The details he didn’t share with his friends was that Valentina had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, that she moved with the ease and grace of a cat, that she shivered when he stroked the underside of her wrist, and that she spoke as though every word mattered. He also said nothing about the exquisite joy, and the profound release he felt when making love with her. Most of all, he said nothing about the complete lack of guilt he felt that he had fallen in love so soon after Orla’s death.
It had come as a relief when Sunday afternoon came and it was time for his friends to leave, all declaring themselves looking forward to meeting the amazing woman who had given him a new lease of life. Those were the exact words Sorrel had used –this amazing woman– and it pained him to admit that he doubted they were genuine. But then so often Sorrel wasn’t genuine; it was always what she didn’t say that was important.
His breakfast eaten and tidied away, and restless once again, he decided there was only one thing for it; he’d take a boat out on the river. At midday Robert Clyde from Clyde & Marshall Estate Agents was due, so he would have to be sure to be back in time to keep the appointment.
The one aspect of selling Linston End that did cause him a pang of regret was knowing that the future he had planned for the house, that of Callum, Rachel and Jenna bringing their own children here one day, would never happen now. He had always liked the idea of continuing the tradition Aunt Cora had started when she had provided him with an idyllic summer holiday on the river, but he had to think of himself, and his own future.
Down at the boathouse, he chose the simplicity of the wooden dinghy; physical exercise would help to work off the agitation he felt. Perhaps his irritable state was no more than a case of cabin fever, having spent the greater part of the last nine months outdoors. Of course his mood wasn’t helped by missing Valentina. How he wished he was back in Sri Lanka with her. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the way they met.
She had been assigned as his diving buddy, and as he’d joked to his friends, their eyes had met through their diving masks.
Except it hadn’t happened that way at all. The truth was, and in spite of all the preparation, he hadn’t been looking forward to going diving; in fact he’d very nearly dropped out after a night of terrifying dreams beforehand, but the group he’d been with had convinced him to give it a go. Perhaps that’s why Valentina, with her tall, perfectly toned, slim body and mesmerising blue eyes, had been given the job of partnering him: what better distraction or inducement?
He’d been under the water for no more than a few minutes when he was stung on the leg by a jellyfish. He’d panicked, flinging his arms about like a fool and attracting the attention of another jellyfish. In his panic, his mouthpiece and regulator came adrift, and suddenly it seemed as though he’d got himself separated from the rest of the group and was surrounded by jellyfish. Try as he might he couldn’t locate his mouthpiece and his breath was fast running out. All he could think of was that he was about to drown; just like Orla.
Then from nowhere came a hand and he felt the mouthpiece being put firmly in place and Valentina was staring at him through her diving mask. While he got his breathing under control, she signalled for them to return to the surface of the water. Was his pride hurt? Damned straight it was!
Once they were back on the boat, and using a pair of tweezers from the first aid box, she proceeded to pull out the tentacles left by the jellyfish. ‘You should apply a hot compress when you return to your hotel,’ she advised. Her tone was brisk, and although her English was good, it was too clipped to be her first language. He had wondered before where she was from, and he wondered again as he watched her, tweezers in hand. ‘Hot water will help to reduce the pain and inflammation,’ she went on. ‘Does it hurt very much?’
‘Hardly at all,’ he lied to the top of her head, admiring the way her long dark hair was plaited and lay like a thick wet rope against the side of her neck as she bent over his leg. ‘I don’t suppose I could repay you for coming to my rescue by buying you a drink, could I?’ he asked. ‘It seems the least I could do in the circumstances.’
She had looked up at him then with her extraordinary blue eyes. ‘You didn’t need to go to the trouble of being stung by a jellyfish to ask me to join you for a drink, I would have said yes anyway.’
What she didn’t know was that it hadn’t crossed his mind until that moment to suggest a drink. In fact it couldn’t have been further from his thoughts. But after that evening, after a leisurely cocktail while watching the sun going down, and then dinner in a quiet fish restaurant overlooking the beach, the water lapping at the sand, he couldn’t get her out of his head. It had been pretty much that way ever since.
He had just rowed out of the dyke and turned onto the main river when he saw a woman he didn’t recognise standing in front of the mill on the other side of the water. She stood for a moment on the lawn to watch him and gave him a friendly wave. He let go of an oar and waved back, then decided to row over and say hello.
Chapter Ten
‘You’ve been with me all these days and only now you’re telling me you have found yourself a new husband?’
‘Mama, I told you, it’s much too soon to talk about marriage.’
‘It’s never too soon! And don’t you think a third time might be lucky for you, that God is providing for you?’
At Valentina’s shake of her head, Liliya Zima crossed herself with a rapid fluttering of her small wrinkled hand, her faded eyes turned heavenward, or in this case towards the high ceiling of her Moscow apartment in Ablina Street, a short walk from Kamergersky Lane, one of the oldest districts in Moscow and once upon a time, home to writers, composers and poets.
Valentina’s mother had lived here in this neighbourhood as a child, when Moscow had been a very different place to the city it was now. During the 1960s her mother had been working as an assistant to a chemist called Konstantin Zima. They were secretly in love and when they were sent on a foreign trip as part of a Soviet delegation to Paris for a scientific conference, they planned a daring bid to escape the KGB agents who were travelling with the group. Their attempt was successful and they were granted political asylum. As defectors they were known from then on asnevozvrashchentsy– non-returnees. The KGB tried hard to lure them home with letters claiming their parents were ill and they must travel home at once, but they had known this to be a trick.
Settled in Paris, they embarked on a new life and it was there that Valentina and her brother Sergei were born. Yet as French as the family made itself, Mother Russia flowed through her parents’ DNA and so it came as no surprise to Valentina that they eventually returned home to their roots. That had been in 2000, the year in which Vladimir Putin took office as the President of the Russian Federation. A year later Valentina’s father died from a stroke.
Liliya may have attended church regularly in Paris, adopting Catholicism for convenience sake, but once back in her native homeland, back into the welcoming embrace of the Orthodox church, she was once again the habitué of old, a daily worshipper at the nearby church of St Ablina, headscarf tied under her chin, a fervent kisser of icons and lighter of candles.
For all her scepticism, Valentina was not without a fondness for accompanying her elderly mother to church now and then. She had even grown fond of the icon corner Liliya had created in her apartment here. It faced east and was positioned in the hallway so that it was the first thing anyone saw when entering the apartment. With its centrally placed cross on an embroidered cloth, along with a collection of small silver icons and oil lamp, and a plethora of other sacred items, her mother kept a Commemoration Book that contained the names of family members, both living and dead, whom her mother regularly prayed for. Valentina had a whole page for herself, as did her brother Sergei, who had tragically died of meningitis when he was twelve years old. The corner contrived to create a spiritual atmosphere that in normal circumstances Valentina did not feel.
This was not her world; this reliance on another being – God or otherwise – to keep her safe, or make all her wishes come true. She preferred to do that herself. And by any means she could. But for all her fierce self-reliance, she would not refuse her mama whatever comfort her faith provided. Religion was one of the few things Communism failed to eradicate, and there had to be a reason for that.
‘Tell me about this man who you say you love but don’t wish to marry? Is he already married, is that the reason?’
‘No, Mama, he’s not married. He’s widowed like me. And I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry him.’
‘Is he rich? Tell me he’s financially secure and can support you!’
‘Yes, I believe he is very financially secure.’
‘So why don’t you marry him before he slips through your hands?’
‘Mamochka, why on earth do you persist in this idea that I must be married?’
