‘Hey, Rachie, Merry Christmas!’ he says, strolling into the kitchen and kissing her on the mouth with the smell of beer on his breath. He produces an over-priced store-wrapped silk scarf, a box of German lebkuchen and, finally, an enormous plastic binliner with a Russian-made baby carrier inside. ‘Don’t read anything sinister into it,’ he pleads. ‘I just want to make life a little easier for both of us.’ The baby carrier is rigid, square, with thick shoulder straps, an aluminium frame and a simple canvas hammock for Ivan to sit in. Lucas had to leave it outside the front door the night before so that Rachel wouldn’t find it.
‘Thank you,’ she says, knowing she has been unreasonable about the Pampers. Lucas would have bought some if he could.
Rachel’s gift to Lucas is a set of mugs she found in a craft shop in Podil. They are rough to the touch, like sandpaper, with an unusual dark grey glaze lining the insides. One of them shatters as soon as she pours hot water into it.
There is a parcel, too, from Lucas’s mother that she’d sent to the office. Socks for Lucas, gloves for Rachel and a hat and mittens set for Ivan. ‘Cashmere! Hand wash only!’ says the scrawl in the card. Rachel strokes the gloves along her cheek and drinks in the pale amethyst colour.
Nothing has arrived from her own mother.
‘Why don’t you give her a call?’ suggests Lucas. ‘You can’t stay incommunicado for ever.’
‘Maybe,’ murmurs Rachel, vaguely. All she had sent her mother was a postcard with a bland greeting in Russian she bought at a kiosk near the monastery. She had tried to please her the previous Christmas when she and Lucas had visited the bungalow. It hadn’t gone well. This year she hadn’t expected a present – not really. But ignoring Ivan was deliberate, and mean.
At midday Lucas nips out to the office. He needs to check in with Zoya, who isn’t answering the phone.
‘Odd,’ he says. ‘She told me she wouldn’t take time off in December. I thought she was saving it for the new year holiday next week. Hey, do you want to come too? You could give that baby carrier its first outing.’
Rachel shakes her head. ‘Ivan’s coming down with a cold,’ she says. ‘I’ll practise indoors.’
Lucas’s hand is on the door catch.
‘You are okay, aren’t you?’ he asks. ‘After last night?’
‘I’m fine,’ she says, with a quick smile. ‘I’m glad you’re home. I’m fine.’
In the evening, Vee comes for dinner. She brings a festive litre of Stolichnaya with a red ribbon tied round its neck, and a knitted toy with stuck-on googly eyes for Ivan that he’ll chew and choke on if Rachel doesn’t remove them first. Lucas fusses over the chicken he picked up in the Bessarabsky market, while Rachel slips the toy into a drawer and looks after the rest of the meal – carrots, red cabbage, onion stuffing, bread sauce made with UHT milk and some last-minute spaghetti. The potatoes she’d left under the sink have gone rotten in the middle.
Lucas jokes that Vee has turned up because she wants to fleece him for stories. Vee jokes that she’s come to see Rachel and Ivan, not him.
‘So, have you started the survey yet?’ she asks Rachel, to prove her point.
‘Sort of,’ says Rachel, draining the spaghetti by tipping the saucepan and holding it back with a knife. A few pale strands slip over the top and threaten to take the rest with them in a slimy cascade. ‘I’ve done the basic fruit and veg and some dried stuff like this pasta… toothpaste and shampoo were easy, but electrical goods and furnishings – I don’t know where to start.’
‘A new place has just opened down off Khreschatyk,’ suggests Vee. ‘A basement store, plenty of stock, German brands.’
Rachel turns to the kitchen table and starts plating up.
‘Teddy says those places are all run by gangsters.’
‘You’ve seen Teddy? God, I thought he’d vanished to some love nest with that new boyfriend of his. Well, he’s right, but honestly, don’t let it worry you. Those mafia guys aren’t threatened by an expat consumer survey. Just get Zoya to run you there, check a few tickets and say you’re looking for the washing machine that your husband has so far failed to provide!’
‘Shut up,’ says Lucas, grumpily, as Vee picks at a tail of spaghetti that has stuck to the pan, then dangles it above her mouth and drops it in. ‘Anyway, Zoya, it appears, went A.W.O.L. while I was away. I couldn’t get hold of her today, and London aren’t happy because we missed a technical inventory, so she won’t be running Rachel around any time soon.’
‘Oh dear.’ Vee smiles at Rachel as she is handed a plate. ‘Then why don’t you fire her?’
‘I can’t fire her. When she’s on form, she’s the best. Trouble is she knows it and takes the piss. She’ll be moonlighting somewhere, probably translating for one of the Nordic embassies…’ Lucas takes a sharp swig of his beer. ‘Anyway, when she is around she’s always so disapproving, questioning my story ideas. She’s ambitious. Probably wants a Ukrainian Service job and a stint in London, but if she expects a good word from me she’s going to have to start providing some proper support.’
‘So,’ says Vee. ‘If I take Zoya out and get her drunk, will she tell me what you’ve been plotting with Sorin? I know you’re working on something!’
Lucas pulls a face of mock pity.
‘Good luck with that. I don’t think she drinks. Or if she does, she’ll drink you under the table. Anyway, I had a great time on my travels, thanks very much for asking.’
‘So what did you discover? Did you go down a coalmine in Donbas?’
‘I did, as it happens. The lift was terrifying – you leave your stomach behind and it’s so fucking deep and black – though, as you’d expect, everything else was stage-managed as usual and I didn’t need to go all that way to hear them deny the stats about stillborn births, unpaid wages and the rest. The whole of eastern Ukraine is an environmental disaster zone, but the old guard aren’t about to roll over and die. Crimea was more fun. I got some ranting vox pops from ethnic Russians and several bottles of sticky Massandra wine, as well as a few bulletins about the Black Sea fleet. It’s a weird mix – shifty, militarised with a seaside café culture. We should fly down there for a weekend, Rach – maybe in the summer. The coastline is to die for. We could stay in one of the state sanatoria, take Ivan for a paddle.’
‘Nice diversion, Lulu,’ says Vee, waving her fork, notching up a stroke on an invisible tally. ‘I’ve not forgotten there’s something you’re not telling me. You’ve got a story you’re keeping secret!’ She turns to Rachel. ‘Hey, you okay? You’re not eating! I hope you’re not on a diet. Have you seen how skinny that Suzie woman is getting? I bumped into her husband at the Interior Ministry, knee deep in shit, I bet. What a creep.’
Rachel remembers something about Rob and his trucks coming in from Finland. Suzie had told her he could get hold of anything. Perhaps he could find some Pampers.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she says. ‘Have some more chicken.’
‘Did you call your mum?’ asks Lucas.
Rachel pinches the skin on the inside of her wrist. ‘I forgot.’
‘Off to Russia. Pregnant.’ Rachel’s mother had expelled her daughter’s news like a pip or a piece of eggshell.
Rachel gazed out of the kitchen window, across her mother’s grey December garden to the bare, diminished shrubs and the bonfire patch with its tide of sticky ash where her father used to burn hedge trimmings and leaves. Lucas was out there having a smoke by the compost bin, flicking his butts into a pile of vegetable peelings.
‘It’s not Russia,’ she said. ‘It’s the Ukraine.’