‘I just want you to be happy. Is that so very bad?’
Valentina shook her head again, knowing that it was pointless to argue with her mother on the subject of marriage. Liliya believed that happiness was born of security and stability, love had nothing to do with it. That Valentina’s first husband proved to be a homosexual did not in any way make him a bad husband in Liliya’s eyes. He had treated Valentina well and had been generous to a fault; that was good enough. As for Ivan Petrov, Valentina’s second husband, no matter that he was never faithful, that his mistresses were plentiful and young, and getting younger by turn. No, what upset Liliya was the inconvenience of his death, that once again her daughter, no longer in her prime, was a single woman again. What would people say? That she was so careless with her husbands that she couldn’t keep them? Oh, the shame!
Adopting a mournful tone, Liliya said, ‘I pray to God I shall live long enough to see the day when my littlemalyshkais happy again.’
‘But I am happy, Mama. Alastair is a kind and thoughtful man. You will like him, I’m sure.’
‘Then why not marry him? Or hasn’t he asked you?’
‘He hasn’t asked me because, as I keep telling you, it’s too soon.’
‘Too soon, too soon, such nonsense! I married your father,’ another flurry of her hand as she crossed herself, ‘just three months after we were introduced.’
‘It was different back then.’
‘You’re right, it was. In those days we had nothing.Nothing!Barely a rouble between us. When I think of the sacrifices your papa and I made for you and Sergei so we could give you the best start in life, and now this is how you repay us. Thank God your father is not here to witness this day.’
Valentina’s patience was beginning to wane. She loved her mama, she really did, but she could be one of the most infuriating and illogical women she knew, never missing an opportunity to remind Valentina of what she owed her. When the truth was, her mother owed her an enormous debt. Had she really forgotten that it was Valentina, in times of plenty, who had persuaded Ivan to buy this apartment for her?
She went and stood at the long case window that overlooked the tree-lined street. It could be Paris, she thought with a surprising trace of nostalgia. Surprising because she had grown bored of living there, she was more than ready to live somewhere new. She was also tired of being an interpreter, even though she worked freelance so that she could pick and choose the jobs she did.
Her work, and her marriage to Ivan, had taken her to many places in the world, but nowhere really felt like home. With his children, Irina and Nikolai, at school in England, Ivan had taken her to live in St Petersburg. She had enjoyed the summers there, but the long and bitter winters had not agreed with her. She had endured it though.
After Ivan’s death three years ago, which had not left her as financially secure as she’d expected, not with the risks he’d taken and the debts he’d racked up, she had wondered about moving to London to be near her stepchildren who were both living and working there. She decided that wouldn’t be a good idea and returned to Paris to resume her work as an interpreter. She spoke both Russian and French fluently, and passable Italian and German. Her English was also of a high standard, but never quite perfect enough to pass herself off as an English woman.
That irked her, for it meant that like so many of her Russian compatriots, she too would be denied full acceptance by the British, who, thanks to their media, had an inherent mistrust of Russians.
Which was one of the reasons she had made it clear to Alastair that they had to live in a place where English was not the first language. She would not be put at a disadvantage. Absolutely not.
Initially Alastair was taken aback at her insistence, but then he came round to her way of thinking. People usually did. Apart from her mama, that was.
In the street below she watched a black Mercedes swing smoothly into a parking space. Its windows were tinted; such a cliché, she thought, watching the driver push open the door and step out. Why do Russians do it, make clichés of themselves? Money. It all came down to money and the flaunting of it.
She once had to act as an interpreter for a young girl from St Petersburg whose father had presented her with a credit card that was max-proofed due to the obscenely generous limit it had been given. The card, a gift for her eighteenth birthday, came with the instruction that she was to ‘go and pretty herself’ as a treat in Milan. Of course the girl had needed no one to help her; all she had to do was point to what she wanted, try it on and hand over her brand new card, but Valentina had accepted the job; she needed the money after all. Up and down the Via Montenapoleone they had gone, in and out of all the designer stores with a chauffeur on hand to ferry the many carrier bags back to the waiting car – a Mercedes with tinted windows, naturally. Just like the one on the street below her now, and the model Ivan had driven.
Money had become much more important to Valentina since Ivan’s death. She had enough to live comfortably for the time being, but it wouldn’t last forever. To remedy the situation she had taken an extended break from work to go travelling in order to find herself a new husband. She would sooner die than admit that to her mama. She had deliberately picked places where she would come across a different type of man to the sort she usually encountered. To that end, she had scored a bullseye.
Or so she hoped.
Everything Alastair had shared with her about his life in England – the death of his wife, the closeness of his friends and the emotional attachment he had to his home – might ultimately prove to be divisive. Would they be too strong a pull for him and cause him to change his mind?
She smiled at the thought of how easily he had fallen in love with her, how sweet he’d been and how gentle and romantic he was. Quite unlike the usual men she met. Ivan had not been a tender husband. The idea of spending her life with such an attractive and considerate man appealed to her greatly. She would go further than that, she would say that she loved Alastair, as much as she was capable of loving any man.
In her experience, love and happiness could be so fleeting; they were probably two of the hardest things in life to achieve. It was, she had learned, often a choice to allow oneself to be happy. But all too frequently one’s head would put obstacles in the way, would over-analyse a situation and over-complicate things. Why could two people from very different worlds not fall in love and be together? What could be simpler?
The thought of being with Alastair, of making a life together in a beautiful new home, was a dream she wanted to dream. She wanted it more than anything she had wanted for a very long time. They were two grown-up people, independent and with few ties or commitments; why not build themselves a castle in the air?
For most people the fact that they had known each other for so short a time, just three months, was answer enough for why they shouldn’t be contemplating what they were. How could they possibly know each other? How could they know this wasn’t just a holiday romance?
For anyone else these would be sufficiently valid reasons to put a stop to their plans, or at least apply the brakes, but Valentina wasn’t being led by a fickle and untrustworthy heart; it was her head that was guiding her. She knew how Alastair made her feel, and she knew that she made him happy – happier than he’d ever been, he’d said.
She wanted Alastair, and she planned to have him. That was all there was to it.
Behind her, and interrupting her thoughts, Liliya said, ‘Come, let’s not argue anymore. I’ve prepared the samovar, let’s have some tea and then you can tell me some more about this English man of yours.’
That was something the Russians and the British had in common, their love of tea and its cure-all qualities. Valentina suspected she would be drinking a lot more of the stuff in the coming weeks when she flew to England to be with Alastair and when she would meet his friends. She smiled to herself, thinking that day could not come soon enough.
Chapter Eleven
