Lucas follows them out onto the balcony. ‘Rachel used to be a picture researcher. Travel books, that kind of thing.’
‘Is that right?’ says Teddy, turning and smiling through the doorway. ‘Who for?’
Rachel tries to relax. She smiles back. ‘Gallon Press. Near the British Museum. No one’s ever heard of it.’
‘They use authors’ own pics, mainly,’ says Lucas. ‘Tightwads. It’s the same problem at the BBC. My lousy World Service retainer nails me to Bush House for all of three hundred pounds a month. I’m sick of peddling short bulletins that get knocked off the schedule by an old fart on the night desk. I need a story I can sink my teeth into – get a couple of solid half-hour features under my belt, something for Radio Four or a piece in the Sundays.’ He takes a swig of his beer, then leans out through the open window and peers down so that Rachel can’t see his head. ‘Smells like burning plastic down there,’ he declares, pulling his shoulders back inside and turning round to face Vee and Teddy. ‘So, what are you two working on now?’
This, Rachel knows, is not the right question. Her husband seems jumpy, vulnerable in front of his Kiev friends. Here they are, Rachel and Lucas, saying things, stabbing at things, both, in different ways, out of their depth.
Vee, on the other hand, gives nothing away. ‘Oh, you know,’ she says, twisting the silver necklace she wears. ‘Rule by decree. The World Bank’s latest doom-mongerings. Those so-called reformers whining about whether foreign films should be dubbed in Russian or Ukrainian – all talk and no action while the grandmas protest outside St Sophia’s and war vets starve along the boulevards. There’s a press conference tomorrow. They’re printing bigger denominations.’ She reaches into her handbag and pulls out a pack of Marlboro Lights. ‘One hundred kouponi, these cost me – and they’re counterfeit. See? The foil’s too smooth. Now that’s a story that won’t end well for some hapless new kid who tries to follow the money.’ She flips the lid with a glossy fingernail and holds the pack out to Lucas. He hesitates, until she turns and looks back apologetically at Rachel. ‘Sorry. God, that’s stupid of me. No smoking around the baby!’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Lucas, quick with his lighter. ‘It’s fine out here. If we shut the door.’ And Rachel sees now why he chose the flat with the glazed balcony where he and his fellow journalists can puff away all winter, guilt-free, even though he promised to give up when Ivan was born. This is his city, his job. These are his friends. Anyway, there are some things that only she knows. Ivan is stirring in his cot in the bedroom and immediately her breasts start to tingle as the let-down reflex floods the vessels behind her nipples. If she doesn’t go quickly, the pads will leak.
Lucas twitches briefly as Ivan breaks into his high-pitched cry, though she’s already on her feet.
‘Can we see him? Will you bring him in here?’ calls Vee.
‘Sounds like an appetite!’ adds Teddy.
‘I have to feed him in the bedroom,’ murmurs Rachel as she slips down the hall.
‘We don’t mind – truly!’
But Rachel is already closing the bedroom door.
Ivan’s face is turned inside out. His eyes are squeezed shut and his mouth is a red cave with its glistening, quivering uvula and hard ridges of gum. When Rachel lifts him away from the urine-soaked cot sheet he stops crying, but his lips are searching and she must be quick. She sits on the bed with her back against the flimsy headboard and her fingers rummage for the clip on her bra. As soon as she peels off the sodden, sticky pad, milk spurts forward and hits Ivan’s cheek. She hesitates only for a second, then bites down on her lip and brings his head towards her.
When Ivan clamps on, she catches her breath and resists the urge to scream. The cracks in her skin re-open and she can see by the dribbles at Ivan’s mouth that the milk is blushed with blood. It’s the pink of her mother’s gelatinous salmon mousse that always made her want to gag. She closes her eyes, her head bent low over the baby as if this might ease the dragging, the burning. And it does ease, after a few minutes, as the pressure lessens and Ivan’s saliva softens the fissures and the scabs.
Ivan is a big feeder and will drain her to the last drop. When his sucking flattens out into a more contented rhythm she brings her knees up to cradle him and leans her head back once more. Milk from her other breast has pooled across her stomach. She doesn’t wipe it away because she doesn’t care, in here, in this private space. Besides, every second is precious now, when the pain is fading and she knows she has two or three hours before she must endure it again. Her own breathing settles. The voices outside are forgotten. Time to sleep, the midwife would say in her sensible, seen-it-all tone. This same midwife told her to put Ivan on the bottle; that she needed to heal before she took her baby to a place with no emergency numbers, no guarantee of antibiotics. But formula milk means using sodium-rich mineral water that might poison her child, or that brown stuff from the tap in the kitchen.
No, the midwife hadn’t understood. Rachel is staying awake. She needs to do the inventory.
She starts with the bed. It is two singles pushed together; chipboard covered with a yellowish-brown veneer like every other piece of furniture in the flat. The mattress is hard and uneven. The blankets are heavy, boil-washed. Behind the bed, a large rug hangs on the wall. Not a traditional piece from Kazakhstan or the Caucasus but a factory-made brown rug with pink and red flowers. Opposite stands a wardrobe with her few clothes hanging neatly, not touching, where she placed them just two hours before. Lucas’s shirts hang beside them, with underwear hidden in a drawer. Ivan’s vests and babygros are folded on a shelf.
Now she turns her head to the two small bedside cabinets. The one nearest Rachel contains her evening primrose cream and her breast pads and contraceptive pills, neatly spaced on the shelf. On top sit two books: her copy of Baby’s First Year full of words such as ‘weaning’, and a novel, Jurassic Park, which she found on the plane. She isn’t in the habit of picking up other people’s things, yet no one else seemed to want it. She will read ten pages a day, she’s decided. This will take five and a half weeks. The calculation helps her relax.
Her eyes shift to the floor. The bedroom, the hallway and the living room are all coated in the same thick, uneven layer of varnish that reminds her of peanut brittle. Lucas says the landlord had it done so that he could raise the rent. The residue clogs up the gaps beneath the skirting.
The floor brings to mind things she cannot see. Under the bed is a pull-out drawer. If she leans over she can reach it, though you always save the best to last if you know what’s good for you so she focuses instead on the large window. This window doesn’t bother her, despite the fact that the glass is smeared, veiled with a sagging net curtain. There’s no balcony on this side of the flat.
Rachel looks down, still bewildered by the sight of her white arms cradling her son with the small brown spot above his right ear that will one day be a mole, his eyelashes like tiny scratches and his pink, almost translucent nostrils. Earlier, in the living room, she had glimpsed Ivan falling. Such visions, she knows, must be dismissed with a sharp shake of her head before they can fix themselves like premonitions, like memories, but Vee had been watching her, so she hadn’t moved. It’s a long way down from the thirteenth floor. Five seconds, she thinks. Maybe six. As the calculation freefalls, the impulse to lean over the side of the bed is something she can no longer ignore.