by Susan Lewis
Watching her as she sat down in the snow to slot her feet into her skis, he tried to work out what he should do. He couldn’t force what was going on in her mind out of her, but the fact that she had turned so cold on Galina these past couple of months and now with the prospect of Rhiannon joining them seeming to bother her so much, he was experiencing an unease that he knew was going to have to be dealt with.
‘Marina.’
Max and Marina looked up to see Gretchen, the ten-year-old Austrian friend Marina had made the day before, standing a little shyly a few feet away.
‘My mother said would you like to come and ski with us?’ Gretchen asked in her impeccable, though heavily accented, English.
Max and Marina looked at each other. Marina’s face had lit up; she clearly wanted to go and since Gretchen and her family had spent the afternoon with them yesterday Max saw no reason to say no.
‘Hi, Gretchen,’ Galina said, skiing to a halt behind the young girl. ‘How are you today?’
‘Oh, I am very fine, thank you,’ Gretchen answered, blinking adoringly up at Galina. ‘How are you, Mrs Romanov?’
‘I’m very fine too,’ Galina smiled. ‘Have you come to ski with Marina?’
‘I’m going to ski with Gretchen and her mother,’ Marina replied stiffly.
Galina looked at her and pretending not to notice her tone said, ‘That’s nice, sweetheart. Did you ask Daddy for some money in case you need a drink while you’re gone?’
Marina looked at Max. Her face was pinched with annoyance that she was being forced to do something Galina had told her to do.
‘Can I go too?’ Aleks asked, looking up from where he was still trying to master the buckles on his salopettes.
‘No, Daddy,’ Marina groaned, before Max could answer. ‘He’s too little and he can’t ski properly yet.’
‘How about coming skiing with me?’ Galina offered, stooping in front of Aleks to help him with his buckles.
Aleks’s eyes sparkled with pleasure, then seeming suddenly to remember something, he looked nervously at Marina, as though he was unsure how she would feel about him skiing with Galina.
It wasn’t the first time Max had seen Aleks look at Marina that way when there was an issue concerning Galina, nor was it the first time that Marina had pretended not to notice. But there was little doubt that the two of them had discussed something, perhaps even come to some kind of pact concerning their secret.
‘I skied all on my own just now,’ Aleks was telling Galina as Max buttoned twenty Swiss francs into Marina’s pocket and watched her ski happily away.
‘Did you, darling?’ Galina smiled, laughing and hugging him. ‘You’re so clever. Are you going to show me how you did it?’
Aleks needed no second bidding and was off Max’s knee in a shot, attempting to jam his feet back into his skis.
As they edged their way back on to the slope Max was strongly tempted to slot his boots into his own skis and tell Galina he’d be back in an hour. In fact he wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t, except his concern for Marina and her mention of Rhiannon seemed to be holding him to his chair. Had Galina and Marina spent any time alone together, Max might have suspected Galina of planting the fear in an effort to safeguard her position. But since she’d arrived, Marina had flatly refused to be alone with Galina, even for a minute, and now Max couldn’t help but ask himself if Marina was feeling the same kind of fear she’d experienced the night her mother died. He hoped to God not, because if she was, all his worst nightmares were about to come true.
Feeling the tension increase in his head, he squinted his eyes towards the sun and followed the progress of a cable car as it glided into the remote spruce-covered mountain tops. Earlier, while the children were having their breakfast, he and Galina had skied the black runs together, urging themselves to greater and more reckless speeds as their skis juddered over the uneven surface and soared over precipices, to fly silently down to the next level where the sharp exhilaration of the wind rushing past suddenly picked up again as they landed. They had skied together many times over the years, it was a sport they both excelled at and loved. Carolyn had hated it, which was why she had never joined them.
Turning back to where Aleks was throwing himself happily into Galina’s arms, Max could feel the pounding in his head increasing. Though his main concerns were for Marina, he could feel the choking claustrophobia of Galina’s presence as though it were sucking the air from his lungs. Her behaviour since the revelation of his affair with Rhiannon and the terrible publicity that had ensued had been so out of character for Galina that he couldn’t figure out a way of handling it. It was as though she had shut her mind totally to what had happened and was continuing with their marriage as though there were no lies in the foundations or cracks in the structure. She was unshakeably calm, and collected to a point that was almost religiously strange. She was making no claims either physical or emotional on Max and was so unresponsive to Marina’s rejection that she might almost be oblivious to it. It was as if another woman had taken over her body, a woman who was totally at peace with herself and had no recollection or maybe even knowledge of the psychological torment and abuse that had dogged so much of her life.
It wasn’t that Max had any wish for her to fall apart as a result of his and Rhiannon’s affair; on the contrary, he wished to God that she were strong enough to accept it and allow him and Rhiannon to get on with their lives. As it was, she stood between them like a dazzling white winter sun that permits no one to see around or beyond it.
He sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples. He was a fool to have married her, especially when, as Rhiannon had suspected, he had done it out of guilt, pity, a misplaced sense of protection and a desire to give his children a mother they already knew and loved. But he was going to put it right now and do what Ramon and everyone else had tried to persuade him to do a long time ago.
