Walking in Darkness

language; they won’t learn yours.’

Steve watched her face; not cool now, no, pulsing with feeling, her blue eyes dark with it, so that he knew what she must look like when she made love, the real woman under the ice. Ah, but how thick was the ice? How long would it take to break through the frozen surface – obviously tapping her anger about her country’s history would not be the way!

‘By the time I got involved with it the agency was very successful. Even Vlad was surprised by the way it took off. He couldn’t go on running it alone; he needed to find staff to help him, but he couldn’t pay much so he looked for students. My tutor was an old friend of his, and told me about the job. I was lucky to get it, lots of others were after it, but Vlad had known my father so he hired me. I had to comb foreign newspapers for stories he could use – it was good practice for me, helped me improve my fluency. He didn’t pay much, but even so that money made my life a lot easier. Student grants are barely big enough to survive on back home. We all had to get part-time jobs. When I got my degree, I became a teacher, but I discovered I wasn’t a natural teacher, I didn’t enjoy the job, and the pay was poor, but then most jobs pay very low wages back home. I had to save up for weeks just to buy myself shoes.’

‘I had no idea it was that bad in the Czech Republic,’ Steve said, frowning.

‘These days, some people do quite well, those in business, but on a teacher’s pay it’s tough surviving, especially if you have kids.’

‘Have you got kids?’ he asked, and she knew he was teasing her and laughed.

‘No, of course not. Have you?’

‘No wife, no kids,’ he shrugged. ‘As my mother never stops reminding me.’

‘She wants you to get married?’

‘She’s fixated on becoming a grandmother. Why do women get obsessed with these stages of life? First they desperately want to get married, then they want children, and as soon as the children grow up they want grandchildren – why can’t women just let life surprise them?’

‘We have a sense of the right order of things, I suppose,’ she said, taking the question seriously. ‘A sense of the natural rhythms of life.’

‘But not you? You don’t want marriage and children yet?’

‘First I want to enjoy my job,’ she said frankly. ‘That’s why I left teaching. I didn’t like doing it, and I wanted a better life, it’s so tiring being poor, really poor, never having any money left over from the bare essentials. Have you been to my country? Eaten our food? Grey slabs of meat, potato dumplings, almost no green vegetables or fresh fruit except at prices very few people can afford. And you have to ration your shampoo, can’t afford to go to a hairdresser, have to keep wearing your clothes for years – it wears you down, you feel you’re endlessly struggling, you get very depressed.’

‘The Czechs I’ve met always seem very cheerful, though.’

‘We’re free now – of course we’re cheerful and we have hope, at last. We can look forward to a better life soon. But few of us earn enough. That’s why, when Vlad offered me a full-time job with the agency, working abroad, I jumped at it. He had begun to realise it was no longer enough just to take stories from other sources, he was selling the agency material all over East Europe by then and he needed his own staff out in the field finding stuff with an East European angle.’

‘He sounds like a live wire. I once worked for a guy like that, the year I went into television. He was a documentary producer, Bernie Stein, he was never afraid to take chances, whatever the risk. Men like that don’t come too often.’

She nodded, liking the warmth and affection in his eyes. ‘Vlad is one in a million,’ she agreed, and they smiled at each other, united in their feelings for these giants from their past.

‘Is this the first foreign country you’ve worked in?’

‘No, I was based in London first, for a year, but I travelled if ever a story came up elsewhere in Europe. I had my own car for the first time, too.’ Her eyes were a wide, bright blue with pleasure. ‘Only a second-hand Mini, it’s true, but it was mine! You have no idea what that felt like, to own my own car.’

‘Oh, don’t I? I worked my butt off to earn enough to buy my first old banger. I was still at school and had half a dozen different part-time jobs that last year, just to save up to buy a car. I worked in a store, sweeping floors and burning trash; I cleaned houses, I washed up for a local French bistro . . .’

‘Your parents couldn’t afford to help?’

‘They aren’t rich, although we were never poor, either. But they were going to have to help me out while I was at college. I decided not to ask them for a car.’

Sophie read the stubborn lines of his mouth, the pride in the set of his head and felt a sense of kinship. Americans always seemed to her so rich and spoilt, used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it. This man was different. She could understand this man.

‘You must have felt great when you finally had the money!’

His smile flashed out. ‘Ten feet high. I bought an old blue Thunderbird; the chassis was beaten to hell but a friend re-tuned the engine for me and it lasted me two years. I loved that car more than any car I’ve had since.’

‘That was how I felt seeing all the places in Europe whose names I’d heard all my life but never thought I’d ever see. After years of dreaming about Paris I finally got to sit at a table in a terrace café and drink wine while I watched the world go by, and I’ve floated down the Grand Canal in Venice in a gondola, although I could only afford that once, they charged me an arm and a leg. But it was worth it, to feel, just for one hour, that I was really there, looking up at those marvellous palaces and churches.’

Her breathless excitement had brought a smile into his grey eyes. ‘You’re making me envious! I haven’t been to Europe for a long time. Although I’m going now, of course, to cover Gowrie’s trip.’

She came down with a bump, her whole body jerking into attention as she remembered Gowrie. ‘You’re going with him?’

He was aware of her sharp interest. ‘A lot of us are. If Gowrie becomes the next president, anything he thinks and says is vitally important to our country.’

Her voice was tense. ‘Do you think he will become president?’