Tom was watching her, eyes narrowed. ‘Show me those photos of your cabin again.’
She handed him her phone and he flicked through them once more. She’d taken long shots from the end of the jetty, and also some close-ups of the stairs and banister leading up to the porch.
‘I know what you should be,’ he said, handing the phone back to her. ‘A carpenter.’
She opened her mouth to object then stopped. She loved working with wood. ‘But how would I earn a living at it?’
‘That’s up to you. You could set up a website and distribute leaflets offering to make bookshelves and fitted cupboards … or you could design your own bespoke furniture. Why not?’
She frowned. ‘I’d need to upgrade my tools. I’ve already got contacts in that wood yard in Kentish Town. Perhaps I could build a shed at the end of our garden as a workshop.’ Tom let her think out loud, nodding encouragement. She had the strangest sensation as all the pieces slotted into place. It was as if it was predestined. This was one of the extraordinary things about a close relationship: it was possible for your partner to know you better than you knew yourself.
‘Mum wouldn’t have approved,’ she said. ‘She wanted me to be a lawyer.’
‘Maybe, but most of all she wanted you to be happy.’
Kitty knew that was true, and loved that Tom knew it as well. He provided continuity in her life now that he had become her sole family member. She had drunk two glasses of wine and was about to pour another when she stopped, remembering her great-uncle Nicholas and his cirrhosis. Tom didn’t want any more either, so they put a cork in the bottle and carried it home.
Once they were in the hall, she grabbed the collar of his jacket and pulled him in for the kiss she’d been wanting to give him for the last few hours. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and she meant she was sorry for leaving him alone all summer. He didn’t reply, too busy lifting her sweater over her head. She unfastened his trousers, lifted her skirt and pushed her knickers aside then stood on tiptoe and hooked one leg around his waist so he could enter her. Now, she thought, now at last I am home.
Chapter Sixty
Albany, New York State, 1955
Dmitri’s double life continued for seven years and neither of the women he loved challenged him. Tatiana never seemed to resent the fact that he spent most weekends and holidays with his family and sometimes couldn’t see her for days on end; Rosa never questioned his whereabouts, just accepting whatever excuse he made to explain a few hours’ absence. On the drive home from Tatiana’s he often stopped for a beer to clear his head. Guilt had become a familiar companion but he still believed there had been no choice: he couldn’t have left Rosa, the woman who had entwined her fortune with his and brought him so much happiness, but at the same time he couldn’t resist the potent magnetism of his decades-old bond with Tatiana.
During those seven years, both of his children got married. Nicholas had never brought home any girlfriends and by his late twenties they were beginning to worry about him until one weekend he presented a long-legged, sun-kissed Californian girl called Pattie and announced they were engaged. The whole family flew out to Santa Barbara for a wedding in Pattie’s home church, followed by a party at her parents’ glamorous beach club. At first Dmitri and Rosa were dazzled by the champagne cocktails, the palm trees set around a turquoise swimming pool, and the glitzy people wearing ostentatious jewellery, but Rosa was soon circulating and befriending their new in-laws. She was wearing a rose-pink lace off-the-shoulder dress with a mauve satin sash, and a tiny hat decorated with pink and mauve fresh flowers and in Dmitri’s opinion was by far the best-dressed woman at the gathering.
Marta had brought one of her many boyfriends as her ‘plus one’: a staid, prematurely balding Englishman called Stanley who owned a company that manufactured silver cutlery. He had a strange accent from somewhere in the north of England, and Dmitri found it hard to make out what he was saying. After a while it became awkward asking him to repeat himself, so he nodded and smiled vaguely whenever they were forced to make conversation. Marta obviously had no such difficulty because a few weeks after the Santa Barbara wedding, Stanley came to ask Dmitri’s permission to marry her.
Dmitri hesitated. ‘Of course, it is my daughter’s decision, but I hope you do not plan to take her back to England with you. My wife and I would miss her terribly.’
‘Naw, I’m going to be here awhile,’ Stanley promised. ‘America’s the fastest-growing market in’t cutlery trade and we’ll most likely set up home near Albany.’
‘And you think you can keep my daughter and any children you might have in comfort with your earnings from this business?’
Stanley launched into a speech about profit margins and the potential growth of the company, and Dmitri stopped concentrating. He wasn’t sure what Marta saw in this man, who was no more than average-looking, but perhaps she liked the foreignness of him. When he discussed it with Rosa later, she said he treated Marta like a princess but Dmitri couldn’t see how. At any rate, the marriage went ahead, in a church in Albany, followed by a reception for eighty guests in a swish restaurant. After the meal, a swing band played and everyone crowded onto the tiny dance floor. Dmitri and Rosa held each other and swayed to the unfamiliar beat.
‘We’ve done our duty as parents.’ She smiled. ‘Now I look forward to being a grandma.’
The thought hadn’t even occurred to Dmitri and when he considered it he felt sad that he and Tatiana had not been able to have a child together. His direct bloodline would continue into the future but Nicholas and Alexandra’s would not.
Just after Marta’s wedding, Dmitri’s dog, Malevich, fell ill. His belly swelled up and he was in obvious pain, pressing his head against the wall and whimpering. A vet was called, who told them the liver had failed and there was nothing he could do. Dmitri held Malevich’s head in his hands, looking into those trusting brown eyes, as the vet administered a fatal injection. Once the dog stopped breathing he put his arms around him and sobbed into his coat. His head filled with images of all the friends he had lost, of his parents, of Tatiana’s family. He thought of the concentration camps where many German friends had died; of the hard-labour camps in Siberia. Why was life so relentlessly brutal, just one challenge after another? Why did evil so frequently triumph?
For a while it seemed as though losing Malevich, the dog who had alleviated his depression at the onset of war, would tip Dmitri into another full-scale episode. The old symptoms returned: a feeling of uselessness, believing that there was no point in getting out of bed, or dressing or shaving. Senator Joe McCarthy’s Subcommittee hearings to root out Communism had begun to take on the repressive nature of the very ideology they opposed and Dmitri feared he might be forced to leave America, the land that had become home. He went to Tatiana’s house two or three times a week but was taciturn and moody with her. When she tried to make him talk about it, he growled at her to leave him alone and she shrank back, unprepared for this new side of him.
But Rosa knew what to do. About a month after Malevich’s death, Dmitri came home to find a Borzoi puppy scrabbling round the kitchen floor on unsteady legs. It leapt up at him, licking his outstretched hand, eager to make friends. The puppy’s coat was white with brown patches and it was only a few weeks old. He looked questioningly at Rosa.
‘It’s a girl.’ She smiled. ‘But she’s not house-trained yet so we’re going to have our work cut out!’