Squeezy frowned, apparently actually thinking about something for once. ‘Whad’ya mean? My old mum’s grand.’
It was Aleksey’s turn to toe the ground. ‘You never speak of her, or visit her, as far as I am aware.’
‘Well, you know shit about shit, as we’ve established many times, matey.’
‘Harry speaks of her with great generosity and respect, but it did not escape my notice that she married your stepfather only a few weeks after his supposed loss at sea. There are many things that can drag a man down, defeat his desire to survive—or return home.’
Squeezy rubbed his jaw, and Aleksey wondered whether the cretin was remembering a punch, calculating his odds perhaps should he attempt something similar back—now that the pit bull was busy with velvet frocks and embroidery. Then the other man’s shoulders slumped.
‘Yeah, well. I still don’t think babies should be taken from their mums if it can be helped.’
Aleksey nodded. ‘Yes. It is better to ensure the mother dies if you want to keep the baby for yourself.’
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
Later, after Squeezy had delivered his presents, which consisted of him sneaking into the garden in full view of a slightly astonished Harry and hiding something under Snodgrass’s basket while he was in it, and then similarly hiding a gift for Billy under a mattress in the lighthouse, while the recipient watched in fascinated glee, Aleksey reckoned he’d got away with his misinterpreting of the puzzling conversation. The moron had taken his last comment as a joke and was still occasionally chucking over the many and varied ways there were to kill people and get away with it, something which they’d discussed many times and always found a fascinating topic. Aleksey would have joined in with a few of his personal anecdotes from his past life, which Squeezy always appreciated, or even offered up one or two from this new one, but he was thinking about Ben. This was not unusual for him, as he knew he probably spent an inordinate amount of his time thinking about this one man and had done so for fifteen years. Even when he wasn’t thinking directly about Ben, most of his other thoughts were somehow related to him.
He was having a slightly rarer than usual epiphany about Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen, however. He had come to the realisation thathehad been behaving extremely badly all day to Ben, and thatheneeded to apologise. Rare indeed. The annoying thing was, he couldn’t work out why he’d slipped so easily and quickly into the old Nikolas ways of thinking. Sure, he wasn’t currently drunk or high, and he hadn’t killed anyone or lied about anything important all day, not that he could recall anyway, but he’d withdrawn into his protective armour of playing Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen as if he was being attacked. What had Ben done to bring this on? He’d turned Kittiwake into a sanctuary they could retreat to away from the pressures of family at Christmas. He’d tried to make Molly’s Christmas special by inviting her grandparents to be with her. He had Jennifer eating out of his hand—the perfect father to her granddaughter. It was a puzzle, therefore, whyhe’darmoured up. For it wasn’t the old drink and drugs or general mayhem and mischief calling to him this time. It was the shadows. He’d felt a desperate need to retreat into them the moment Ben had told him of this seasonal fait accompli.
Was there genuine threat here but he was too changed to perceive it? This was a worrying consideration. Although he had found it funny at the time, Simon Raiden’s assertion that he was pussy-whipped did occasionally come back to him—usually at moments when there was definitely no such anatomical part present in the proceedings. But, nevertheless, he could acknowledge there was some veracity to the jibe’s essential truth in a different context—he was Ben Rider-Mikkelsen whipped, he supposed. He’d promised he’d change—for Ben. He’d kept to his promises (sort of)—for Ben. But there were consequences to being a new man—mainly that he was no longer the old one. And although he didn’t wish to return to the Aleksey Primakov days, particularly the ones where he’d lain curled and restrained within the Nikolas Mikkelsen box, he sometimes felt a lack within himself. An inability to walk within this world as this new man.
Papa.
Who?
Who indeed?
Having not been much of a companion for either the moron or the dogs on their walk back from the lighthouse, he’d let them pull ahead and watched now as they entered the house while he finished his cigarette in the privacy of the trees. Before he could stub it out, a whirlwind of red velvet came dashing out, holding the hem of her dress high, and flung herself at him. As he’d not been able to pick her up for over a week, he knelt almost reflexively and swooped her into his arms. ‘Papa, tell Daddy Icanwear this dress for Sarah’s wedding.’
He was tempted to remind her that she’d had her nanny in a paroxysm of agitation one day by demanding that Angel Donkey be allowed to accompany her down the aisle. ‘Sarah has made you and Emmy matching dresses. You must wear that one.But—’ He forestalled her sob of protest just in time. ‘You now haveevening wearto change into for the reception. You will be the best-dressed person there. After me.’
‘Boyscan’t be best dressed. You’re just being silly.’
‘Shall I go naked then?’
‘Papa!’ He thought her scream of horror a bit harsh.
‘What does resection mean?’
‘Reception. That’s after a wedding. There will be food and then dancing, I expect.’ He recalled Cossack dancing in the snow paralytic on vodka, Gregory and Anatoly, their arms linked with his, one on either side. Did Christians dance? He wasn’t sure. She wrinkled her nose, playing as ever with his scar, tracing it with one shell-like nail. With a breath for courage, he asked, ‘Will you have the first dance with me now?’ She jerked with surprise, staring into his eyes, her green ones so wide and so vivid that he felt the ground slipping beneath his feet on their beauty.
‘Me?’ On this whisper of disbelief, he glanced towards the house, which was just a dark shape behind the trees and sang softly into her hair, beginning to sway, ‘In the game of life we dance alone, to soundless tunes in darkened rooms.’
Her expression was priceless. ‘That was my mother’s favourite song, and so it became mine when I was your age.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know. It was a Norwegian folk band, and none of us spoke the language. I am doing my best to translate, but it does not seem right now, I will admit.’ He began to spin her and she laughed, flinging her arms out as they entered a glade in the woods. Entirely alone except for this child in his arms, caught in the illumination of the sun emerging to full strength, he began to sing properly. ‘We learned our lines and sang our songs, moved our feet to right old wrongs, we spun dizzy upon the stage, dancing trapped within life’s cage—’
‘—dizzy dancing, Papa, dizzy dancing!’
‘But now I pause and see your eyes, where light shines out not love’s disguise—’ He dipped her almost to the ground and she screamed in glee, her long hair brushing the dry leaves, ‘—and so I stay and dance your dance, I have practised every move. I’ve walked in darkness all my life, out of step, but now your light, it shines on me, and we will love from both those sides, from left and right, dark and light, and…’
‘What does it mean, Papa! What does it mean!’
He laughed as he dipped her again. ‘That bit I do understand now. You and your father have improved my understanding of that language.’
