Rachel, unsure what to do next, sets the kettle on the hob and puts biscuits on a plate. Ivan won’t wake, she reminds herself. He’s become a deep sleeper like his father.

When Lucas appears she asks him to explain that they will be back at ten-thirty and if anything is wrong she must call Vee’s number, which is written down on a sheet of paper next to the telephone.

‘Ten thirty?’ mutters Lucas. ‘This is Teddy’s leaving dinner! Well, I suppose Zoya can bring you back earlier.’

Rachel doesn’t risk a last peek at her son. She closes the front door softly behind her.

‘Hurry up,’ says Lucas, stabbing at the button of the lift. ‘I don’t want to be late.’