Cervena (23 page)

“I can’t wait to see her.” I took a step back and grabbed Sasha’s arm, tugging him forward. “Rosalyn, this is Sasha.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Sasha said formally, offering his hand to Rosalyn. She ignored it and pulled him into a hug, holding on gently so as not to hurt his ribs.

“It’s wonderful to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re the reason my stupid brother’s finally happy.” She released Sasha and looked him up and down. “Joe wasn’t wrong. You are gorgeous.”

“Ros!” I frowned, but Sasha relaxed at last and laughed, his face flushing.

Rosalyn found a luggage trolley to help us get the cases to her car, and within half an hour, we were unloading everything once again. With Steve at work and Rachael at school, the house was quiet, and I used the time to unpack some of our things in the guest room. Sasha sat on the bed, frustrated that he couldn’t help.

“Does your sister really not mind us sleeping together in her house?”

“No, she doesn’t mind. We’re a couple.”

“But what about her little girl? Won’t she think it’s weird? Or wrong?”

“Sasha, my sister and her husband are totally accepting that I’m gay. Rachael doesn’t really understand it yet, but she knows I go out with boys instead of girls.”

“My sister doesn’t know.” Sasha’s expression became wistful. “I think she’d hate it. She only thinks I went away to college, but my parents will probably bring her up to feel that being gay is dirty.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Maybe one day you’ll get the opportunity to find her and talk to her about it. You said she’s a smart girl. She’ll probably grow up to have her own ideas about what’s right and wrong.”

“Yeah, but my whole community was antigay. How could she know anything different?”

It took a while for Sasha to push his moroseness aside, but he cheered up when Rachael came home from school and immediately commandeered him to help her with her homework. It was a reading exercise from a play, and Sasha was her audience as she stood tall and straight, reciting from the book and putting on different voices as if she were on the stage.

“She wants to join the local amateur dramatics group,” Rosalyn told me. “She’s too young yet, but they said she can join when she’s ten. She’s doing the school play, though. She’s Nala in
The Lion King
.”

When Steve came home, it was Rachael who introduced her dad to Sasha. She chattered on without taking a breath until Steve shushed her in order to get a word in and speak to Sasha, telling him he was welcome to stay as long as he and I wanted. I’d known my family would love Sasha, but it was good to see how easily they took to him. He gradually opened up as we sat around the dinner table that evening, telling them about his early life in Russia.

“Why did you leave?” Rachael asked.

“Don’t be nosy.” Rosalyn frowned, but Sasha shrugged.

“It’s okay.” He glanced at me. “Do you want to explain?”

“Rachael, you know Sasha and I are together, right?”

“Duh.”

“Well, in the city he comes from in Russia, he would have had to hide who he is and pretend not to like boys.”

“Why?”

“Because some people aren’t as accepting as others. They think he should be with a girl.”

“Even your parents?” Rachael looked at Sasha, eyes wide.

“Yes, even them.”

“How could your parents not want you for that? That’s a stupid reason.”

“Yes, it is. But it worked out well in the end. If I hadn’t left and gone to Prague, I wouldn’t have met your uncle.”

“Or me.” Rachael beamed again.

Sasha smiled back. “I’m very glad to have met you. I have a little sister. A bit older than you, but you remind me of her. Her name’s Elena.”

The rest of the dinner conversation revolved around Sasha’s sister, and it made me wonder if there was a way to find her. She was twelve, maybe thirteen now. Probably too young to have a Facebook profile if her family even had a computer, but perhaps it was worth checking. Sasha had mentioned that in Russia younger people used a social media site called VK, but if Elena had no idea where Sasha was, maybe she’d try something with wider usage.

I left it for the moment, but after Sasha had gone to bed, not long after Rachael as the long day had exhausted him and made his ribs throb, I fired up my laptop.

“Surely you’re not working now.” Rosalyn threw herself onto the sofa beside me and curled her legs under her.

“No, that can wait. I had an idea. Do you have a Facebook profile I can log into to search for someone?”

“Yes. Who are you looking for?”

