A Child Claimed By Gold. Rachael Thomas

She sounded flustered as she took her camera out of its protective case. ‘I’ll just take a few frames and then you can tell me about it on the way back. I’d rather be in the warm when the snow arrives.’

      He pushed back the image of that warmth being his bed and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He had to distract her from the truth of his family history by showing her the façade they had lived behind.

      ‘This,’ he said as he helped her from the troika, ‘Is where my mother and I spent each summer until we left Russia. In the summer, though, it was much greener and warmer than now.’

      He hadn’t thought of those summer days for such a long time, consigning them to the past he wanted to forget, but now, as he began to talk to Emma, it wasn’t nearly as hard to look back on them as he’d always feared.

      ‘And this was your mother’s family home?’ she asked as she lined up the shot and took a photo of the one place he’d been happy as a child.

      ‘It was, but I never saw it like this, all covered in snow. It was always summer when we visited and I’d run with the dogs in the orchard, enjoying the freedom.’

      It hadn’t been just the freedom of running free in the summer sun, it had been the freedom from the terror of his father: from not having to hide when his filthy temper struck; of not having to worry about his mother as his father’s voice rose to aggressive shouts. It had been freedom from pain—for both of them. He’d realised much later on that his mother’s parents must have known what was going on and it had been their way of offering sanctuary. He just couldn’t understand why his mother hadn’t taken it permanently.

      ‘And is your grandmother here to talk to us now?’ Hope was shining in her voice. She thought he meant the grandmother who had started this whole nonsense off.

      ‘No, they passed away before my father. Marya Petrushov is my father’s mother. The one who contacted World in Photographs. She lives in Vladimir.’

      ‘So we can see her?’

      She turned her attention to packing away the camera, obviously happy with the photos she’d taken, and he was glad she couldn’t see his face—because right now he was sure it must be contorted with rage and contempt for the woman who had done nothing to help him or his mother. Instead she’d preferred to make excuses for her son and for that he could never forgive her.

      ‘Tomorrow. But right now we should return to the hotel.’

      Just as he couldn’t put off returning to the hotel because of the impending snow, he knew he couldn’t put off meeting his grandmother again any longer. Maybe facing her for the first time would be easier with someone else at his side. It might also be the worst possible decision he’d ever made.