‘Can I ask you about your daughter?’ she asked me then and I felt my body grow a little more rigid at the audacity of her question. ‘Of course, if you’d rather I didn’t—’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No, I don’t mind. What would you like to know?’
‘She was a teacher, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What did she teach?’
‘English and history,’ I replied, smiling a little at how proud I had been that she had chosen such impractical subjects. ‘She had other ideas though. She planned on being a writer.’
‘Really?’ asked Mrs Elliott. ‘What did she write?’
‘Poems when she was younger,’ I said. ‘They weren’t very good, to be truthful. Then stories when she was older, which were much better. She published two, you know. One in a small anthology, the other in the Express.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she replied, shaking her head.
‘Why would you? It’s not the sort of thing that the police would tell you.’
‘No,’ she said, her jaw setting a little at my use of that terrible word.
‘She was writing a novel when she died,’ I continued. ‘She had almost finished it.’
And now I must admit my own remorse at what I was doing to this woman, for not a word of this was true. Arina had never written any poems that I knew of. Nor had she published any stories or attempted to write a novel. That was not her calling at all. It was as if by inventing this creative side to her character I was suggesting that a great potential had been extinguished too soon, that she had killed more than just a person, but also all the gifts that she might have offered the world over the course of her lifetime. ‘There was already some interest, I believe,’ I continued, lost in the embellishment of my own lie. ‘A publisher had read her stories and wanted to see more.’
‘What was it about?’ she asked me.
’How do you mean?
‘The novel that she was writing. Did you read it?’
‘Some of it,’ I said quietly. ‘It was a story of guilt. And of blame. Misplaced blame.’
‘Did she have a title for the book?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I ask what it was?’
‘The House of Special Purpose,’ I replied without any hesitation, frightened by how many truths my lie was placing before her, but Mrs Elliott said nothing, simply turned away from me now, uncomfortable with where our conversation had led us. I felt awkward too and knew that I could not continue with this charade for any longer.
‘You must understand, Mrs Elliott,’ I said, ‘that I do not blame you entirely for what happened. And I certainly don’t… I don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Arina ran out on the road, I am told. She should have looked. It doesn’t matter, does it? None of it will bring her back. It was brave of you to come to see me, and I appreciate it. Truly, I do. But you cannot see my wife.’
‘But Mr Jachmenev—’
‘No,’ I said firmly, bringing my hand down on my knee, like a judge descending his gavel upon the courtroom desk. ‘That is how it must be, I’m afraid. I will tell Zoya that I have seen you, of course. I will let her know of your great remorse. But there can be no contact between the two of you. It would be too much for her.’
‘But maybe if I—’
‘Mrs Elliott, you’re not listening to me,’ I insisted, my temper growing a little more. ‘What you are asking for is impossible and selfish. You wish to see us both, to have our forgiveness, so that in time you may move past this terrible event and, if not forget it, then at least learn to live with it, but we will not be able to do that, and it is no concern of ours how you manage to confront your own response to this accident. Yes, Mrs Elliott, I know it was an accident. And if it is of help to you, then yes, I forgive you for what you have done. But please. Do not seek me out again. And do not try to find my wife. She could not cope with meeting you, do you understand that?’
She nodded and started to cry a little but I thought no, this is not the moment where I become the protector. If she has tears, let her shed them. If she is in pain, then let her feel it. Let her children talk to her later and tell her the things that she needs to hear in order to find her way through these dark days. She still has hers, after all.
It was time for me to go home.
‘You think it’s your fault, don’t you?’
Zoya turned to look at me, her expression a mixture of disbelief and antagonism. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘I think what’s my fault?’
‘You forget,’ I said. ‘I know you better than anyone. I can tell what you’re thinking.’
More than six months after Arina’s death and the normal routines of our lives had begun to reassert themselves, as if nothing untoward had ever happened. Our son-in-law, Ralph, had returned to work and was doing all that he could to keep his grief at bay for Michael’s sake. The boy still cried every day and spoke about his mother as if he believed that we were somehow keeping her from him; her loss, the incomprehensibility of her death, was a matter with which he could not yet come to terms. There were sixty-two years between Michael and me, and yet we might have been twins for the similitude of our emotions.
We had just returned from our son-in-law’s house, where Zoya and Ralph had argued about the boy. She wanted him to spend more nights with us, but Ralph didn’t want him to sleep outside of his own bed just yet. In the past, he had been accustomed to staying over, to sleeping in the room that had been his mother’s as she grew up, but that arrangement had come to an end immediately after her death. It wasn’t that Ralph was trying to keep Michael from us, he simply didn’t want to be without him. I understood this. I thought it entirely reasonable. For I knew what it was to want my child with me.
‘Of course it’s my fault,’ said Zoya. ‘And you blame me for it too, I know you do. If you don’t, you’re a fool.’
‘I blame you for nothing,’ I shouted, stepping towards her now and turning her around to face me. There was a hardness to her expression, a look that had hidden itself away for many years but had reappeared now, since Arina had been killed, that told me exactly what she was thinking. ‘Do you think I hold you responsible for our daughter’s death? The idea is madness. I hold you responsible for one thing only. Her life!’
‘Why are you saying this to me?’ she asked, her voice betraying how close she was to tears.
‘Because you’ve always felt it and it has overshadowed our lives. And you are wrong, Zoya, can’t you see that? You could not be more wrong to feel this way. Remember, I’ve seen how you’ve reacted every time. When Leo died—’
‘Years ago, Georgy!’
‘When we lost friends in the Blitz.’
‘Everyone lost friends then, didn’t they?’ she shouted. ‘You think I held myself responsible?’
‘And every time you miscarried. I saw it then.’
‘Georgy… please,’ she said, her voice straining. I wasn’t trying to hurt her, you understand, but it came from my heart. It needed to be said.
‘And now Arina,’ I continued. ‘Now you think that her death is because of—’
‘Stop it!’ she shouted, rushing towards me, her hands twisted into fists that beat against my chest. ‘Can’t you stop it for even a moment? Why do you think I need to be reminded of these things? Leo, the babies, our friends, our daughter… yes, they’re all gone, every one of them. What good does it do to talk of them?’