Oksa Pollock: The Last Hope (6 page)

I
N
L
ONDON, AS IN
P
ARIS, THE FIRST THING
G
US DID WHEN
he woke up was to switch off his computer. He couldn’t finish his day without playing a video game for at least an hour. And when he started dozing off, more often than not in front of his computer, he’d burrow under his duvet, virtually comatose, and fall asleep immediately, the screen casting an opaline light over the walls of his room.

This Saturday in London felt really odd. It was the first time Gus had moved house and what he was feeling today was light years away from what he’d feared. There’d been nothing terrible about this change of scene, which was actually proving to be quite exciting. After a week, everything felt so familiar! Having dreaded the move to the point of making himself sick, he couldn’t get over how happy he was. Of course, if he was honest with himself, the fact that the Pollocks—and particularly Oksa—were here made it much easier to adapt. But, as his mum said: any type of happiness is good happiness.

He decided to go downstairs for breakfast. His parents were already up and they each planted a wet kiss on his cheeks.

“You’re so affectionate,” he remarked, pretending to wipe his cheeks with his pyjama sleeve.

Pierre Bellanger, nicknamed “The Viking” by his friends, was a bulky man who always dressed in black. Long strands of greying blond hair hung over his forehead, partly obscuring his plump face. Jeanne had an oval, Madonna-like face framed by short black hair. She was much shorter than her husband, with a slender figure and a lively expression in her brown eyes. Discovering at the age of thirty that they couldn’t have children had been a terrible shock for them both. Jeanne had struggled with depression, while Pierre had buried himself in his work, only coming home to sink into a restless sleep. One spring day, they realized they had a choice: either they let cruel reality get the better of them or they did something about it. The next day they began the adoption process. After several trips to China, during which they met Marie—who would become Mrs Pollock, the wife of their best friend, Pavel—their hopes gradually began to materialize. Two years later they went over to an orphanage to fetch Gus, their little miracle, and bring him home to France. He was just over a year old and all they knew about him was that his biological mum had been a young Shanghai girl who’d fallen in love with a Dutch student. By the time she’d realized she was pregnant, the young man had already gone back to his own country and she didn’t have the courage to terminate the pregnancy or tell her family, who still lived in the countryside. When the baby was born she abandoned him at the orphanage, since she was unable to take care of him herself. It was love at first sight for Jeanne and Pierre Bellanger, the minute they saw the toddler playing on his own in his cot. And the feeling had been mutual—as soon as Gus had seen them at the orphanage, he’d tottered towards Jeanne and Pierre, babbling “Mama, mama”. The orphanage staff had been dumbfounded. Quite a few people wanting to adopt had come through their doors, yet this was the first time they’d ever seen such a young child warm so quickly to strangers.

Jeanne and Pierre watched their son eat his breakfast. He was a handsome boy with slanting blue Eurasian eyes, dead straight, sleek black hair and long, tapering hands. They’d lost count of the number of girls who’d fallen for him since nursery school. Still, more often than not, it was Oksa who noticed that kind of thing; Gus just blushed and looked embarrassed when his friend pointed out some new crush.

“Honestly, Gus, are you blind?”

“What? Why me?” he asked, sincerely at a loss.

Most of the time, Oksa preferred not to answer and would just shrug and sigh. Why Gus? Very simply because he had a fantastic physique, good looks and a shy nature which made him irresistible to girls. But for Oksa, who knew him better than anyone else, he had some really special qualities: he was loyal, considerate, modest, kind, intelligent… The list was long, but what Gus was to her could be summed up in three words: her best friend.

Two streets away, in the small house on Bigtoe Square, Oksa was hopping up and down beside the phone impatiently, chewing her nails. Every thirty seconds she started to dial Gus’s number, which she now knew by heart, then broke off before the last digit. She was dying to speak to him about her amazing discovery, and yet something was stopping her. She didn’t doubt him for a second, but what she desperately wanted to tell him was pretty mind-blowing even for her. So, glued to the spot by the phone, shaking with contradictory emotions, she tried to face facts: it was too soon to talk about…
that
. She just wasn’t ready.

