Chapter 14
“You!” The voice was vitriolic, like the scraping of nails down a blackboard, the accent still thickly Slavic in origin. Emma dropped her glass, feeling the sharp shards pierce the skin of her instep as it shattered on the tiles. The tiny cuts stung from the liquid which was fortunately only water.
Rohan’s mother stood in the hall, her immaculate figure framed in the kitchen doorway and a front door key gripped in her raised hand. “Vot are you doing here?” she snapped, thinning her lips in a habitual pout. “Vy are you at my son’s house? Ver is he?”
Alanya was still beautiful, her straight blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun, the ballerina’s poise still slight and graceful. Age had attacked the top half of her body since they last met, bending her slightly forward like a weathered tree, but her lips were still straight and unsmiling and her blue eyes terrifyingly perceptive.
Emma gulped and stared at the mess on the floor and then the terrifying woman in the doorway. She became sixteen again, tousled curly dark hair and a skip in her step, reduced to cowering before this vicious matriarch who seized possession of her father and home. At almost twenty three, the urge to cower was overwhelming. Emma resisted. With poise and dignity, she crunched across the glass, feeling jagged edges press into the soles of her feet. “Rohan’s nipped out, he won’t be long. Excuse me,” she said politely to the woman, pushing past her and walking carefully up the stairs. Behind the safety of her bedroom door she tip toed across to the bed and hurled herself face down. “Shit, shit, shit!” she exclaimed, examining the myriad tiny cuts oozing from both feet, staining her socks. Emma carefully stripped the socks off so they were inside out. She dabbed at her bleeding flesh with a tissue from the bedside table and crawled over to the ensuite on her knees, keen not to stain the light coloured rug.
“Why me?” she complained. With shaking hands, she locked the bathroom door and then blocked the plug hole in the shower tray with a flannel and set it running. “I’m an idiot! It was inevitable I’d see her. What was I thinking? Rohan, please hurry up and come home. Why didn’t I just go with you?”
When there was enough water for her to stand in, Emma climbed in and soothed her poor feet with the cold water, sloshing them around to get rid of the glass. She cursed again as it stung over and over. The flannel was ineffective and the water drained away, stained pink and speckled with glass. She sat on the bathroom floor and dabbed at the cuts with toilet paper, making a damp mountain of tissue next to her. The sound of her stepmother’s raised voice drifted upstairs to her and Emma felt sick to her stomach. “Shouting at yourself, you horrid old woman!” she hissed, channelling the pain as anger. The woman shouted again in her jerky speech and Emma heard the echo of a male voice, raised in reply. “Fantastic!” Emma complained, as yet another piece of tissue stuck to a weeping cut. She looked at her watch in panic. “Noooo!” She had to leave in half an hour to fetch Nicky from school and it was a fifteen minute walk on cut, bleeding feet.
“Em!” The knock on the bathroom door was accompanied by Rohan’s concerned voice. “Are you ok? What the hell happened?”
“My syn,” came his mother’s argumentative voice from close behind him. “Throw ze bitch out. She is trouble, beda, garbage!”
“Stop!” Rohan sounded determined as Emma froze in her futile ministrations. She heard his footsteps as he ushered his mother out into the hall. “Get and clear up the mess, Mama. You don’t need to be involved in this. Ukhodi!”
Emma heard the severe woman chunter to herself down the wooden split landing, clumping down the stairs in her high heeled boots. She heard Rohan exhale and translate a version of the Russian word under his breath. “Bugger off, woman.” He knocked again. “She’s gone downstairs, Em. Open the bloody door, please?”
Emma shuffled onto her knees and clicked the lock, sitting down heavily on her bottom and hiding her trembling hands underneath her.
“What the hell?” Rohan stared at the blood spotted tissue and the soaked floor. “She did this to you? Is this why you won’t let her see Nicky?” His jaw tightened and an angry flush began on his neck.
Emma shook her head. “No. She let herself in with a key and frightened me. I dropped a glass and...I needed to get away from her.” She sniggered as a nervous reaction. “It was a bit kamikaze walking over it. I knew what was going to happen but it was the lesser of two evils.”
Rohan tutted and knelt awkwardly on the ground next to her. She pushed him away with force and he wobbled and clutched at the glass shower door. “No!” she exclaimed. “You’ve got your work trousers on. You’ll ruin them. I’ll be fine!”
He stood up crossly and walked away, leaving Emma to her dabbing. She folded some wads of tissue with shaking fingers, wondering if she could limp to school with them in her sock. Nicky was the priority, even if she had to crawl there. Emma struggled with the vision of the woman downstairs, biting down the wave of sickness which accompanied her terror. She took deep breaths and tried to work out how to get out of the house without being seen again. Under no circumstances could the woman know about Nicky.
