Page 82 of The Half Life of Valery K

‘You’d better come in, then,’ Valery said, with a heavy coldness sliding through his bones now. ‘Let me make you all some coffee. You look frozen.’

Valery melted some chocolate into their coffee and gave the littlest boy Albert to play with. Once they seemed to have settled, he sat down too. The middle girl took over. She looked very like Shenkov indeed, with dark hair and a lustre.

‘They took him away about an hour ago. They wouldn’t say what the charges were. We, um … they tried to take us to an orphanage, but we ran away.’

‘Good,’ said Valery. ‘Always run. That was exactly right, you did really well.’

‘Will they come after us?’ the eldest said quietly. He must have known that the Lighthouse was thoroughly bugged, because he kept glancing at the light switch. Valery had already put the television back on, and it was casting harsh shadows over them all while the three-in-the-morning maths professor explained quadratic equations on the screen.

‘No. They don’t care where you are, the orphanage thing is to upset whoever they’re arresting.’

The boy nodded, and they all looked mutedly relieved.

‘Did they say what they were arresting him for?’ Valery asked.

‘Contact with political dissidents.’

So, Valery.

‘Right. You didn’t have a chance to call your mum, did you?’

‘No.’ The girl swallowed, her eyes edging over the phone. ‘What if they do care where we are and they hear us on the bugs?’

‘I’ll call her,’ Valery said.

‘But you can’t tell her we’re here, or …’

‘I know, don’t worry.’

‘I don’t know the number,’ she said suddenly, horrified. ‘Oh, God – I’m sorry—’

‘I’ll find her,’ Valery said. ‘Easiest thing in the world, I promise. Which hospital has got Tatiana?’

‘Um, Chelyabinsk, Hospital Number – Three.’

‘Settle in, it’ll take me a minute.’

Valery rang the hospital and pretended there was an emergency at the physics labs. It was enough to fluster the nurses into looking up where Anna was staying, and within a few minutes he had the number and the line was ringing. He nodded to the children, who had been watching him hard. While they were distracted, Albert was investigating someone’s coffee, dipping in the tip of one arm. He flushed a disgusted shade of green when he realised it was hot.

‘Anna,’ Valery said brightly when she said a sleepy and bewildered hello. ‘It’s Valery, from the chocolate factory. Sorry for disturbing you so late. You won’t believe this, though. You know your missing kittens? I’ve just found them, all three. They’re with me now.’

There was a long silence at the other end. ‘God, you did well,’ she said at last. ‘Listen, I know they must be climbing up the curtains, but can you sit with them till I get there?’

‘They’re good as gold. Being terrorised by the octopus, actually.’

‘Is … the tomcat with them?’

‘I think someone else must have decided they wanted him.’

‘Well, thanks. I’ll see you soon.’

He set the phone down. ‘She’s coming,’ he told them. ‘It will take her a little while, though, from Chelyabinsk. Shall we get some blankets in here and you can all sleep by the fire?’

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ the eldest said with painful seriousness. His shoulders dropped. He was thin; he probably spent a lot of his time looking after the little ones, and he had the harried, too-old look that Svetlana always had.

Valery brought in everything and let them settle themselves, aware that interfering too much would only make it worse. He was a stranger, and he could remember being ten; however kind, strangers had made him nervous, and he could well imagine it was even more the case for the children of a KGB officer and a physicist whose work was so top-secret that they had all been raised thinking this was a chocolate factory. While the elder two moved things around, the littlest came up to him shyly and said they didn’t have toothbrushes.

‘I’ll go and find some. I think they have some in the supplies, for the night-shift people.’