‘Snowman time,’ Galina said, kicking off her skis as she sat down at the table.
Max glanced across to where Aleks was kneeling in the snow and starting to gather it into a pile. ‘Want some help?’ he offered.
‘No,’ Aleks replied. ‘I can do it.’
Max smiled. ‘Independence,’ he said, signalling to a waiter. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘Just a coffee,’ Galina answered. ‘Un crème,’ she said to the waiter.
Neither of them spoke again as they waited for the coffee to come and either watched Aleks going busily about his sculpting or made a pretence of absorbing the glorious scenery around them. Galina’s frosted lips were curved in the gentle almost rapturous smile she had worn for days now, but the expression in her lavender-blue eyes was shielded by the oval black lenses of her glasses.
‘Thank you,’ she said to the waiter as he put a coffee in front of her.
Max watched her as she picked up the cup and put it to her lips. She was so familiar to him, so much a part of his life, an extension of his conscience, that he could hardly imagine what his life would be like without her. He smiled inwardly, as the thought alone gave him such a sense of freedom as he hadn’t had in years. It surprised him not only to find he felt that way, but that the feeling should be so strong. His eyes followed her hand as she put the cup back in the saucer and he wondered how he was going to deal with his conscience when she’d gone. A horrible sinking feeling made him realize that maybe he wasn’t as able to free himself from her as he liked to think.
Turning to look at him, Galina sighed rapturously, as though sensing and relishing his dilemma. ‘I bet you’re thinking how wonderful it would be if it were Rhiannon sitting here now instead of me,’ she said.
Max’s eyebrows flickered in surprise. It was the first time she had mentioned Rhiannon since the day they’d left London and the kind of remark she’d just made was a Galina he was much more familiar with than the one he’d been living with these past few days. ‘No, I wasn’t thinking that,’ he responded mildly. ‘But I could have been.’
Galina l
aughed and letting her head fall back, she gave a long, low murmur of content. ‘Can she ski?’ she said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So what good would she be to you here, if she doesn’t ski? No, don’t tell me, as much good as I am to you anywhere else.’ She lifted her head to look at him. ‘Is that right?’ she said.
‘If you say so,’ he answered.
Galina picked up her coffee and took another sip. Then setting the cup back down, she started to dig into her sleeve for a handkerchief. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘would it make things easier for you if I were just to throw myself off one of the precipices over there and never be seen again?’
‘It would make it easier for me if you were to stop behaving the way you are and tell me what’s behind the problem with you and Marina,’ he responded.
Galina’s lips pursed at the corners and he was aware of the way he had tensed as he waited for her answer. ‘Marina’, she said, ‘has stopped wanting me in her life, because she knows that you’ve stopped wanting me. Surely you realize that.’
Max’s heart turned over for more reasons than he wanted to face.
‘But of course you’ve never really wanted me,’ Galina went on, ‘you just took care of me because you felt sorry for me and then you married me because you didn’t know what else to do with me. And you give in to everything I want because you’re terrified of doing anything to upset the children’s lives any more than they’ve already been upset because of Carolyn’s death. Am I right? Yes, of course I am. You see, I know you, Max, I know you better than you know yourself, so why are you sitting there trying to figure out how you can tell me it’s over when we both know that you’re never going to do it. You can’t do it, Max, not because you’re afraid I’ll tell the world what happened the night Carolyn died; no, it’s not me who’ll do that, it’s Maurice who’ll do that, and you’d rather die than have . . . Where are you going?’ she demanded as he clipped his boots into his skis.
‘I’m not sitting here listening to this,’ he said.
Her eyebrows rose mockingly. ‘Running away again, Max?’ she taunted. ‘That’s all you’ve done since we’ve been here, you know, run away.’
Max’s dark eyes were flashing with rage. ‘I warned you a long time ago’, he said, keeping his voice low so that Aleks wouldn’t hear, ‘what would happen if you ever tried to blackmail me. Now start believing it, Galina, because I’ll go public if I have to.’
Galina shrugged, apparently unfazed by his outburst. ‘What will you go public with, Max?’ she said. The truth?’
His face was strained with loathing and anger as he glared down at her, then turning away he skied full speed down the hill, putting as much distance between them as he could before he lost control completely.
Watching him go, Galina put her thumb to her mouth and bit off a hangnail. ‘The problem is, Max,’ she said as if he was still there, ‘you don’t know the truth.’
Much later that night, when Aleks was all tucked up in bed and Galina was taking a bath, Max let himself quietly into Marina’s bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. He was much calmer now, having spent the day working off his temper on the slopes and his only real concern now was for Marina.
Her inky black hair and freshly tanned face looked lovely and innocent in the peachy glow of the Forever Friends nightlight she went nowhere without. It was hard to imagine, looking down at her now, that such demons as had, had found a place in her young heart, and Max’s throat tightened with emotion as he felt the impotence of a father who loved so much and didn’t know what to do to help.
‘I’m not asleep, Daddy,’ she whispered, opening her eyes to look up at him.
He smiled. ‘You had me fooled,’ he told her, running a hand over her face and into her hair. ‘Can I get you something? A hot drink? Some milk?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m OK,’ she said.