When Pavel came out of his bedroom, he found her lying on the floor by the phone, looking agitated and trying to concentrate on a sample menu her mother had scribbled on a scrap of paper the night before when she’d come in from the restaurant.

“What are you doing there, darling?” he asked in concern.

Oksa jumped.

“Er… nothing,” she stammered. “I was just waiting for someone to bother to get up and have breakfast with me,” she said as flippantly as possible. “I’ve been hanging around in this draughty hall for forty-eight and a half minutes!”

“It’s all your mum’s fault,” replied Pavel, defending himself, his eyes sparkling roguishly. “You know what I’m like—if it were up to me, I’d be out of bed at the crack of dawn!”

Oksa burst out laughing at this outrageous assertion.

“Yeah right—only if you believe that dawn is around 10 a.m.!”

Pavel gave a sigh, which was meant to sound pathetic but which merely made Oksa giggle.

“What’s going on? You’re very cheerful this morning!”

Marie Pollock had just drowsily appeared at the top of the stairs.

“My daughter is the cheerful one,” replied Pavel. “She’s cheerfully persecuting me.”

“You poor thing,” said Marie, winking at her daughter.

All three sat down in the kitchen to enjoy a hearty breakfast and the mood continued to be light-hearted—outwardly, at least, because the thoughts running through Oksa’s mind were as heavy as lead. Molten lead. Even while she was devouring thick slices of buttered bread, she was in turmoil. On several occasions she almost opened the floodgates and told them her secret. Should she get up and make a solemn announcement? Or slip the information into the conversation casually, naturally? Or even better: give them a demonstration! Send that tea towel by the sink flying into the air? Add a little creative chaos to the perfect rows of spice pots on the shelves? The idea was tempting but Oksa couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do anything. Or say anything. To anyone. Not yet.

I’m going to have a bath, Mum,” said Oksa.

“Okay, darling.”

Lying in the hot water, gazing at the tiled wall as it gradually misted up, Oksa tried to make sense of her muddled thoughts. She felt exhausted and at the same time brimming with energy. How complicated everything was… something fantastic was happening to her, she knew that. She’d always dreamt of being able to do what was now well within her capabilities. But it also terrified her. She rested her head against the rim of the bath and shut her eyes. Then she heard a strange noise, initially very faint, sounding a long way off, but coming closer and swelling until it mounted an assault on Oksa’s eardrums. She sat bolt upright in fright, trembling as she realized the horrific nature of the noise, which she could now hear clearly: it was the strange, terrifying sound of women screaming. She stiffened, listening intently, wondering whether she should come out of the bathroom or stay put. But after a few seconds she realized that the screams weren’t coming from somewhere inside the house or from outside. No—the screams were coming from
her
. They whirled through her mind and swept over her from head to toe, paralysing her with horror. Then, just as suddenly, they fell silent and vanished. Startled, Oksa looked round and, feeling slightly reassured, she sank down into the hot water until only her face was showing. Her heart had only just stopped racing when she noticed a golden shimmer on the steamy tiled wall. She moved her hand under the water to see if the reflections were coming from the bath, but this had no effect on the remarkable colour of the shimmering patch, which remained unchanged. Oksa closed her eyes and when she opened them again the brightness had gone.

“Perhaps I should try to get more sleep
,” she thought to herself. “What if I’m starting to see things now?” It had all seemed so real, though!

“You all right in there, Oksa? You still alive?”

Pavel Pollock was on the other side of the door asking how she was. As usual. Every time she took a bath—and this had been since she was
old enough to do so alone—he’d call out to her every three minutes or so to check that she was all right.

“Yes, Dad, I’m just drowning myself,” she replied in a mock-serious tone. “And I plugged in the hairdryer because I want to dry my hair in the bath. Oh, and I forgot, I used bleach instead of bubble bath.”

“Fine, make fun of a poor man concerned about the well-being of his darling little girl!”

“Oh, it’s a hard life being a darling little girl,” muttered Oksa with a smile.

“Okay, call me if you need anything.”

“No problem, Dad, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

Oksa couldn’t help smiling. “The legendary Russian OTT-ness,” she murmured, sinking beneath the water.