Although the hotel isn’t quite as flash as I’d hoped, it is a good room. Far too big for just me, but it’s nice to be somewhere like this for a change. The bed is huge, wider than a king, and with crisp white linens that contradict the bling of the rest of the place. I like it. The bathroom doesn’t disappoint either.
I fill the huge, deep bath almost to the brim, adding all the fancylooking toiletries that they’ve placed beside the green marble sink. I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I can call housekeeping and get them to bring me some hair dye, but I decide to hold off and get it done properly somewhere. My hair feels like matted rope, but when I slide down into the floral-scented waters, it soon fans around me and begins to soften. I lather on shampoo, and then the whole little bottle of conditioner, and leave it to soak in while I shave my legs and armpits, and give myself a proper scrub with the helpfully supplied loofah. You don’t get real loofahs at home anymore. Something to do with the environment I expect. Not that I give two shits about that. Finally, I run my fingers through my hair, detangling it, then rinsing it in the dirty bath water, which has formed a distinct brown scum around the edges. The water is murky and opaque, as if all the grime and gunk that I have been carrying around with me, unnoticed, has finally leached from my skin.
Wrapping myself in a fluffy white towel, I inspect my face in the mirror and conclude that I look a lot better than I did yesterday. I have colour in my cheeks now, and instead of dark rings and blood, my eyes look as bright and shiny as a pair of new buttons. I think I have the ladies on the train to thank for helping to sort out my demeanour. Perhaps taking Carrie’s identity is what’s perked me up. At the back of my skull, a small bead of worry is undulating under the skin, but it soon works its way back inside. The old Carrie is gone. The new one is right here.
I choose the cleanest, neatest clothes from my mediocre selection, but they are worn and crumpled, and even Carrie’s strappy vest top doesn’t make the grade, but it’ll do for now until I get something new. I pick up my small bag, and make sure I have all my cash, then I head out for some entertainment.
No one pays me much attention as I hurry along the wide boulevards, not having any real sense of where I am going. I have in mind to find a department store, grab a few things from there, but I’m conscious that my cash isn’t going to last forever, and I’m concerned now that none of the cards I have will work. Most of them I picked up in Thailand, from drunken Brits, who’d been waving them at the distractingly pretty staff. I got three in one night, all from the same crowd of idiotic rugby lads who really should’ve known better. I had developed a foolproof scam of standing close to them while they tapped their pin in to the card reader, then pretended I’d been jostled into them, grabbing their waist to stop myself falling over, sliding a hand into their pocket to remove the freshly used card. In most cases, they’d wait until the next day before cancelling, so I was able to withdraw the maximum, twice. I kept the cards as souvenirs, and I marked them with a code on my little piece of paper – the code being a quick drawing of the place I’d taken it, or the person that I’d taken it from.
I stopped doing it for a while, when I met Sam. I’d assumed I wouldn’t need to – that he would be happy to pay for things for me – but that was just something else I got wrong about him.
I have no idea where I am, but I don’t feel like I am in the main hub of the city yet. So far, Moscow is not nearly as pretty as I’d imagined. The streets are grey, the buildings nondescript. I’m not sure what I expected, but I know that when I get to the river and Red Square and St Peter’s Basilica, it will look like all the photographs I have seen online over the years. So far it’s not unlike Irkutsk: harsh apartment blocks, small, soulless squares, bored-looking people sitting on benches, unapologetically drinking from cans of beer or bottles of vodka. The people I pass are hurried, drab and uninterested. Where are the glamorous hooker-types like the girls at the party?
I turn the corner and there is a row of sad-looking shops, the signs old and faded. Even the mannequins in the windows look bored. But the clothes look half decent, and I imagine them to be cheaper here than in the centre, so I go into the one with the least depressing display.
The assistant doesn’t look up from the counter, but I’m getting used to this now. I walk around the edge of the shop, trailing a hand across the hanging garments, stopping occasionally to push the hangers back and pull something out for a better look. I choose a simple cotton dress, navy blue with an anchor pattern, which at home I would laugh at, but somehow seems fitting here. I wander into the centre of the store, where a variety of shoes are on display – none of them particularly nice, but neither are they particularly awful. I lift up a tan ankle boot, checking for the price on the sole. It just happens to be my size, and the other one is there, too – not a common occurrence in any decent shop, in case you pilfer them.
I genuinely hadn’t come in here to steal anything, but the assistant hasn’t even looked up yet, never mind greeted me, and a small ball of annoyance bounces up my gullet, a burning lump in my throat. I’m sick of being ignored. Of being sneered at. I could just pay for the dress and the boots and be on my way, but what’s the point? I’d be far better keeping my dwindling cash reserves for other things.
I take a breath, then ask, loudly, ‘Do you have this dress in a medium?’
She looks up, then looks me up and down. She mutters something in Russian, then disappears through the back. I don’t think about it any longer. Don’t consider that she might have a big, burly boyfriend waiting through there, ready to pounce. I quickly roll the boots inside the dress and stuff it under my arm like a rugby ball, then I hastily leave the shop. My heart starts pounding as I skip down the few steps, and then I start to run.
Still no idea where I am, I run across the street and around the corner, and then I just keep running, faster than I’ve run for a very long time. I didn’t even glance back before the shop was out of sight. I have no idea if she is currently calling the police, or if she has even returned from the back of the shop, but I don’t care. My lungs burn, my thighs burn, and I just pump my legs harder, but only one arm – so I don’t drop my illicit wares. Eventually, when I can’t run any further, I stop, letting the clothes fall to the ground. I lean forwards, panting hard, trying to catch a breath – and then I start laughing. I stand, glancing behind me, but no one is there. No one has followed. I laugh until my chest feels like it might burst, until tears are running down my face.
When I’ve managed to compose myself, I walk across the road to one of the small drinks kiosks, and I realise then that I am on the banks of the river. The Moskva is vast and grey, and I gaze down at it for a moment, the river that gave the city its name.
Then I point to a small bottle of vodka. The kiosk worker hands it to me in a brown bag, and says something I don’t understand. I hand him the cash, and then I head over to a bench facing the river, and I sit down, and finally, I relax.