‘Do you want to talk?’
Shrugging, she looked away. ‘If you like,’ she answered after a while.
‘What would you like to talk about?’ he asked gently.
She shrugged again. ‘Anything.’
He nodded, then taking heart, he said, ‘Do you want to talk about what’s making you unhappy?’
Her eyes remained fixed on the toy shelf beside her bed.
Max turned to see what she was looking at, then bringing his eyes back to her face he felt his heart turn inside out. ‘What is it, honey?’ he said, lifting her into his arms as two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Tell me, sweetheart. What’s making you unhappy?’
‘I can’t,’ she said, her voice almost lost in a sob. ‘I can’t tell anyone.’
‘Sure you can,’ he whispered. ‘I’m your daddy and you’re allowed to tell daddies anything.’
Her arms tightened around his neck and she clung to him as though terrified he would let her go. ‘Marina, sweetheart,’ he said, swallowing hard, ‘you have to tell me what’s wrong. I can’t make it better until you do.’
She continued to cry, sobbing into his neck and clutching his sweater in her hands.
‘There, there,’ he soothed, stroking her, ‘I’m here and I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.’
‘Daddy, I don’t want Rhiannon to come,’ she choked, pressing herself even closer to him.
Max’s eyes closed as the pain of her words cut deep into his heart. ‘She’s not coming, honey,’ he told her. ‘But why don’t you want her to come? Don’t you like her?’
Marina struggled to catch her breath. ‘No, she’s nice. I like her, but I don’t want her to come.’
‘Why not, honey? What are you afraid of?’
Every muscle in his body was tensed with the dread of her answer and he tightened his hold on her as she tried to force her way even closer to him, almost as though she would climb inside his skin if she could.
‘Tell me what’s wrong between you and Galina,’ he said, trying another tack. ‘Does any of this have something to do with Galina?’
The tension that knifed through her body was answer enough. ‘But Galina loves you, honey,’ he said. ‘And I thought you loved Galina too.’
‘No,’ she said, frantically shaking her head. Then suddenly she broke down altogether. ‘I want my mommy!’ she gasped. ‘I want my mommy to come back. Please, Daddy, make her come back.’
‘Oh, Marina, Marina,’ he murmured, only just managing to hold back his own tears as he hugged her tightly. ‘Mommy’s gone to heaven, honey,’ he said. ‘She can’t come back.’
‘But I want her to be here, Daddy.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t want Galina to be my mommy. I want her to go away.’
‘But I thought you loved her, Marina.’
‘No. She frightens me, Daddy. I want her to go away and leave us alone.’
The pain in Max’s heart was almost as much for Galina as it was for Marina, for no matter what was going on between him and Galina it would break her heart to know that Marina was feeling this way. Then suddenly he realized what Marina had said and holding her back so that he could look into her face he said, ‘What do you mean, she frightens you, honey?’
It was a very long time in coming and so broken apart with sobs and fear and desperate pleas for Max not to be angry that the true horror of what she was telling him took a while to reach him. When it did, it tore such an agonizing fracture through his soul that he could only be thankful that exhaustion carried her into an almost instant sleep when she had finished, thereby rescuing him from the need to respond right away. He laid her gently back on the pillow and stared down at her for a long, long time. The love and the pain and the horror were a greater force than he had ever had to deal with in his life. It was twisting his heart with such agony and guilt as he knew already could never be healed. Carolyn had tried so many times to warn him and he, fool that he was, had never listened.
Outside on the landing he stopped and turned to the window. The night was blue-grey and silvery
white. Giant snowflakes floated through the darkness, blowing randomly in the wind and vanishing in a crystalline carpet of ice. The trees, burdened with snow, loomed in the darkness like fairy-tale monsters. Max’s heart flipped as he thought of the phantoms that had haunted his daughter’s life, of all the fear and suffering he could have spared her, if only he’d known.
Hearing Galina singing in the bedroom, he turned and walked away, descending the stairs swiftly and going to pour himself a drink. His hands were trembling; the desire to kill her was stronger than any other emotion he had experienced that night. Minutes ticked by, then snatching up the phone he dialled Ramon’s number. ‘1 want her out of my life,’ he said in a voice that shook with anger and pain. ‘I want her out now.’
Chapter 27
RHIANNON AND LIZZY were sitting quietly on the side of a hillock gazing down at the indolent comings and goings at Perlatonga’s waterhole. A pair of Marabou storks were drinking now, while a few feet away a bad-tempered bush pig fussed and fidgeted around her brood as they tumbled about in the mud. On the opposite bank a tired old hippopotamus lay dozing in the late afternoon sun, apparently untroubled by the screeching gaggle of baboons somersaulting through the trees nearby.
‘It’s not hard to see why you love it here,’ Rhiannon said, following the graceful flight of a cormorant as it rose from an overhanging branch. ‘It’s so peaceful and fascinating – I can’t imagine ever getting tired of watching it all.’
Lizzy smiled. ‘I know,’ she sighed, leaning back on her elbows, ‘all this and Andy too. What more could a girl want?’ Her eyes came round to Rhiannon’s. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t very tactful.’
