The woman’s enormous blue eyes opened even wider.
Sophie said, “Not on school premises. It’s against the rules.” Had the woman heard her? Understood her? She had already put a cigarette in her mouth.
“We are outside!” she pronounced. “In fresh air! Ineedcigarette!” But after a second, she took it out of her mouth, unlit.
Sophie looked around the dismal yard. What could she say about it? Valerian was growing out of the brickwork, and the paint on the window ledges was flaking. The pavement seemed to sweat. The presence of such an exotic, glamorous creature against this drab background made the school seem even more inhospitable than usual.
“So,” Sophie started, “this is our playground. The science labs …”
The woman wasn’t listening. She was rummaging in her handbag again. “I take photograph!” she said, lifting a small camera to her face.
“I think that’s against the rules as well …” Sophie blushed.
“To show my daughter. In Saint Petersburg.”
“You are from Russia?” Sophie blurted out. Of course! She should have known! The woman’s voice, her scarf, her charm, set her apart. Her father had always said it was the most romantic country on earth. And anyone could see that the woman in front of her could not have wandered in from some sorry old corner of England. She could only have stepped out of a land of palaces and poetry.
Flash!
“Turn your head to side!”
Sophie, startled, did as she was told.
Flash!
“How old is your daughter?” Sophie asked.
The woman waved her hand dismissively. “Ten … eleven, maybe. Natalya very clever. All her teachers tell me they are blessed to have such clever child in their class. She can do any sums!” The woman snapped her fingers. “Like that! In head!”
Sophie wondered what such a mathematical prodigy would make of Mr. Webb, the school’s only math teacher, who had taken to talking about the insanity of numbers and how they persecuted him.
The woman rearranged her silk scarf so that the oversized designer logo was more apparent. “I tell them it is because I prepare all her food. Finest food. From import. All organeek!” She glanced up at the sky. “Now it will rain. I do not like rain.”
“Well, maybe the science labs —” Sophie began, though the rain had stopped and didn’t look like it was starting again.
“I do not like science labs. Imustspeak with nice English man.Oooocheeetel. This is word forteacherin my language.” The way she pursed her lips as she said the word made it sound like a more fascinating job than Sophie could ever have imagined, possibly than Mr. Tweedie could ever have imagined. “But first … leep-steek! Take me somewhere I can make beauty face.” She puckered up her mouth, and gave Sophie a sly look. “You have room where sleep?”
Ten minutes later, Sophie was still waiting outside her own room. The woman seemed to be taking rather a long time just to apply some lipstick. Eventually, she emerged in a storm cloud of scent and with a determined air.
“Photograph at window,” she said. “Is your father?”
“Yes …” Sophie said cautiously. But why, she thought, had the woman been looking around the room rather than at her own face in the mirror?
“He lives abroad?”
Something in her voice made Sophie reluctant to answer. She hated questions about her father, but the woman’s direct, uncaring tone made it even worse.
“No. He’s …” She hesitated.
“Dead?”
Sophie nodded.
But why did that make the woman smile? Without another word, she turned and sashayed off down the corridor. She did not ask Sophie to follow her.
She had looked, Sophie thought uneasily, almost triumphant.
Sophie paid no attention in French. The dream of her father and the winter forest, the holes in her sweater that had caught Mr. Tweedie’s eye, the strange Russian woman … the day was beginning to feel unreal. Theassistantewarbled on, but Sophie stared out of the window, trying to turn the wet London plane trees into a forest coated in snow. If only she could have gone to Saint Petersburg! She stared hard at a couple of Japanese tourists, dressed in leg warmers and trench coats, with manga-style spiked hair, and half closed her eyes to see if she could get them to become duelists, meeting in the half-light of dawn. Perhaps the taller one could be a poet, if she imagined him with a hat to cover the pink streaks in his hair. And the other one could be a lieutenant, and they had quarreled over a game of cards … no … the taller one had stolen the other’s stallion and ridden it until it was lame …
