“What do you think this is?” he asked as he pressed Play. I heard a familiar sound that I could not place.
“Footsteps on snow,” he said, so pleased that he had captured it on tape. I wished I could take that sound back with me to London.
“Just over for a holiday?” the taxi driver asked as we pulled away from Heathrow, onto the motorway that led to central London. “When are you heading back?”
“I live here,” I said, still surprised to be asked this question, though it happened all the time.
“Pigeonholed by your accent,” Deborah had commented when I had told her I could never escape it. We had fit in so well as children, visiting relatives with our mother who was born in Wales and studied medicine in London. Alone, I was viewed as yet one more foreigner on holiday here.
I dragged my bags up flights of long narrow stairs to the top floor of a row house that I shared with Stewart, Charlotte’s flat mate. Charlotte was still in Bosnia. I flicked the light on, dropped my bags in the bedroom and then wove through a pathway between stacks of old newspapers in the living room, walked down a few steps and along a corridor into the kitchen. Half a dozen bottles of wine — each one almost half finished, as per Stewart’s daily habit — lined the kitchen counter. I opened the fridge. It was empty. Stewart must still be away.
I made a cup of tea and sat in silence. I stared at the phone and wanted to call someone, to hear a friendly voice welcome me back, but I did not really have friends here, just colleagues. All of my friends lived somewhere else. I went to buy groceries and for a swim. The day slipped away.
The next morning I arrived early at work. I went down to the canteen for coffee. Back in our office, I sat at a large desk with my coffee and spread the morning papers across it. I loved this part of the day, the breadth of coverage in the papers here, especially for foreign news. I heard footsteps in the hallway and looked up as my first colleague arrived. I saw his thumb, wrapped in a huge padded white bandage, enter first, then the rest of this man.
“What happened!” I asked. He explained that another colleague had slammed this colleague’s thumb in the door. The reason for the feud and ensuing injury was so complex that I could not follow it, but I did understand that hatred lingered and this thumb — almost a trophy now — marked him as the victim in what he considered an unjust office war.
As lonely as I sometimes felt, I think my Russian colleagues had it worse. At least I now heard my native language everywhere and had relatives in the U.K. My Russian colleagues had left so many family members and friends behind when they moved to London. They only functioned in their own language at work, though I guessed now that Russian world could be small and fraught. Oh well, I would never understand it. I turned back to my paper. Soon our office hummed again. Everyone was back at work.
One morning I sat in my glass cubicle. I heard a conversation between two colleagues that floated in over top.
“He’s been arrested — both men are dead. They think that he might have worked for the KGB, though they don’t know who actually pulled the trigger,” one said.
“Where’s Alison?” asked the other.
“She’s not here. She must be at home, in shock.” I heard many personal conversations at work, but even when I heard each word in hushed exchanges and could not help but piece together private affairs I pretended to know nothing unless directly told. Too curious now, I rushed out of my cubicle.
“What happened?” I asked the men who stood nearby. They said that Alison’s husband, Gagik, had been arrested for involvement in the murder of the visiting Chechen prime minister, Ruslan Outsiev, and his brother Nazarbek.
I could not believe what I heard. I just stood there and listened. I did not know what to say. Our boss came into the room. He looked grave.
“Meeting in five minutes,” he said. Then he left to find others.
In the room next door, a few people sat on desk tops but most of us stood as our boss summarized the facts. The police were holding Gagik and his friend Mkritch on suspicion of murdering Ruslan and Nazarbek. He told us not to talk to the press — an awkward instruction for a room full of journalists.
I lingered in the hallway after the meeting. People stood in clusters and exchanged information. Everyone worried about Alison. No one had been in touch with her. Someone told me that Gagik had worked as a translator for Ruslan and that Alison helped arrange an invitation for Mkritch so that he could travel from Armenia to London.
Deadlines loomed. A producer rushed by. Someone snatched a directory of employee home addresses and phone numbers from a tabletop and shoved it away in a desk drawer. Of course, we’d have to be careful now. Alison’s home address and phone number were listed in that directory, always confidential information, now more confidential than before. We drifted back to work. I sat at my desk and completed a morning assignment my mind only half on it, my thoughts still with Alison.
On the way back from lunch, I showed my identity card as I passed the security desk at the front door, went up to my office, dropped my coat and left for a meeting. When I returned late that afternoon, Charlotte sat at my desk. She was back from Bosnia for a few days.
“Hello,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” I replied. “How did you get in?” I did not really need to ask. Charlotte had enough charm and journalistic skill to disarm any guard.
“They’ve put me on the story. I’m the only one who’s been to Chechnya,” she said. So I was pitted now against my friend. I thought, though, that this served me right after all these years of prying into the lives of others for quotes and information.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything, not that I really know much anyway.” We left the office together, crossed the road and waited at a stop for our bus home. Black cabs whizzed past, faint drizzle visible in their headlights from moisture-laden air not quite filled with rain but more like mist from a cloud. A red double-decker arrived. We climbed the steps up to the top and sat near the front. Below, commuters inched their way home on crowded London streets.
“Do you think she knew about Gagik?” Charlotte asked.
“I wondered about a boyfriend that I had over there, so I’m sure that Alison did as well. But once you know someone for a while the doubts fade. They never disappear, but they slip to the back of your mind,” I said.
“Well, Gagik must have been a bloody good actor,” Charlotte said.
“I know. What horrible deceit.”
“Do you think Alison ever suspected?” Charlotte asked.
“I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that she did,” I replied. “I think he probably used her. Or maybe he was blackmailed and didn’t know what to do.” I asked Charlotte if she remembered Mykola, a journalist in Kiev. She did.
“I remember advice that he gave me so well. He said, ‘Never date a man from here — they’re only after one thing, your passport. I know how they think.’ I thought those words a bit harsh and cynical back then.”