He looked into her eyes, saw her smiling face and the calm of her voice and the ice that had gripped him thawed just a little.
‘My mother was very superstitious,’ Demyan said.
‘Oh.’
Alina took a bite of her scone.
‘Very,’ Demyan said, and watched as she looked at him. He had never really spoken of it with anyone. That note to Alina had been the first time he had shared such a detail. Nadia had had no idea. She had laughed at the old superstitions and had happily placed an empty wine bottle on the table, and Demyan had long ago taught himself not to react, not to show weakness. ‘That speaker last night, I thought for a moment that we must share the same mother.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Alina said, and then blushed because she was talking with her mouth full. She quickly swallowed and took a mouthful of water. ‘Excuse me...’
‘Alina...’ He smiled. ‘Everything embarrasses you. Even when you are being kind, you have to excuse yourself for not...’
‘I know.’ She took another mouthful of scone, just so that she wouldn’t jump in and ask for more information, simply to give herself a small pause, because surely it was too personal to discuss, except Demyan had brought it up. And when her mouth was empty, the need to ask was still there.
‘How bad was she?’ she asked.
Her question wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction and Demyan was grateful for that.
Demyan lay back and closed his eyes for a moment and tried to keep it in, but being at the farm, losing Roman, that speech last night...he couldn’t.
Not today.
‘If I told anyone how bad she was I knew they would take her away,’ Demyan said. ‘So I tried to keep her world safe.’
‘How?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘I do.’
‘Lie with me, then,’ Demyan said, not because he wanted her beside him but because he just didn’t want to see her reaction when he spoke.
He told her, not all but enough to reveal the madness, the impossibility of his world—spitting three times, how you must not speak of a hopeful future, how he had left a school book once and returned to get it. ‘She was screaming and dragged me to the mirror. Everything was bad omens, everything was going to ensure we went to hell. The rituals for her drinking...’ He shook his head at the hopelessness of truly conveying it. ‘There was so much madness.’
‘So, how did you go—’ Alina wondered whether she should even ask ‘—raising Roman? Was it hard, given all you’d been through?’ Alina asked.
‘It was actually easy. I had a very good rule of thumb, I did the opposite to my mother. If Roman was scared of the dark, instead of joining his fear I turned on the light and read a story. If Roman cried, I cuddled him... If he walked on the cracks, I walked on them too... If he spills salt I just brush it off.’
‘Now you can just throw it over your shoulder,’ Alina said, but tears in her eyes marked the solemnity of the conversation. ‘How old were you when she died?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Your father?’