The Secret Wife(92)
‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked. ‘We could go for a late dinner.’
She shook her head. ‘Breakfast tomorrow will be fine.’
‘I’m supposed to catch a train to Istanbul in the morning to stay with my sister Valerina. She and Vera live there. But I’ll telephone and say I’ve been delayed.’
‘I’d like to spend some time with you, if possible. It’s been so long …’
She unfastened her hair from its pins and he saw it was almost waist length. It suited her. She came back to lie in his arms, her face on his chest, and he marvelled at how well they fitted together, like a familiar pair of gloves.
A question came to his lips and he blurted it out before he could stop himself. ‘Did any of the others survive? Do you know?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t see how they could have. I only survived because of you – and for a long time I wished I hadn’t.’ Her voice was flat.
Dmitri felt the weight of his old familiar guilt. ‘I looked everywhere for you – all over Russia. When Anna Tschaikovsky appeared in Berlin, claiming to be Anastasia, I went straight there to see her.’
‘And?’ she asked, without hope.
‘Definitely not.’
‘You didn’t go to see any of the people who claimed to be me?’ There was a spark of irony in her voice.
‘I saw photographs. There was little resemblance.’
‘Huh! Such a strange thing to do.’ She tilted her face to kiss his lips, savouring the luxury, then asked, ‘Tell me about your children. You have two, don’t you? What are they like?’
She laid her head on his chest to listen as he described them. ‘They’re in their early twenties, and both at college, where they live in residence. Marta is very popular and has dozens of boyfriends, who call on the telephone or arrive on the doorstep at all hours when she’s at home. Nicholas is more of a loner, like me. I worry about him more …’
He couldn’t think what else to say. The children never confided in him, the way they did in Rosa. He’d catch them sitting in the kitchen chatting about their friends, their classes, but they’d change the subject when he entered. He did not have Rosa’s facility for making them open up.
‘I have a Borzoi as well,’ he added. ‘A beautiful animal called Malevich.’
‘After your army friend,’ she remembered.
He shivered, a vision of what happened to Malevich flashing to mind. ‘He’s a sensitive creature, very smart and affectionate. There’s something about his nature that reminds me of Ortipo. He’s no longer a puppy but he still runs after birds, even though he knows they will take off at the last minute. It’s a game he plays with them. He’s a happy creature.’
‘I loved Ortipo so much,’ she said with passion. ‘You’d be surprised how often I think of her, even now.’
‘How did you come to have her tag with you?’ Dmitri asked, stroking her hair.
She cuddled closer, burying her face so he could hardly hear her words. ‘Those last weeks, we sewed jewels into the seams of our clothes. The tag was in the boning of one of my undergarments. I escaped with a few more gemstones but had to sell them over the years to get by.’
‘Why didn’t you …’ he began, but Tatiana hushed him by kissing him. It was a long, hungry kiss that touched him deep inside and soon they were making love again, this time for much, much longer.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Lake Akanabee, New York State, 10th October 2016
Rebecca Wicks, the editor at Random House, emailed Kitty a couple of days later with a response to her question about Dmitri’s translator:
Our accounts department has two letters on file from your great-grandfather regarding Irena Markova. In the first, dated July 1958, he asks that in the event of his death a monthly payment of $300 should be paid to her from his royalty account, and gives an address in Albany. In the second, dated May 1975, he tells us that Irena has recently passed away, and that his royalties should be held in an interest-bearing account until one of his descendants gets in touch to claim them.
That’s me! Kitty thought, with a start. It felt as if Dmitri expected her to find out about him one day, as if he was reaching out a hand to her from the past.
The second shock came when she calculated that Irena Markova had died forty-one years earlier so that meant she really could be the body at the cabin. The dates fitted. But why would Dmitri have buried her there? Did he murder her? There was still so much she didn’t know about him …
Why had he been so concerned to keep paying Irena in the event of him dying first? The blackmail scenario didn’t fit. She wondered if they had maybe fallen in love after Rosa’s death. Perhaps that was the case, and Nicholas and Marta couldn’t forgive him for it. That might explain the rift between them.
But it seemed implausible that the grandmother she remembered as generous and fun-loving could have been so cold-hearted as to cut off her own father. She must have had a stronger reason. Kitty remembered her mum saying that Marta and Stanley were short of money after Stanley’s business failed. Why did she not ask Dmitri for help? And then it occurred to her that maybe Dmitri had been the one to break off contact. Could it have anything to do with the body found in his cabin? He didn’t want to risk them finding out … Kitty felt as though she was going round in circles.