“Elena. I hadn’t thought about it before, and she’s only a kid, so I doubt she’d have a page, but you never know.”

Rosalyn gave me her log in details and leaned on my arm as I searched for Elena Vasilievna. Much to my surprise, two girls with that name located in Russia came up immediately.

“Could one of them be her? Surely it can’t be that easy?” I clicked on the first profile and it opened up to a picture of a lady who could have been in her forties. The details stated she was married and working in St. Petersburg. I looked at the photo albums on her page just in case, and found a series of pictures featuring the lady and what was no doubt her family. None of them looked anything like Sasha.

I closed the profile and tried the second Elena Vasilievna. Her profile picture was a black horse, and the details stated she was eighteen and in college. My heart sinking, I opened up the photo albums anyway and found a single picture of a young girl who could only be Sasha’s sister. Her hair and eye color and the shape of her face were identical to his, and she was the same girl whose photo Sasha had showed me once, although that picture had been of a younger child. So she’d had the sense to sign up with a fictitious date of birth.

Returning to the home page and scrolling down, my eyes widened as I saw a recent post and below that, numerous similar ones posted at intervals of a few weeks. Elena had uploaded a picture of Sasha looking the same age as on his passport picture. The wording coupled with the pictures was in English.

Do you know this man? He is my brother, Stanislav Vasilievich, known as Sasha. He is from Kaliningrad in Russia. I do not know where he is. Please, if you know him, ask him to send me a message.

Other posts explained that she thought Sasha had gone away to college, but she worried something must have happened to him as he’d never been home for the holidays, or even contacted his family to tell them how he was doing. She also wondered if he might have traveled to other countries.

“Are you going to send her a message?” Rosalyn asked excitedly.

“No.” I shook my head. “Sasha can do that when he wakes up.”

I logged out of Rosalyn’s account and spent the rest of the evening talking to my sister and brother-in-law, mostly about Sasha, but also about what had led me to sell Červenà and leave Prague. They were horrified to hear the details of Karel’s deception and Sasha’s kidnap. I didn’t tell them who Vincenc was when I said he’d bought the club and found Sasha. His family might have been well-known in Eastern Europe, but it wasn’t in England, and I thought it better to keep their criminal activities to myself.

When I eventually went to bed, I lay awake a long time, listening to Sasha’s steady breathing as he slept beside me. I meant to spend every minute with him until he’d fully healed. There was no great rush to plunge straight back into another business, although I’d put out some feelers while we took an extended break and discovered what would be available to me. With much more money than I’d anticipated having, I could take my time in making a decision.

I couldn’t wait to tell Sasha about Elena. When I woke he was still sleeping, and I slipped away quietly to take a shower. He stirred as I put on my clothes, and I hurried to the bed and sat beside him. “Morning, sexy.”

“I don’t feel very sexy.” He made a face. “I need to shower and brush my teeth.”

“You can in a minute. First I have something to tell you.” I helped him sit up and clutched his hand tightly. “I found your sister.”

“
What
?”

“She has a Facebook page. It looks like she set it up only to find you. It has your picture in every post and a message in English, giving your name and asking people to contact her if they know where you are. She signed up as an eighteen-year-old in college.”

Sasha swore loudly in Russian and then clapped his free hand over his mouth. Tears filled his eyes and he blinked rapidly. He lowered his hand shakily. “Did you contact her?”

“No, I left that for you. Do you have a Facebook account?”

Sasha shook his head. “Tomáš and the others have them, but I never did it. Everyone I know was at the club. Except for Elena.”

“Don’t worry. We can set up a page for you and you can get in touch with her.”

“I didn’t think it would be this soon. You know I said I’d try to look for her when she’s older, but I didn’t expect she’d be looking for me. I thought my parents would have prevented it.”

“I doubt they know. She could have used a friend’s computer, or one at school.”

Sasha let go of me and threw back the bed covers. He sprang from the bed before remembering his cracked ribs, and stood trembling, clutching his side. “Shit.”

“Take your time. Elena’s not going anywhere. She’s been on that page for a year looking for you.”

