She stared at the cheque, which covered a year’s wage in the nursing home. Maybe this way she could concentrate just on nursing. But it hurt to swallow her pride.
‘We’ve got to go.’
And they did. They opened the front door and Annika stood there. She stroked Rebecca’s cheek and it dawned on her that not once had Nina held or even looked at the baby.
Her own grandchild, her own blood, was leaving, and because she loathed the mother Nina hadn’t even bothered to stand. She could so easily turn her back.
So what would she be like to a child that wasn’t her own?
‘Iosef …’ She followed him out to the car. Annie was putting Rebecca in the baby seat and even though it was warm Annika was shivering. ‘Did they know?’
‘What are you talking about, Annika?’
‘Levander?’ Annika gulped. ‘Did they know he was in the orphanage?’
‘Just leave it.’
‘I can’t leave it!’ Annika begged. ‘You’re so full of hate, Levander too … but in everything else you’re reasonable. Levander would have forgiven them for not knowing. You would too.’
He didn’t answer.
She wanted to hit him for not answering, for not denying it, for not slapping her and telling her she was wrong.
‘You should have told me.’
‘Why?’ Iosef asked. ‘So you can have the pleasure of hating them too?’
‘Come home with us,’ Annie said, putting her arm around Annika. ‘Come back with us and we can talk …’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Come on, Annika,’ Iosef said. ‘I’ll tell Mum you’re not feeling well.’
‘I can’t,’ Annika said. ‘I can’t just leave …’
‘Yes, Annika,’ Iosef said, ‘you can—you can walk away this minute if you want to!’
‘You still come here!’ Annika pointed out. ‘Mum ignores every word Annie ever says but you still come for dinner, still sit there …’
‘For you,’ Iosef said, and that halted her. ‘The way she is with Annie, with my daughter, about my friends … Do you really think I want to be here? Annie and I are here for you.’
Annika didn’t fully believe it, and she couldn’t walk away either. She didn’t want to hate her mother, didn’t want the memory of her father to change, so instead she ate a diet jelly and fruit dessert with Nina, who started crying when it was time for Annika to go home.
‘Always Iosef blames me. I hardly see Aleksi unless I go into the office, and now you have left home.’
‘I’m twenty-five.’
‘And you would rather have no money and do a job you hate than work in the family business, where you belong,’ Nina said, and Annika closed her eyes in exhaustion. ‘I understand that maybe you want your own home, but at least if you worked for the family … Annika, think about it—think of the good you could do! You are not even liking nursing. The charity ball next week will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars—surely you are better overseeing that, and making it bigger each year, than working in a job you don’t like?’
‘You knew about Levander, didn’t you?’ Had Annika thought about it, she’d never have had the courage to ask, but she didn’t think, she just said it—and then she added something else. ‘If you hit me again you’ll never see me again, so I suggest that you talk to me instead.’
‘I was pregnant with twins,’ Nina hissed. ‘It was hard enough to flee Russia just us two—we would never have got out with him.’
‘So you left him?’
‘To save my sons!’ Nina said. ‘Yes.’
‘How could Pa?’ Still she couldn’t cry, but it was there at the back of her throat. ‘How could he leave him behind?’
‘He didn’t know …’ Annika had seen her mother cry, had heard her wail, but she had never seen her crumple. ‘For years I did not tell him. He thought his son was safe with his mother. Only I knew …’
‘Knew what?’
‘We were ready to leave, and that blyat comes to the door with her bastard son …’ Annika winced at her mother’s foul tongue, and yet unlike her brothers she listened, heard that Levander’s mother had turned up one night with a small toddler and pleaded that Nina take him, that she was dying, that her family were too poor to keep the little boy …
‘I was pregnant, Annika …’ Nina sobbed. ‘I was big, the doctor said there were two, I wanted my babies to have a chance. We would never have got out with Levander.’
‘You could have tried.’
‘And if we’d failed?’ Nina pleaded. ‘Then what?’ she demanded. ‘So I sent Levander and his mother away, and for years your father never found out.’
‘And when he did Levander came here?’
‘No.’ Nina was finally honest. ‘We tried for a few more years to pretend all was perfect.’ She looked over to her daughter. ‘So now you can hate me too.’
CHAPTER NINE
BUT Annika didn’t want to hate her mother.
She just didn’t know how to love her right now.
She wanted Ross.
She wanted to hide in his arms and fall asleep.
She wanted to go over and over it with him.
The truth was so much worse than the lies, and yet she could sort of understand her mother’s side.
The family secret had darkened many shades, and her mother had begged her not to tell anyone.
Oh, Annie knew, and no doubt so did Millie, Levander’s wife, but they were real partners. Ross and Annika … they were brand spanking new!
How could she land it on him?
And anyway, he would soon be heading off for Spain!
For the first time in her life she had a tangible reason to sever ties with her mother. Instead she found herself there more and more, listening to Nina’s stories, understanding a little more what had driven her parents, what had fuelled their need for the castle they had built for their children.
‘I haven’t seen you so much,’ Elsie commented.
‘I’ve cut down my shifts,’ Annika said, with none of her old sparkle. ‘I need to concentrate on my studies.’
Cashing the cheque had hurt, but then so too did everything right now. When push had come to shove, she’d realised that she actually liked her shifts at the nursing home, so instead of cutting ties completely, she’d drastically reduced her hours.
Ross was around, and though they smiled and said hello she kept him at a distance.
She had spent the past week in cots, which didn’t help matters.
The babies were so tiny and precious, and sometimes so ill it terrified Annika.
She was constantly checking that she had put the cot-sides up, and double- and triple-checking medicine doses.
She longed to be like the other nurses, who bounced a babe on their knee and fed with one hand while juggling the phone with the other.
She just couldn’t.
‘How’s that man of yours?’ Elsie asked, because Annika was unusually quiet.
‘He