4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017
Copyright © Juliet Butler 2017
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Cover images © plainpicture/Cavan Images
‘You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul’, Words and music by Steve Benson © copyright 1985 Blue Obsession Music OHG. Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group Australia. Also reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
This book is based on the author’s experiences. Some names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed, reconstructed or fictionalised.
Juliet Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008203795
Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008203771
Version: 2018-01-09
To David Llewelyn – literary consultant – without whose persistence Dasha’s story would never have been told.
‘A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.’
Helen Keller
Contents
SCIENTIFIC NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PROSTHETICS (SNIP), MOSCOW
SCHOOL FOR INVALIDS, NOVOCHERKASSK
TWENTIETH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW
SIXTH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW
12 April 2003, 12:05
I know I’m dying. I just don’t know how.
The ceiling rushes past me in the First City Hospital as we’re pushed down the corridor in a white-coated swirl of medics. First City; we’ve been here before. Masha, my Mashinka, you’re here with me. But this time it’s different. This time I’m alone.
Two nurses are running along with us, one on each side. They’re talking, their voices muffled through their surgical masks.
How long has she got?
God knows!
Where are we taking them?
Emergency unit.
Do the doctors know? Can they separate them?
No, no, of course not, they’d need a team of twenty surgeons.
Everyone’s always thought we’re fools. That we can’t understand, because we’re Together.
What do we tell her?
Nothing, of course. Tell her nothing.
The nurse bends over me and speaks loudly and slowly.
Masha’s fine, she’s just sleeping, that’s all.
I start crying.
Hush, hush now, everything’s going to be fine …
1956
‘One cannot hold on to power through terror alone. Lies are just as important.’
Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party, 1922–53
Age 6
January 1956
Mummy
‘I’m bored,’ says Masha.