‘What if she hates me?’
The car was pulling up outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel the following day. Gabriela pulled at the lining of the dress Ivan had bought her on their shopping spree the previous afternoon, at the GUM shopping arcade.
‘She’ll love you.’
‘How do you know? Mothers always hate their son’s partners, it’s the law … Are you allowed babies in here?’
She eyed the opulent displays of champagne as they walked through the lobby with its black marble colonnades, her fingers sweating lightly against the handle of the buggy.
‘Will you please stop worrying?’ Ivan squeezed her arm reassuringly. ‘She will love you, because I love you, and because you’re impossible not to love. As for the baby, this is Russia. Anything goes, if you have enough money.’
‘Mama.’ Ivan rose to greet his mother when she arrived in the dining hall, almost half an hour later. She was as short as he was tall, and she seemed to shrink further in his arms.
‘I told you I would send a car.’
‘I like to walk, you know that.’
She went for Layla first. ‘Kotik!’
She held a hand to her chest as she leaned in to kiss her granddaughter, her eyes sparkling.
‘Rad poznakomitsya s vami.’
His mother smiled and turned to Ivan. ‘And she speaks Russian. Where did you find her?’
He was about to answer when the phone rang in his pocket, and as he pulled it out, his expression turned cold. Looking up quickly he said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to take this.’
Briefly, Gabriela heard a woman’s voice at the end of the line as he moved into the next room.
‘Who was that?’ she asked lightly when he came back a few minutes later, his forehead creased.
‘Nothing, just work,’ he said, and she watched him ease back into the role of the prodigal son. When his phone beeped again a while later, he pulled it out, his eyes flashing over the message before he pressed two buttons and she heard the sound of the message being deleted.
‘But won’t you come inside?’ Olga asked, when their car pulled up outside her flat a couple of hours later, the evening sun casting long shadows across the courtyard in front of her apartment block beyond a locked gate.
‘We should be getting back,’ Ivan replied, but Gabriela interrupted.
‘Of course we will.’
Whatever reservations she’d had about meeting Ivan’s mother had been immediately allayed as she cooed over Layla, stopping to look up at them as if they were remarkable for having given her life.
He hesitated. ‘Fine, but we mustn’t be long. We have a booking this evening …’
She was already halfway out of the car, unclipping Layla from her seat.
‘Meet us here in an hour,’ Ivan instructed their driver as he stepped onto the pavement and followed Olga and Gabriela through the gateway.
‘We’ve lived here ever since we moved to Moscow. How many years is that?’ She half-turned to her son as she opened the front door, without waiting for an answer.
Inside, the apartment was modestly furnished: rows of books and a couple of animal skins lined the wall. Through the window in the living room, there was a school building, children of primary age running back and forth in the playground. Momentarily, Gabriela had a flash of memory of Sadie and Callum and her chest tightened.
‘Ivan is always trying to get me to move, but this is my home,’ Olga continued as Gabriela’s eyes ran over the framed photographs lining the bookshelf. In one of them, she saw a younger Ivan next to a woman with dark curls, between them a baby.
‘Wasn’t he handsome?’ Olga said, moving closer behind Gabriela.
‘He still is,’ she replied. ‘Is this …?’
She heard the old woman exhale quietly. ‘That was Masha.’
There was a flushing sound from the bathroom and then Ivan walked into the room. He stopped when he saw them by the photographs. ‘Shall I make tea, Mama? Please sit, you’ll be exhausted by the time we leave.’
Once Ivan had moved out of the room, Olga spoke again, conspiratorially. ‘It nearly broke him. If it wasn’t for his work … And now you, and dear Layla …’
There was a rattling of crockery against wood as Ivan returned into the room carrying a tray, and Gabriela turned away from the photographs, a wave of guilt kicking her in the back.
When Ivan woke Gabriela the following morning with a cup of coffee and a fresh croissant that had been delivered to the door while she slept, she took a moment to understand where she was.
‘I have to go out for a couple of hours, to meet a client for breakfast,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I’ll leave money – and you have Victor’s number in case you need to be driven anywhere.’
‘It’s fine. I’m tired, I might just chill out here for a bit. Won’t we, hmm?’ She directed her final words at Layla, who was kicking her legs in the bed next to her mother.
‘Great. Well, I’ll come and pick you up at 1p.m. Be good.’
She watched Ivan disappear down the street, on foot, his phone clamped to his ear. It was another beautiful day and at the end of the street the spire on the Ministry glistened in the sunlight.