Rohan clumped back up the stairs with a first aid kit after more shouting in the downstairs hallway. He sighed as he handed over a pack of plasters. His blue eyes fixed on Emma’s face making her feel in disgrace. As her reaction to pressure made her want to giggle, it wasn’t helpful. She sniggered and snorted through the operation, knowing it wound Rohan up even more. “Stop staring at me!” she spluttered, accidentally sticking the wiggling plaster to the floor. She snorted as she tried to lift it off the tiles with her thumbnail.
“Bloody hell, Em!” Rohan snatched the packet from her hand and ripped the cardboard to shreds, showering Emma with plasters of all shapes and sizes. She burst into hysterical giggles and shook her head, seeing two round pimple plasters cascade from her hair. She put her hand up to her mouth and sniggered behind it as Rohan hefted himself awkwardly on the floor next to her. “Keep still!” he ordered, roughly gripping her ankle in his fingers. One handed, he peeled the backing off a long plaster with his teeth and spat the white paper onto the floor. He aimed it over the worst of Emma’s cuts and she squealed and pulled her foot away so he stuck it to her jeans.
“No! I don’t want it on my foot when you’ve had it in your mouth!” Emma punctuated her protest with a peel of laughter.
“It was the bloody paper! I’m so gonna kill you in a minute!” he threatened, but the smirk lifted one side of his mouth and Emma snorted again.
“Durak,” she whispered and Rohan looked up in surprise. He tore the protective backing from another plaster in absolute silence and Emma’s mirth lessened as she waited for his reaction to her calling him a fool in his own language. Rohan held up the biggest plaster in his fingers and lurched for her mouth, sealing it firmly over her lips. Emma squeaked and fell backwards onto the tiles. Rohan overbalanced and unable to save himself with his arms, plunged on top of her. Emma grunted in pain as his strong body crushed her and Rohan came to rest with his face close to hers. Emma squeezed her eyes tight shut and her body rocked with her effort at keeping her giggles to herself. Rohan’s lips turned up and he whispered something in Russian and then moved his long fingers to her waist. With her successfully gagged, he set about tickling Emma until tears ran freely from her eyes and snot coursed down her face. “Enough?” he asked her and she nodded enthusiastically, squeaking again as he resumed his tickling. “Tough, you little troublemaker,” he smirked.
Emma licked at the plaster over her lips, successfully pushing it off with her tongue and wrinkling her nose at the dreadful taste. “I have to get Nick,” she groaned, freeing her hands enough to push Rohan’s chest.
“I’ll get him in the car.” He couldn’t resist the urge to tickle her twice more. Emma grunted.
“Stop! You can’t do that. He loves to play in the park with Mo after school. And there’s no way you’re leaving me here with Cruella de Vil by myself!”
Rohan laughed and used his slee
ve to rub the snot and tears from Emma’s face. He completed the action with such care and gentleness that she held her breath and studied his handsome face. He caught her watching him and on an impulse pressed his lips to hers. He pulled away with an act of will, clearly not wanting to. His eyes were dark, his pupils huge in his glittering eyes. Rohan leaned on one elbow and brushed Emma’s fringe back from her forehead. “Are you getting up then, or what?” he asked, his breath stroking her face. His lips tasted of coffee and Emma nodded slowly and then smirked again.
“I’ve got a bit of clearing up to do first. This big durak made a right mess of my ensuite.”
“Sort yourself out woman,” Rohan smiled, his eyes sultry and alluring. “I’ll clear up your mess downstairs and then we’ll go.” He shifted his weight onto his hands and knees and tickled Emma one last time as he hauled himself upright.
“Ro!” Emma’s voice held panic as she sat up quickly and seized hold of the side of his smart pinstriped work trousers.
“What’s wrong?” The fingers of his right hand closed over hers.
“Please don’t let her near me? And she can never know about Nicky!” Emma looked truly terrified and Rohan nodded with doubt in his eyes.
“Ok.” He smiled without surety and nodded again, exiting the room with a heavy gait.
Emma fanned her hot face with a flapping hand and used more toilet roll to dab her cuts dry. Then she used the scattered plasters to patch up her feet enough to stand. She cleared the remaining plasters into a pile which she left on the side of the sink and put the rubbish in the bathroom bin. She donned two pairs of less holey socks and limped into the hallway, closing Nicky’s bedroom door against prying eyes on impulse.
“You can come down, Em. She’s left,” Rohan said, peering up the stairs at Emma as she lurked on the first landing. “I sent her home in a taxi. Come on, let’s get Nicky.” He held his hand out to her and reluctantly, Emma stepped down, wrinkling her nose at the pain in her feet. When she was still two steps from the bottom, Rohan wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into him. He pressed his cheek against her soft breasts and sighed, wrapping his arms around her waist. Emma suffered a bout of confusion as she fondled the skin on the back of his neck and pushed her face into his hair. “Everything’s gonna be ok,” he whispered. “I promise.”
Emma closed her eyes, remembering the same promise spoken from his lips in another time. Hours after he said it, Rohan left his teenage wife, broken and terrified, nursing her dreadful secret alone. “You can’t promise me that,” she replied with sadness. “You never could. Now she knows I’m here, I have to leave. She can’t see my son.”