But it was not easy to live in Uzbekistan. After her brother was killed in the uprising she made up her mind that she would find a way to leave it behind, every broken street and Russian soldier, all the memories, everything her native country stood for and everything that had happened to her there, and live in America, or England. She would become an American girl by sheer force of will.
Or an English one, that would do.
It had taken a long time to get the money for a holiday flight from Tashkent to Luton, but she had managed it.
Yakov had wished her good luck, knowing that he would never leave Uzbekistan himself.
Roxana didn’t plan to be on the return flight.
In London her intention was to find work looking after children, pink and white cherubs who would be dressed in little coats with velvet collars, that would be nice. Or if not that, maybe she could be a chambermaid in a big hotel. She saw herself in a maid’s uniform, plumping up pillows and setting out white towels and crystal glasses.
But she had soon found out that without references and papers there was no work with English children. The hotels she walked into had all told her that they weren’t taking on casuals at the moment. It was Dylan who had come to her rescue again.
‘Ye said ye can dance.’ His accent was so strange. He told her he came from Ireland. When she first met him in the café she could hardly decipher a word, but by now she could understand him better. ‘There’s a feller ye can go to see.’
He wrote down a name and an address for her, lent her the map book, told her which bus to catch and what time to be there, and advised her not to be late. To make sure she knew where she was going, Roxana traced the route from the house to the place. And on her way out of the house, on a sudden impulse, she borrowed the yellow bike.
It had been in the hallway ever since she had come to live there, leaning in the same place among the litter of envelopes that no one picked up. She had not seen anyone touch it, let alone ride it. There was no lock. Maybe someone had just left it at the house and forgotten all about it.
And she had already worked out that to take it would save her the bus fares. Buses and tube trains in London cost a lot of money.
She had bumped the bicycle down the steps of the house and boldly set off. At first it was exhilarating to be so free. She flew along in the glittering traffic, the wind of her own speed whistling in her ears and pinning a smile to her face. It was a shame that she ended up getting lost. It meant that she was late for her meeting with Mr Shane at The Cosmos. He was a small, elderly man with quick cold eyes. He looked Roxana up and down as if he was pricing her for sale.
‘This is a quality venue, do you understand me?’ was the second thing Mr Shane said to her, after telling her that if she was ever late again she could forget working for him.
‘I understand, yes,’ Roxana answered, glancing around her at the tables and the shuttered bar. Before the club opened for the night it looked sordid, but she supposed that it would be different when the lights came up and it was full of people.
‘Right. Where are you from and how long have you been here?’
She told him.
‘Legal?’
‘Yes,’ she lied.
Mr Shane sniffed. ‘Let’s see what you can do, then.’
There wasn’t any music and the only audience was Mr Shane sprawled in a front-row armchair with his mobile phone pressed to his ear. It wasn’t difficult to envisage what he wanted, but making her body perform the right sequences wasn’t easy at all. Roxana concentrated very hard on making it look as though what she was doing came naturally. The performance seemed to go on for a very long time.
At last he held up his hand. ‘All right. That’ll do.’
‘I could do some more, something different if…’
‘You can start on Friday,’ he said impatiently.
Roxana could hardly believe her luck. ‘Yes? Friday. Thank you. Thank you, I…’
‘Seven o’clock sharp. Five minutes late and you can go straight home.’ He didn’t have time for her gratitude. He was already on the phone again, and gesturing for her to get dressed and leave.
She came out of the cavernous dimness of The Cosmos and into the fluttering air, breathing deeply with relief. She had a job. She was on her way.
She did get lost on the way back from the river, but not quite as badly as the first time. She had the first inkling that instead of being fragments of a puzzle, the few pieces of the city that she was beginning to recognise might even be logically and manageably connected to each other. She was whistling as she pedalled into the street and even the sight of the house, with peeling paint and torn curtains and the rubbish sodden in the basement area where the windows were boarded over, didn’t depress her spirits too much. She hauled the bike up the short flight of stone steps and leaned it against the broken teeth of the railings while she groped for the key to the front door. Before she pushed it open, she had a brief premonition that there was something waiting for her on the other side.
The flurry of violence was so sudden that she didn’t even have time to scream.
The bicycle was seized and hauled inside, dragging her with it. One of the pedals bit deep into her shin at the same time as the man grabbed her wrists and forced her up against the wall. The door slammed shut, cutting off her escape route.
‘Did I miss something? Did you buy that bike off me? Or did you say to me, “Mr Kemal, I need to borrow a piece of your property”? Or did you just nick it out of here without a word to no one, like you own the world?’
She tried not to inhale the smell of cigarettes and unwashed skin.
‘No,’ she said. Her teeth rattled in her head as he shook her.
‘No what?’
‘I didn’t buy it. I didn’t ask. I thought it wasn’t anyone’s.’
‘That was a mistake, Russia.’
Roxana lifted her head. The man was plump, black-haired, unshaven. He was wearing a grey singlet and there were thick tufts of glistening hair under his arms and curling all the way up to his throat. ‘I am from Uzbekistan,’ she said. ‘Not Russia.’
‘Like I give a shit.’ He twisted her arm and she winced. ‘You’re not hurt, Russia, not yet. If you take things that don’t belong to you, then you’ll find out about being hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you say now?’
‘I am sorry,’ she whispered.
Mr Kemal let go of her arms. ‘Upstairs,’ he ordered. He followed her up through the breathless house, made her unlock her padlocks and kicked open the door of her room so he could take a good look inside.
There wasn’t much to see.
She had sellotaped a picture postcard of a tropical beach to the wall beside her bed. She had bought the postcard from a street vendor in Tashkent, when she was out shopping with her friend Fatima. She had fallen in love at first sight with the image of silver sand and blue sea. Apart from that there were her few clothes hanging behind a curtain mounted across one corner, a two-ring gas burner and some tins and packets, a transistor radio in a turquoise plastic case, and her Russian–English dictionary lying open beside her plate and cup on the small table.
As he flicked through her belongings the man made a dismissive tssshhh through his teeth.
‘Didn’t you say to me you’re not Russian?’
‘My