Once he was out of sight, she moved to the front door and applied the chain before moving quickly back through the apartment, into the bedroom where her handbag lay on the dressing table.
Calling out reassurances to Layla, whom she could hear fussing in the other room in a way that suggested she wouldn’t go straight back to sleep, she slipped her fingers inside the bag and pulled out the SIM card from within the tiny tear in the lining that you wouldn’t know was there unless you were looking for it.
It was too risky to hold onto two phone handsets now that she was permanently at Ivan’s, where her belongings were relegated to a single chest of drawers, constantly exposed to Polina’s attentive gaze. So she had started to make do with rotating two SIM cards with one handset, switching between the two numbers, telling Tom she was caught up and unable to have her phone switched on, on the occasions when he rang and it reached her voicemail. Not that he had ever questioned it.
She hadn’t spoken to Callum and Sadie in days and her nerves twitched with excitement as she drew the phone from her pocket and removed the back of it. Taking out the original SIM card and slipping it into the pocket of her dressing gown, she inserted the other, waiting for the screen to light up.
It took a few seconds for the voicemail sign to flash, followed by two texts.
‘Hi love, the kids are desperate to talk to you. Give us a call when you have a second.’
And then, ‘Me again. Everything OK?’
It took half an hour to feed Layla to sleep, her resistance in the face of such pressing time limitations making Gabriela tense with frustration.
When she finally drifted off, Gabriela laid her on the bed and closed the door before pulling out her mobile.
Tom answered after two rings. ‘Hey, bloody hell, we’d begun to think you’d been abducted by aliens.’
‘Is that Mum?’ It was Sadie’s voice in the background and the tears stung at Gabriela’s eyes but she forced them back.
‘Hi darling!’ she called out as if it was the most natural conversation in the world, and Sadie took the receiver.
‘Mum, where were you? We were trying to call.’
Pressing her eyes shut, she replied, ‘God, I’m sorry, baby, it’s been so busy here. I’ve missed you so much, but I’m going to be home in a few weeks.’ The thought was so sweet and so terrifying. ‘Is Callum getting excited about his birthday?’
‘Yes,’ Sadie replied, and Gabriela could tell from her tone that she was trying to protect her from something.
In the background, she could hear crying and Tom’s hushed voice.
‘Is that him? Why is he crying?’
Panic rose in her chest, her breasts tingling with pain.
‘He just misses you,’ Sadie said quietly.
‘Oh, baby,’ she said, pressing her hands against the window. ‘Can I talk to him?’
There was a brief rustling at the end of the phone and then a sniffing sound.
‘Callum?’
He didn’t answer at first.
‘Callum, it’s Mummy. Hello, baby, I miss you too. I was just saying to Sadie, you’re going to be five soon – can you believe it? Such a big boy.’
His voice broke into tears again. ‘I want you, Mummy.’
‘I know, darling.’
‘Why can’t I see you?’
‘Oh, Callum.’ For a moment it was as though her heart might rupture.
‘Hey, tell you what, ask Daddy to switch the call to video …’ Any doubt in her mind was cast aside by the sound of her son’s heartache. Besides, what would be the harm? Ivan wouldn’t be coming back for ages.
A couple of moments passed before she saw her son’s image emerge on the screen. A second later, she saw her own face appear in the corner, and an involuntary smile appeared on Callum’s face.
‘Hey, I want to see.’
It was Sadie’s voice and after a brief wobbling motion, her eyes appeared next to Callum’s.
Gabriela’s heart swelled. ‘Hello.’
‘There you are,’ Tom’s voice said and she felt a stab of pain.
‘Hey you.’
‘Mummy, you look tired,’ Sadie said and Gabriela realised she was still in her pyjamas.
‘Hey, let me see where you are …’ Callum said and at the sound of his voice she faltered, though only for a moment. On the brief occasions she had agreed to video-call from the house in London, she’d had to bunker up in one of the bedrooms and pretend to be in a meeting room or the bathroom, without any immediate access to the outside world to share with them.
Now was her chance to prove to them where she was – to show them that she hadn’t lied.
‘Look,’ she said, moving towards the window and unlocking it. Pushing it open, she held the handset out onto the street and let it linger for a moment on the view of the government building that could not be mistaken for anywhere but here.
‘You see that? That’s Moscow.’
As the words came out of her mouth, she felt a wave of self-satisfaction and relief for the evidence she had finally been able to provide them with. When she looked out of the window and saw Ivan’s face looking back at her, she felt such an intense stab of horror that for a second she thought it might have been her mind playing tricks.