‘You sure?’
‘Don’t drink too much. I have plans for you for later.’
Molly slept for an hour. Aleksey worked through the tea, shared the biscuits with the dogs and read one of his new books. When she woke, he took her into the TV room and let her show him how to work the DVD player, and she chose an animated film she’d seen many times before but never seemed to grow tired of. They sat together on the sofa, and when she was fully engrossed, he asked softly, still in Russian, this language of her babyhood, ‘What’s wrong? What happened at school to upset you?’
Her lower lip began to quiver once more. ‘Where’s my mummy?’
This, Aleksey has not been expecting. He’d anticipated more along the lines ofI don’t like my new teacher,orsome boy was mean to me,orthey made me eat something green for lunch, all valid reasons, he agreed, for a few tears when aged only three. He switched to English.
‘You know this. We’ve talked about this many times.’
‘I invited everyone to my birthday party and Jemima said ask your mummy if I can stay the night afterwards and I said I didn’t have a mummy and she laughed and told everyone and said everyone has a mummy even if they live in France where her mummy does. So where does my mummy live? Can she come to my party?’
‘What has daddy told you about this?’
‘He said she’s in heaven and that she watches over me all the time. Jemima said heaven is a lot further away than France, but you don’t need to change planes to get there. You could fly her home, couldn’t you, Papa? Babushka showed me on a map where she used to live and that’s even further away and you and daddy flew there.’
‘Jemima knows a lot, doesn’t she?’
‘She’s four already.’
‘Ah, that explains it then.’ He toyed with one of her curls, twisting it around his finger. The brightly coloured animals on the screen continued to sing and dance. ‘I bet Jemima doesn’t have a big sister like Emilia.’
‘She hasn’t got any brothers or sisters. Her mummy said never again.’
‘Huh. Well then, she doesn’t have a brother who does all her homework for her in the car on the way home so she gets gold stars, does she?’
‘No.’
‘Does she have two grandmothers who live with her?’
‘No.’
‘Does she have dogs like Radulf and PB?’
‘No. She’s got a rabbit. He’s called Mr Fluffy.’
‘I bet she doesn’t have an Uncle Tim.’
‘She doesn’t know anyone like Uncle Michael.’
He suppressed a chuckle. ‘I bet she’d like Sarah to live with her.’
‘She likes Daddya lot.’
‘She is wise beyond her years.’
‘She’s never met you.’
‘Well, when she comes to your party and sleeps here afterwards, she will, won’t she?’
She bounced up. ‘Can she? Can she really? Daddy said not to ask you because you’d say she was going to kill us all. Oh, please, papa, can she?’
Aleksey wasn’t too sure that he hadn’t just argued himself into taking Molly’s mother in this role, but in puzzling out where his logic had become so flawed he realised he’d very successfully avoided having to answer her original question. Where was Kate indeed? Sometimes, he wished he knew the answer to many such mysteries.
* * *
Ben came back relatively sober. Aleksey suspected he felt guilty about leaving him with Molly so rapidly and readily, but possibly more because of the seriousness of the conversations the three of them had been forced to have on the pretence of a boys’ night out.
