he would terminate the conversation. ‘I am trying...’ she pleaded.
‘I know,’ he said, and instead of telling her off he took her hand.
Roman had known this would be a difficult conversation, which was why he hadn’t wanted to go there tonight. His reaction would be just the same if Anya spoke of Mika or another lover she’d had.
Soon it would be his turn, to sit lacerated as she told him about Mika, and so for now he kept it at Celeste.
‘She taught me how to hold a fine china cup and how to sit in a restaurant...’
And she winced because their last night had been spent in a restaurant.
‘Remember how I embarrassed you.’
‘You did not.’
‘But I did,’ Roman said. ‘Decorum was part of your curriculum...’
‘I could have shown you,’ she pleaded.
‘But I didn’t want you teaching me.’
‘You let her, though!’
‘Because I did not care for her then. Celeste and I had a deal, two years together, and I intended to use them wisely.’
‘So you answered the ad...’
‘Yes.’
‘And you made love to her.’
‘Sex,’ Roman said.
‘With affection?’ she asked, and then changed her mind. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘You do need to hear this, Anya,’
Roman had decided.
It was time.
‘I was locked in the secure unit for four years. I had no social skills, it is not a part of the orphanage’s curriculum.’
His words were cutting and she nodded her understanding that it still hurt him to recall those times and Roman continued.
‘I remember when I went first to her home. I had never been inside one, not a proper home.’
And she thought how bleak his life had been at the bedsit that he had tried to make presentable for her.
‘Was that the first time you saw her?’
‘Yes, we had exchanged photos and spoken on the phone, but that was our first meeting. Celeste too was shocked,’ Roman recalled. ‘She said, “You look like your picture...”’
And Anya smiled for the first time about the subject.
‘Did you sleep with her that day?’
‘No,’ Roman said, and he held her angry glare. ‘That night.’
‘And?’
‘I would never discuss what went on in the bedroom with you and I shall extend the same courtesy to Celeste. All I shall say is that affection grew. Anya, when I turned up at Daniil’s Libby embraced me. When I turned up at Celeste’s door and she did the same I recoiled.’
Anya could not speak.
‘I wanted to improve myself. Which I did. If you don’t approve of my methods, that is up to you.’
‘I don’t approve...’ she said, and then she closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at him. ‘It was supposed to last only two years, yet it went on for longer?’
‘Celeste found out that she was dying. I chose to be with her till the end.’
And how could she hate him for that?
‘What is your new name?’ she asked.
It was the only question he wasn’t prepared for.
‘Roman?’ Anya begged. ‘Surely you can tell me that.’
It was so hard to, though. ‘I wanted to give my brother a chance of a life without his poor relation on his back. I wanted you to have the life you deserved. I couldn’t turn my back on it all, though.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I was given a new identity—we all are for that first year. Then you get a choice, retain the new one or go back to the old. If I kept my new one, I could never look you up, I could never see my brother again. And I couldn’t do it. I am still Roman Zverev.’
‘So why have you stayed away all these years?’ she asked.
‘Because I never felt ready, because I still thought I would be a strain...’
‘So, what, you had to change before you could find me?’
‘I didn’t do for you, Anya, I did it for me.’
Anya sat there as he stood.
‘I am not going to apologise for Celeste. Get used to that,’ he said. ‘Anya, had we stayed together we would have been as poor as church mice and I tell you now...’ he made a gesture with two fingers to the back of his throat, and her own throat closed as he touched on a painful subject ‘...I could not have put up with that. I would have held you back.’
He was done explaining, and left the table and went through to the bedroom.
He lay on his back with his hands behind his head. He loathed sharing his feelings, he loathed to admit that need for Anya that had clawed at his heart.
And Anya came to the door and she remembered a time many, many years ago.
Flu had swept through the orphanage. In an effort to contain it, all the orphans had been confined to their dormitories and rooms.
Katya too had been ill and Anya had been asked to work in the kitchen. She had taken suppers around on a trolley without the perpetual guard of her mother.
As she’d looked in she had seen Roman, lying on his bed, his hands behind his head.
He hadn’t been sick but had been confined.
The guard had opened the door and she had gone in.
Roman had stared up at the ceiling and had not turned to look, for he’d expected it to be Katya bringing him his meal.
‘One day you will get out of here and do great things,’ Anya had said, and his face had turned towards her.
Anya smiled at the recollection.
He was out of there and had done great things.
He’d done them in his own unique way, and she was proud that he had.
‘How did you get the chocolate?’ she had asked as she had walked towards him, carrying his tray.
He hadn’t answered.
Instead he had smiled.
She had walked into his room utterly innocent, but he had stripped her bare with his eyes. She had walked over, her eyes on his crotch, watching him harden.
His eyes had been on her breasts, which had ached.
‘What time are lights out?’ she had asked.
‘Ten.’
‘Anya.’ A worker had called for her to hurry, but their love had been born by then.
And at ten that night she had lain in her own bed and thought of him, and Roman had done the same as her.
‘You did get out of there, Roman,’ Anya said, and he turned and looked. ‘And you have done great things.’
‘I had to do it by myself, for myself.’
Anya nodded, even if she did not quite understand.
Now, though, she could do as she had wanted to back then. She walked towards him, and he smiled as she stripped herself of her robe.