‘Should we go get something to eat?’
Inside the dubious-looking eatery on the corner, I peel off my sour, wet layers and shiver. Richard lends me his scarf, which smells of him, of wood and ash and sherry.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks, once the food comes.
‘I’m fine. Honestly.’ I stab with my fork at a mushy mountain of peas. Richard’s own mother died daintily over tea at Fortnum & Mason five years ago, the victim of a brain aneurysm. It’s almost hard not to be jealous, when Mum deteriorated over the better part of a decade.
Sometimes it felt like she was going to live for ever, that way.
‘Anything happening here?’ I ask, my mouth half full.
‘Not much. Dad rang yesterday, asked if I’m done yet,’ he says. Richard’s father seems to find it amusing, his son doing a doctorate in Classics, like Richard has to flush it out of his system before he can crack on with becoming a trader in the City, or whatever it is men in their family usually do. ‘He’s still upset that Henry and Olivia split up,’ Richard adds, referring to his older brother and his brother’s long-time, if not lifelong, girlfriend. ‘I didn’t say that Henry told me he’s planning to quit his job and travel Europe this summer.’
‘Right, about this summer.’ I swallow hard. ‘I’m thinking of applying for a short-term project in Moscow.’
His eyebrows rise. ‘I know you wanted to spend some time there, but – are you sure? Have you talked to Windle?’
‘You know how he is. I’ll make it up when I’m back. He won’t care.’
‘I wish my supervisor didn’t care.’
‘It is the best thing.’
Richard chuckles. ‘But would you be home in time for our wedding?’ he says, half joking. He doesn’t sound put off quite yet, but Richard is rarely put off. His sturdiness and his steadiness and his sameness are what endeared him to me in the first place. In Richard’s world, people die neatly of invisible brain aneurysms. They do not self-destruct. In Richard’s world, it is a shock when one’s childhood sweetheart is not, in fact, the love of one’s life.
‘Don’t be daft.’ The peas taste like bits of rubber in my mouth. Maybe I somehow knew Mum wouldn’t be attending our wedding when we first set the date. Maybe I purposely put it just out of her reach, thinking how she’d only arrive late, her face cherry red, how she’d start snoring at the ceremony, arms and legs flung over other guests’ chairs, her body draped over her own chair like a dishcloth.
How she’d still be in her nightgown.
‘I’ll need some extra time in Moscow anyway,’ I add. ‘You know. To let friends and family know about Mum?’ I can’t think what people normally do when someone dies. But people normally have other people.
I shovel in more peas.
‘Where’s the position?’ asks Richard. ‘There’s a rather famous university in Moscow, isn’t there, what’s it called—’
‘Lomonosov. It’s just an idea, really.’
Richard drops his gaze to his own platter of what might have been a shepherd’s pie in a past life. I can see him trying to work it out around the margins. He pushes around a glob of pie and clears his throat. ‘Why don’t I join you?’
‘You just started writing up.’ The peas sit like lead in my stomach. ‘You’re so busy. And maybe I … I don’t know. I need to get away for a bit.’
‘Is that all it is?’
‘That’s all it is.’ If Richard can just hold on for a few more months, then we never have to speak of Mum or Russia again. It’ll be a silent addition to my wedding vows: To have. To hold. To be Rosie and never Raisa, ever again.
‘Well, I’d miss you.’ Perhaps feeling guilty, he adds, ‘I understand. It was just you and Kate, the two of you, for so long.’
The two of us. He’s right. So why did it always feel like I lost my whole family over the course of one single night in Moscow? Like Mum’s blood was spilt there too, all over our living-room floor? Or at least her lifeblood, because she never practised ballet again after we left Soviet Russia. Defected, people would say, but we didn’t defect. We escaped. We fled.
The peal of bells from a nearby chapel tower is a ghostly sound. Bells have rung in Oxford for centuries. That is how long my nights often seem.
Next to me, Richard stirs, but I don’t move. I’ve been an insomniac for years, and often it’s the most awake I ever feel. My father would have understood. He often worked late at night, marking papers, doing exercises. Mum blamed the mathematician in him. It’s not good for numbers to run through a person’s head, she would say, because there’s no end to them.
But if it’s numbers that keep me up, they don’t go very high.
One, two.
Tonight I think about Alexey Ivanov, whom I will meet tomorrow, and how much he and I have in common. The Last Bolshevik was published in Europe in the late 1970s and promptly banned in Russia, forcing him abroad for his own safety. But so much has changed in the USSR since 1985, under Mikhail Gorbachev. The era of political repression appears to be over. Alexey’s memoir was officially published in his homeland last year. He’s being courted by the Soviet government and has even been offered citizenship again.
I could tell him, Look, see, something had to end in order for me to go back, too.
In my case, it was Mum.
Richard lifts his head from the pillow, blinking drowsily. He’s used to this, seeing me wide awake, owl-like, in the darkness. Before I can say anything, he kisses my cheek, soft as down. Richard’s touch is always gentle, always generous; You’re safe here, he’s telling me, in his way, and soon all thoughts of Mum and Russia have faded into the shadows.
Later, the bells are ringing again on the hour. I try to sleep with my face turned into the pillow. Richard won’t be there, in Moscow. Only the shadows.
Alexey’s choice of cafe is cosy and low-lit, catering mostly to university staff and students. The leisurely atmosphere fits him. He seems to do most things easily, sitting back in his chair, flicking at the label of his teabag, looking out every so often towards the glass front of the cafe. Letting the conversation stall.
The quieter and more relaxed he appears, the more harried I feel, like I want to make up for it.
‘I’d love to hear about your new project, Mr Ivanov.’ I wrap my hands around my mug. ‘I know it’s not my background, but I’m a quick learner, and I’m keen. I’ve been doing a lot of preliminary reading this past month—’
‘Why?’ he asks.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I looked you up. You’re in the first year of your DPhil at the Mathematical Institute,’ he says. ‘In cryptography, I understand. Codebreaking. This brings to my mind Bletchley Park. Very exciting. Why are you pivoting to Russian history?’
I was going to lie outright, but I think he’d see through it. I have to hedge.
‘I was born in Moscow,’ I say. ‘My mother has just died. Honestly, it’s made me rethink a lot of things. I want to get to know my own culture and history. My heritage.’
He gives me several seconds to elaborate, and when I don’t, he simply nods. I suppose he’s been surrounded all his life by people who didn’t want to share the long history of their pasts. I almost want to ask him: What is it like not only to share the past, but to broadcast it? To take a roomful of questions on it?
‘Alright. Well, to be frank, I could use a bit of a different perspective,’ says Alexey. ‘Because the task at hand is very different from my usual work. I’m trying to find a woman I used to know. That’s it. That’s the project. We’ll just have to see if I have enough time. Not free time,’ he adds, with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Just time.’
I look down into my tea, let the steam sting my eyelids. Mum’s just died at age fifty-three. My father died at forty-four.