Snegurochka Judith Heneghan (most read book in the world .txt) 📖

says Teddy, stirring his coffee with his finger. ‘But here you are, out and about, no Lucas in tow, doing your thing, getting a job . . .’

‘It’s not a proper job,’ says Rachel. ‘Only collecting prices. It seems a bit pointless, really. They’ll have changed again by tomorrow.’

‘Dear Rachel,’ says Teddy, mock sighing, rolling his eyes. ‘You’re already infected.’

‘What do you mean?’ asks Rachel.

‘I mean you’ve picked up Expat Disease. It’s the wall we all hit. And then you have to decide. You can sink into the system, tie yourself up in red tape and grow cynical and sticky with all the misery and corruption, even when you tell yourself you’re above it all.’

‘Or?’

‘You say fuck it, and have a good time!’

Rachel is silent for a moment. ‘I just meant the price rises,’ she says.

‘Ha!’ Teddy smiles. ‘So – this survey. You ought to be careful. If I were you I’d just make it all up, because the kiosks have always been compromised, but now the gangsters are deep in every fancy import store. You’ve seen them – the thugs in their shell suits, the money men in fancy tailoring and cashmere coats. No price tags or bar codes. I mean,’ he glances at Karl with just the hint of a wink – ‘take a Max Factor lipstick. Eight bucks back home in Kalamazoo. Here, fifteen? Twenty? And it’s still fake.’

‘I’m supposed to give a store name, or at least a location,’ says Rachel.

Now Teddy is leaning back and reaching into a drawer behind them. He rummages a little, then extracts a shiny black cylinder of lipstick and places it on the table in front of her. The Max Factor brand name is embossed in gold on the lid.

‘Special for you, ten dollars, Café Karl!’ says Teddy with an exaggerated salesman’s drawl.

Ivan lurches forward and grabs hold of the lipstick, almost hitting his chin on the edge of the table. Rachel prises it from his hand before he can jam it in his mouth, then puts it down, out of reach.

‘Shame it’s not my shade!’ she says, brightly, needing to know that Teddy is still joking.

Teddy nods, then smiles as he always does.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Hey, that little tyrant looks hungry. Let me know when you’re ready to go home.’

* * *

By the time Rachel returns to Staronavodnitska Street, Ivan is howling. He’s thirsty, and his nappy is bloated and sagging inside his snowsuit. She prays that the lift is working, that she won’t have to climb the stairs. Her need to count the depleting pile of Pampers beneath her bed is making her heart race.

She navigates the double doors of the entrance by pushing backwards with her hip and rocking the buggy wheels over the metal grate. As they rattle into the foyer, she remembers she’s forgotten to knock the snow off the wheels. Clumps of blackened ice drop in her wake as she hurries across the floor. She’ll have to be quick so that the caretaker won’t catch her. Ivan’s wails echo around the walls, but the lift is ahead of her now, yawning open, its interior empty like the vertical box that the magician’s assistant climbs into before the door is locked and trick swords are thrust through its sides. It’s all right, she thinks, we’ll make it. Then as she approaches the toneless bell pings and a weak light glows above her head. Someone on the ninth floor has just called the lift, so she shunts the pushchair quickly over the threshold. This is a mistake. The scuffed brown doors make a grinding noise and judder towards each other. Before she can pull back, they clamp against the metal frame. The pushchair is trapped.

Rachel tugs, so hard that an onion from the string dangling down from the handle breaks off and rolls out into the middle of the foyer. She stabs at the buttons on the control panel as her mind floods with visions of her son’s head crushed beneath the lintel as the lift starts to rise. Then sense kicks in and she stoops forward, releases the straps and lifts Ivan out of his seat. Holding him against her shoulder, she yanks again at the pushchair. The frame is stuck tight. Ivan’s feet scrabble for a purchase beneath her ribs. Perhaps she should simply abandon the pushchair and take the stairs. But what if someone else removes the pushchair? She can’t manage without it. There is only one thing to do. She’ll have to find the caretaker.

The caretaker – Teddy called her something. Baba Yaga. Well, Rachel doesn’t believe in witches, though the old woman clearly sees herself as some kind of spy. In the old days, she thinks, the caretaker must have been paid to listen and watch and poke through the rubbish. If you spoke against the Party, she’d have heard it. If you hoarded fuel, she’d have smelled it and if you took a lover, well, she’d have sniffed that out, too. Now, Lucas says, no one is rewarded for whispering any more. But what if other people’s business is all you know, and searching out weakness is what makes you feel strong? That old woman, she sits in her little hidey-hole across the foyer and purses her lips whenever Rachel walks by, wagging her finger like a stick to beat the bad wife who dares to leave her flat and flaunt her baby as if she’s proud of him, proud of what she’s produced. They’re everywhere, these crones, barren with secrets, berating her on the trolleybus or in the bread shop or murmuring and crossing themselves outside the cathedrals and the churches, tugging at her hair when she doesn’t cover her head and kicking the pushchair when she wheels it across the painted floor to show Ivan the candles at the back of those dark, cloying shrines….

Ivan has stopped crying. The only sound is her breathing, shallow and rapid. Rachel turns towards the caretaker’s cubicle. It has a glass front. A curtain strung on