“Shit,” he repeated. I watched, helpless, as he thrust me aside and fumbled for some clothes before disappearing into the bathroom. I left him to it and went downstairs to get coffee and turn on the laptop. By the time he joined me, I was on my second caffeine fix and the computer was waiting, as was my phone.

“I’ll take your picture and upload it. You’ll need it for your profile so she can see it’s you.”

“Thanks. Sorry about… before. I’m excited. And scared. How much do I tell her?”

“That’s up to you. Take it one step at a time.” I looked at him critically and frowned. “You still have faint bruises around your eyes. That will worry her. I’ll ask my sister if she can do something with makeup. It won’t take much.”

When Rosalyn had applied various creams and powders to the corners of Sasha’s eyes, I took a series of photos from different angles. The bruises weren’t visible in the pictures and I uploaded them to the computer. Sasha set up his own Facebook profile and called himself Sasha Vasilievich. As soon as it was done, he found Elena. He spent time reading through her posts, one after another, even though most of them were identical. Eventually, he clicked on the Add Friend button and proceeded to type a message to her, in English. I left him alone and joined my family in the kitchen as Rachael and Steve came downstairs.

Rosalyn made breakfast for everyone, packed up sandwiches for Steve and Rachael, and then Steve left for work, needing to head for the school much earlier than Rachael did. I returned to Sasha with a plate of toast and found him typing another message.

“Look who I found. It’s Gabriel. I found Tomáš, too, and Kris. I’ll be able to keep in touch with all of them.” He grinned and continued typing. “Thank you for this.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes, I do. You saved me. I don’t just mean last week—”

“That was Vincenc’s doing.”

“It was you too. But I meant at the beginning, when I was in your yard.”

“It was a long time ago and you already thanked me.”

“Not enough.”

“I thought we were past that anyway.” I frowned at him, confused. After everything, did he still feel grateful to me?

“We are.” He pushed the laptop aside. “I love you. But I haven’t forgotten how I got to be here.”

I reached for him, careful not to squeeze too tight as I drew him into my arms. “I love you too. I can’t wait for your ribs to heal.” I placed a light kiss on his mouth.

“We need to find our own place.”

“I know. The things I want to do to you, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with, knowing my sister and niece are so close.”

“We could look now.” Sasha gestured to the laptop. “What are you planning to do? Rent or buy?”

“Rent.” I pulled the computer onto my lap. “At least in the short term. It’s more important to put the money into another business. We can buy somewhere to live later on when we have a decent income.”

“Do you know what business you want?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I haven’t made any decisions, but I thought maybe a bar or a small club. Not on the scale of Červenà, though. Something smaller. I’m going to find out what the possibilities are before I look for a place to live. There’s no point in renting an apartment or house and then finding a business fifty miles away. We won’t be staying in London.”

“I thought you wanted to be near your sister.” Sasha’s brows drew together.

“I do, but London’s too expensive. I’m going to look around an hour’s drive away.”

Sasha and I spent most of the day together, looking into the opportunities in the outskirts of the city and beyond. I found one or two ideas that sparked my interest, although they looked like a lot of work. Ironically the one that appealed the most was a very similar situation to Červenà. The two-story building on Woking High Street was for sale for only four hundred thousand pounds, something I never thought I’d find so close to the country’s hub. The catch was that the bar it had once been had suffered a fire caused by electrical failure, and the interior was nothing more than a blackened and charred mess, although the structure was deemed sound and without need of demolition. My mind worked overtime, flitting between what Karel and I had done with the old restaurant Červenà had been, and the small intimate club I could potentially turn this little building into.

“It’s a lot of money.” Sasha sounded doubtful.

“Not for London.”

“But look at it! It’s a wreck.”

“I know. If I buy this without a mortgage, I’d have about a quarter of a million left over.”

“That’s not very much.”

“Pounds, Sasha, not koruna. I could do something with this. It’d take months, maybe a year, but I like a challenge.”

“How do you know it would work out?”

“I don’t. But we can at least do some research and go and see it. I don’t plan to do much in the way of work until you’re better, but maybe we can look.”