How lucky to be able to live here forever.
I sit down and open my laptop. Celine has already installed Word into it so I sign into my Dropbox account and access my manuscript. For the next few hours I hardly look up. My fingers fly over the keyboard as I dive back into that other world that I live in. Hours pass without me noticing. A knock on the door interrupts me. Celine comes in to say Nikolai cannot make dinner.
“That’s fine,” I tell her, but I am strangely disappointed.
The rest of the evening passes slowly. Celine hands me a bag with my riding gear. I phone Nigel. I bathe. I stand outside on my balcony and watch the sun set. I eat. I have coffee. I find a book in the library and take it up to read in bed.
In the early hours of the morning I am startled awake at feeling a large body come into the bed and know instantly it is not Nigel. In the darkness I feel no shame, and my body opens out to welcome him.
He takes me roughly and I welcome that too.
It is nothing like sex with Nigel.
Sex with Nigel is warm and slow and delicious. Like being curled up on the sofa feeling warm and safe while watching a storm lash outside. Sex with Nikolai is like standing in the middle of a storm, naked, while lighting flashes all around me, my skin tingling with electricity and my heart pounding with fear and excitement.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nikolai
All day long I tried to forget her. I told myself I didn’t need to rush back for a bit of pussy. Then, like a cheap strung-out addict, I climb into my car in the early morning hours, and speed to her body, my cock hard as stone. Fuck, I even run up the stairs.
She sleeps with only a thin sheet to cover her. I walk up to her and look down on her. It’s like looking at a fucking angel. Something I dreamed up.
I lift the sheet. Her nightgown has ridden up. I lay my hand on her thigh and push the nightgown upwards.
She is bare underneath. One good thing. She knows how to take instructions.
She wakes up then. In the dark she opens her legs in invitation. My body becomes electric with anticipation. I unzip my trousers and take my rigid cock out. Getting on the bed, I plunge it into her sweet cunt. She cries out. The sound is feral and uncontrolled, exciting me.
I don’t use a condom and she doesn’t ask for one either.
I need to be bare inside her. I just want to fill her pussy with my cum. It must be the same for her. As soon as her wet, warm pussy sheaths me, the pent-up rage and frustration gnawing away inside me eases away. She feels incredible. So much tighter than I imagined.
I find a steady rhythm and lose myself in it. I fuck her deeply, each thrust measured, allowing me to revel in the intense pleasure of her sex.
When she lets out her scream of pleasure and comes hard around my cock, I thrust into her faster and harder, again and again, until my own release approaches.
I take her twice. The second time I am rough. She claws my back and grunts at every thrust.
When I pull out of her, she looks up at me with wide eyes. In the dim light, her eyes gleam and her hair shines like spun gold. I don’t like blonde hair on a woman, but I want to bury my face in hers. I want to smell her hair.
It won’t smell of biscuits, I tell myself, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Through the fog, the memories come.
I leave her bed, grab my trousers, and get out of her bedroom.
Nikolai
1990
We wake while it is still dark, and wait our turn to use the outside toilets. Afterwards, we wash in the unheated water. Together with all the other forgotten children we file into a massive dark, dank room with row upon row of long wooden tables and benches. It is so Dickensian it reminds me of the movie Olivera Tvista (Oliver Twist).
We join the line of silent children moving in an orderly fashion to the counter where there are two middle-aged, uniformed women wearing blue scarves around their heads. Their hard, unsmiling eyes refuse to make contact with either Pavel or me when it is our turn. They slop thick buckwheat porridge into our trays like robots.
Both Pavel and I are starving and we scarf down the cold food quickly. I look around for Sergei and his gang, but I don’t see them. After breakfast Pavel and I are separated.
He is taken to a classroom for children his age, and I am forced to join a room filled with eleven and twelve year olds. All of them look defeated and resigned to their fate. There is a girl sitting in the corner, on her own, rocking away, oblivious to us all.
The teacher wears thick glasses that make his eyes appear twice the size of normal people’s eyes. He stands stiffly, several arm lengths away from his charges. There is a thick strap of leather hanging beside the blackboard. It is well worn and there is no doubt what it is used for.
We have History, followed by Math, followed by Geography, followed by Literature. Every change of routine is announced by the ringing of the bell. We don’t change classrooms or teachers. We simply open new books to suit the next lesson.
As soon as recess is announced I dash out to look for Pavel. He smiles at me, and I feel relief. Unlike the children in my class who look like they have been beaten into dull acceptance, the smaller children in his class look terrified. I know I will see the same terror in my brother’s eyes too if we stay here for much longer. I have to find a way to call my uncle.
“Just wait here for me,” I tell him and run to the Director’s office. There is no answer when I knock. Looking around me, I try the door, but it is locked. The door looks too secure to be broken in.
Lunch is watery cabbage stew. There are a few bits of vegetables floating in it. Then it is back to more lessons. We are given a short fifteen-minute break at four when we are allowed onto a concrete playground. It is bitterly cold and the kids don’t seem to do much except huddle around in groups, shivering and waiting for one of the staff to allow us back in.
Here is where I see the bullies Sergei had told me about. They are older than me. One looks like he might even be sixteen or seventeen. He has dark hair and a livid scar on his
face. I see them glance at me. One of them smiles. It is not a good smile. I turn away quickly and try to shield Pavel from their eyes.
After more lessons it is playtime. We go into a big room and play with a few broken toys. Two children beat an orange ball dispiritedly. Strangely there are glass cases full of donated toys still in their packaging. It is the old Russian mentality of saving for a rainy day. No child was allowed to have its personal toy. The toys belonged to the “collective”.
Afterwards we are sent to wash. There is no hot water so no one wants to wash properly. After pretending to wash we file into the cold chapel for half-an-hour of prayers. The teachers walk up and down the aisle to make sure that no one talks or rises from their kneeling position.
Dinner is the same as lunch. Thin cabbage stew with a few disintegrating vegetables suspended in it, but this time there is a small piece of dry black bread to go with it.
I eat quickly and, telling Pavel to wait for me, run to the director’s room. It is still locked, but as I walk back along the corridor, I meet the director coming towards me.
“Good afternoon,” I greet immediately.
“Good afternoon,” he returns the greeting, and carries on walking towards his office.
“Director Razumovsky, I need to make a phone call to my uncle.”
He whirls around slowly, a bizarrely graceful movement for such a fat, round man. “Yes, you do, don’t you?”
“Can I make it now? Please.”
“It depends on …”
“On what?”
“Whether you plan to be a good boy.”
I frown. “I am good.”
“Come into my room and we’ll see how good you can be.”
I follow him to his room and wait for him to unlock his door. We enter the room and he locks the door. Already something feels wrong. I can see his phone on the desk.
He pulls a chair to the middle of the room. “Sit down,” he says with a smile.