Elena Vasilyevna, on the other hand, cannot leave the washing machine alone. She climbs the stairs almost daily, arriving after Ivan’s nap to watch the next episode of Simplemente Maria on Lucas’s TV. She’ll skip it if Lucas is at home, though most of the time he’s out and when Rachel opens the door to let her in, Elena bangs on the washing machine with her fist and mutters some curse in Russian.
The TV sits in a corner of the kitchen now – it is too big for the narrow space, but Rachel has balanced it on a box opposite the stove, telling Lucas it is too cold in the living room. This is true, but also she doesn’t want Elena to notice the broken seal on the balcony door. She is still wary of Elena and assumes the old woman wants to nose around the apartment and peer at her private things. Nevertheless, she is learning that Elena’s visits offer a crucial, if temporary, reprieve from the fear that on some days makes Rachel lock herself in the bathroom while Ivan naps. When Elena is around, her son is safe from harm – safe from treacherous hands that might pluck him from his cot, carry him to the open balcony window, dangle him out and let go. Soon Rachel finds herself anticipating Elena’s impatient rattle of the door handle. They cannot speak to each other and Elena wants the volume turned up loud, which always wakes Ivan, but when he’s fed and sitting in his bouncy chair or sliding around on the kitchen floor, the caretaker tickles him with the toe of her felt slipper. Ivan giggles, which sometimes makes him bring up his mashed potato or cough on his bread ring, though mostly the three of them settle down to a tolerable silence.
One afternoon Rachel finds herself offering Elena some coffee. The next day, she opens a packet of biscuits.
Rachel wakes in the night to the sound of dogs barking. She can hear them thirteen floors down, despite the double glazing. They sound as if they are fighting, their yelps and snarls echoing between the buildings and across the valley. Lucas isn’t home yet; he is filing late from the office and as Rachel stares into the darkness the sounds seem to get louder, until she imagines the dogs are on the balcony, though she knows this can’t be true.
In the morning Lucas has returned. Rachel sees him from the hallway, looking tired and unshaven. He is smoking out on the balcony.
‘Christ,’ he says, peering down through the open window. ‘Those dogs have murdered each other.’
‘What dogs?’ she asks, willing him to pull his head back inside.
Lucas straightens up and takes a long drag on his cigarette. His chest expands with the inhalation and he holds it in for three or four seconds before breathing it out.
‘Two of them, down by the bins. They’d been tied together by their back legs. They must have attacked each other or died from exhaustion. Horrible. The caretaker is dealing with them.’
‘Oh, that’s awful.’ So Rachel hasn’t dreamt it. ‘Did you see them last night? The dogs?’
‘Yes, when Zoya dropped me off.’ Lucas flicks his butt over the side of the balcony, shuts the window and steps back into the living room. ‘I couldn’t untie them, before you ask. They would have gone for me. They were half-crazy already. It’s a mess down there. Don’t look.’
Lucas and Vee are lounging on leatherette sofas in the bar of the Hotel Rus.
‘So how’s Rachel?’ asks Vee. She stubs out a cigarette and pushes her fingers through her hair. ‘Did she finish the survey already?’
Lucas lifts his glass of beer, checks it in the dull, flat light from the chandelier above their heads, and takes a sip.
‘The survey’s done, though it took quite a while. Don’t worry – I fed her some numbers. Kiev is a hardship posting, no question. Your diplomat buddies will get their allowance.’
Vee sighs. ‘Did you hear the Finns are opening an embassy in the building next to mine? Sorin told me, though I don’t know why he bothers. Maybe he wants me to get him into some parties.’
‘Hmm.’ Lucas hopes Sorin hasn’t told Vee about his film industry feature, where progress is frustratingly slow. He imagines Sorin accompanying Vee to a party, brushing the small of her back with his bureaucrat’s palm and staring at her cleavage. Lucas can see the serpentine curve of her right breast as she leans back against the sofa and yawns without covering her mouth. What would she do if he made a pass? He’s been playing this game more often lately, eyes fixed elsewhere so as not to betray the inevitable direction of his thoughts: how it would go, how it would feel. Not that anything would happen; if visions appear uninvited in his head, then he is hardly to blame. Besides, Vee would be scathing.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
‘How about a proper drink?’ he asks. ‘Vodka?’
‘Kicking back, are we?’ Vee smiles, raises an eyebrow. ‘Then you should call Rachel, get her to join us. She must be going crazy in that flat.’ She leans forward, her blouse falling open a little. ‘How does she do it? I mean, with Ivan, and you, for chrissakes…’
Lucas looks over his shoulder, searching for a waiter, but the bar is deserted except for a man who is just leaving via the revolving door of the lobby. He steps into the darkness. It’s no one Lucas knows. ‘Yeah, well, it’s been hard for her. Not just Kiev, but being a mother. Her focus has shifted. She worries about stuff. She’s promised me she’ll see that new embassy doctor.’
‘Philip Alleyn?’ Vee pushes her hair back from her face. ‘Seems like a thorough kind of guy.’
‘Right.’ Lucas frowns at her choice of words. ‘Anyway, it’s funny – all of a sudden she’s friends with the dezhornaya – the one who’s been complaining about Ivan’s nappies. She comes up most days to see Ivan, and they watch TV together. Rachel says it’s good for Ivan to be around someone else, though I have to say I’m surprised. She makes it pretty clear that she hates the crap out of me – the dezhornaya, I mean. What is it Teddy calls her? The Baba Yaga—’
‘Hey!’ says Vee, sitting up. ‘That reminds me.’ She slips her hand into the shoulder bag on the seat beside her and pulls out a red-bordered copy of Time.
Lucas glances across, sees the full-page image of a pavement stall. It is a familiar Kiev scene, though only the vendor’s hands are showing: an old person’s hands, fingers bound in dirty strips of fabric, held out as if in supplication. Most of the frame is taken up with the meagre vegetables on a sheet of damp newspaper: a couple of wrinkled carrots, a cabbage or two and, in sharp focus in the foreground, a single banana, dotted with flakes of fresh snow. The text beneath reads ‘Ukraine – crisis or stasis?’
‘Nice,’ he remarks, to hide the dismay that rushes up each time he sees a story about Ukraine that someone else has written.
‘The pic’s one of Teddy’s,’ says Vera, smiling, pinning him with her gaze. ‘Clever boy. He’s made the front cover.’
Rachel is sitting on a hard chair in the new doctor’s office at the British Embassy on Desyatynna Street. Ivan wriggles in her lap and she reaches nervously for his hands. She hasn’t seen a doctor for over four months.
‘So, baby first, then you,’ says Dr Alleyn – Philip, as he has asked her to call him, though she would prefer him to maintain his professional distance. He looks like a doctor, she thinks, with his wiry grey beard, dark, bright eyes and a tweedy tie that swings forward as he manoeuvres round his over-sized Soviet-era desk and lifts Ivan out of her arms. When he speaks his vowels curl at the edges, the hint of a past life in Australia, perhaps.
‘Let’s get him undressed. Seven months, hey? He’s a good weight! Had all his jabs, I take it, eating well…’