Judith Heneghan - Snegurochka

‘Call us!’ they urge, as Lucas follows Rachel down the stairs. But Rachel has already forgotten the party.

Her baby. She needs to save him. She needs to reach page twenty-seven before it is too late.

The tropical rain fell in great drenching sheets. All the way back to Staronavodnitska Street, Rachel mutters under her breath, sentence after sentence, line after line: see the words, count the words, miss nothing. She pays no attention to the driver who is staring in his mirror or her husband, who keeps asking her what’s wrong. When they arrive at the car park she scrambles out before the car has stopped moving and Lucas is still fumbling for the fare. Inside the building the light shows the lift is stuck on the sixteenth floor, but Rachel is already running up the stairs, gasping for breath, lungs breaking, counting and counting, don’t miss, don’t repeat, page twenty-five, three hundred and twenty, page twenty-six, two hundred and ninety-two. Her legs are stronger than she knows, yet weaker than she needs; they crumble on the last flight so that she half crawls, half drags herself to the landing on the thirteenth floor.

The key is in her pocket. She fumbles and almost drops it. Finish page twenty-seven. Finish it. Elena opened the door… the lizards crouched like gargoyles… the child must be dead …

As she enters the apartment Rachel bites her tongue until her mouth tastes of blood. She must be quiet now, so quiet, for the living room door is gaping wide and all the lights are on. The breeze is cool on her face and she knows the balcony door is open on the other side of the net curtain. A figure is out there, diffuse, indistinct against the darkness of the night. Rachel must slow her own heart and the high-pitched ringing in her ear and not raise the alarm. Like a ghost she moves across the floor of the living room. She hears the old woman murmuring to herself, sees her stoop down. A squeaking noise, something scraping on the lino – what is she doing…

On the threshold of the balcony, poking through the net curtain, a face appears – a plastic, gurning face from a TV cartoon, rolling on wheels. Rachel stares, first in horror, then bewilderment as an old, arthritic hand pulls the curtain aside. Ivan, her baby, is standing in the doorway, gripping the handle of the Donald Duck baby walker Rachel bought at the universam all those months before. Elena is bending over him, ready to catch him should he fall.

‘ Privyet! ’ says the old woman, looking up, and then her face falls and her hands shield the child’s mouth and eyes, because Rachel is leaning over, retching and retching, all the sickness pouring out onto the living room floor, spattering across the shiny parquet along with little spots of caviar, pale fizz and some half-digested perch.

THINGS HAPPEN, DREAMS Rachel. You say, it was like this, and so it becomes that way. You think something, and then it gets stuck if you don’t blink it away. But the stories you tell yourself, they are not fixed, they can be unmade. Anything might happen, or not, or maybe. Not knowing is something you fall into and falling makes you weightless. It doesn’t hurt – not much. Sometimes when you fall the wind lifts you up like a puff of white dandelion seed and then you are clean again, and new.

The ringing has stopped. There is silence, then there is noise, but nothing is constant. Squeaking from the ceiling, a baby crying, a balcony door opening – these things start, they stop and they start again. Elena is there, bringing peppermint tea. Ivan, her child – she can hear he is near.

Rachel tries to sit up. There is someone she must speak to. The man with the black hat made from unborn baby lambs – where is he?

Rachel is sick for three days. Her fever is high, her body is wrung out, yet still she leans over the side of the bed and retches into a bowl.

‘Food poisoning,’ says Dr Alleyn, who pops over to the flat on the second day. ‘Not the worst, but bad enough. Call this number if she’s not better by Wednesday.’ He tells Lucas his wife needs a holiday back home and a visit to her GP when she is up on her feet. He leaves his card, together with some sachets of Dioralyte.

‘Must have been some ropey perch,’ murmurs Lucas, from somewhere near the window.

Rachel is too weak to tell him it wasn’t the fish.

‘Hey,’ says Lucas. He lowers himself onto the edge of the bed near Rachel’s feet. ‘You’re looking better.’

Rachel nods, carefully. It has just taken all her strength to shuffle to the bathroom and back again. ‘I feel empty,’ she says, and it’s true, she is empty – her milk is all gone. She hasn’t nursed Ivan for three days, and now there’s nothing left. Lucas shows her the powdered formula he bought from the pharmacy in Lipki – some American brand she’s never heard of, but the date on the base of the tin is still good and Lucas says he read the instructions, boiled the water for ages, and even found the sterilising tablets Rachel kept beneath the sink.

‘He didn’t like it at first,’ Lucas tells her. ‘But he hasn’t been sick and now he slurps it up from his beaker like a pro.’

Rachel rests her head back against the pillow. Ivan is sitting on the floor by Lucas’s feet, brandishing a rope of cotton reels that Elena has made for him. Her hand reaches through the space until she touches the top of his head. This isn’t how she wanted to wean her son. In truth she hadn’t known how she would do it and the loss leaves a physical ache, as if a piece of string is knotted beneath her sternum and someone is tugging, but it keeps catching between her ribs. Ivan is separate from her now; yet, unexpectedly, the ache of separation is tempered by relief. He survived out on the balcony even though she wasn’t there. If she died now he would live.

‘Where is Elena?’ she asks.

‘Elena? No idea. She was here earlier, though. I know you weren’t sure about leaving her with Ivan, but she’s been a godsend while you’ve been ill. She’s taken the washing away, taken him for walks. Don’t worry – I’ve told her not to take him out on the balcony.’

‘It’s okay,’ says Rachel. ‘I don’t mind.’

Lucas is taken aback. ‘Really? I thought it would upset you!’ He doesn’t know about Mykola’s warning, or the gravity-invoking weight of her own fear and none of this matters to Rachel any more, because Elena has taken her baby out to the edge and proved them all wrong.

‘Look,’ continues Lucas. ‘I’ve been thinking. I said some stupid stuff before you got ill, and I’m sorry. I really am. But you do need to go back to England for a couple of weeks – nothing more, I swear – just a bit of time for a rest and some food that won’t poison you.’ He takes her hand. She doesn’t pull away. ‘Zoya’s been useless – I think a relative died and I’ve got behind with work. Not your fault, obviously. So I’ve booked you a ticket. For next week.’

Rachel blinks quickly, her old habit, the one she has always used to push away difficult thoughts.

‘Anyway,’ continues Lucas, ‘when you come back my story will be finished and we can take a holiday together, maybe down to Crimea like I promised at Christmas. I could get a feature out of it – make it pay for itself.’

‘I suppose.’ So many other things are stretching, twisting, re-forming into a way of thinking that is as yet unclear. For the first time in months Rachel peers out at a pressing, insistent future. England, and the fact of its continuing existence, is beginning to reassemble itself.

ON THE MORNING of Rachel’s departure she wakes early and stands in the kitchen in her bare feet. The sun is already high above the river. She can feel its warmth on her face as she sips her tea. Her suitcases are packed. Ivan’s changing bag is ready. The cupboard is full of dried pasta and tinned tomatoes so that Lucas won’t starve. Soon she will wake Ivan, give him his morning milk and dress him for the journey, but she won’t move until she hears Lucas pull the light switch in the bathroom. Her own stillness calms her. In a few hours she will be in England, knocking on her mother’s door. She hasn’t told her mother she is coming. Neither has she mentioned this fact to Lucas. Baby steps, she thinks. First one foot, then the other.