On The Couch. Fleur Britten

under self-imposed house arrest, ‘maybe for a whole month’, but now that the knife had been at his leg, it was ‘nice and flat’. Ollie was such a stoic. I was going to miss his calm crisis management.

      10pm suddenly became 7pm—Zhenya was going to come back early. She was waiting outside in her car, with her mother and another cousin, Nastia (short for Anastasia). They screamed when I tried to get in. This was, of course, because I’d got into the wrong car of Buryatian girls. I guess Zhenya saw all of this because I then heard a car horn, presumably to aid my sonar location. But once reunited, no one mentioned it—least of all me in my deep shame. I missed having someone to laugh with.

      We dropped Zhenya’s divorced mother at home, taking the silent and shy 20-year-old Nastia, a ‘customs’ student, back with us. Was I hungry? ‘A little bit peckish,’ I said warily, thinking about sheep entrails. Plus, I’d just eaten half a packet of strawberry sandwich biscuits. Too bad—pancakes, tomato chutney, smetana and Siberian apple jam were promptly laid out on the kitchen table. Nastia and Zhenya folded their pancakes into neat little parcels, so I did too, filling mine with round after round of the most delicious apple jam—crunchy and fresh cherry-sized apples in a tart but sweet sunset-pink apple soup. Zhenya had made it herself; her grandmother did the blackcurrant jam, which they’d mix with cold water for a drink. But that was nothing, her father had built the whole house.