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  Her offhand comment stopped me in my tracks.

  “So you actually think I’m stable enough—I’d be decent enough as—”

  “A mother?”

  “Eventually,” I added. “Not now.”

  She turned over a price tag, contemplating it for a minute before looking up at me. “Not just decent enough,” she said. “Tremendous.”

  • • •

  At their adoption hearing the next morning, I sat in the hallway with Tatiana, letting her paint my nails fuchsia in a gesture of cultural goodwill while we waited for a verdict.

  The polish had barely begun to dry when Jascha and Gloria burst out the courtroom’s heavy paneled doors. “Ten-day waiting period before we can leave Moscow,” she said, elatedly clacking over to me in her heels, “but we’ve got her!”

  Squeals and hugs all around, and then off they went, rushing to settle up Sveta’s birth certificate and passport while my guitar and I descended into the bowels of the Metro to busk on the platform at Komsomolskaya station. I’d never performed live before, so I thought I’d try my hand at it, make this a real Russian tour.

  All told I made ninety rubles, barely enough to cover a pint back in London, and Tatiana’s impromptu manicure got chipped to hell, but it was worth it just for the opportunity to play the Sex Pistols and the Kooks and even (in a nod to the locale) a little Regina Spektor under yet more chandeliers and frescoes.

  “God, that was ace,” I said later that night, sprawled on my sofa bed, cruising the telly.

  Gloria looked over at me from where she stood folding Sveta’s new wardrobe into a neat stack on the desk. “You know,” she said, smiling, “I wouldn’t be opposed to you giving a repeat performance tomorrow after we’ve picked her up.”

  I sat up. “Seriously? You don’t want me to stick round in case . . .” I trailed off, unable to envision what exact calamity I’d need to be on call for. I mean, Sveta was a little hyper, sure, but she certainly didn’t seem like a mini-me.

  As if confirming my assessment, Gloria’s smile deepened. “Oh, I think we can handle her,” she said, creasing the arms of the dragonfly cardigan, placing it lovingly on the pile.

  • • •

  During my next Metro set list, I decided to go for broke and trot out the Clash’s greatest hits, punctuated by the kitschy intermission of a horrid, shrieky song made popular by a pair of faux-lesbian Russian teenagers a few years prior. Made a killing off that one, let me tell you. Headed back to the hotel right pleased.

  Soon as I hit the lobby, though, and saw Gloria pacing back and forth before the front desk, raking her hands through her hair, I knew the party was over.

  I ran over fast as I could. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I said, dropping my guitar case to the floor. “You weren’t worried, were you?”

  In answer, she flung her arms around me, the same way I’d done to her so many times, and buried her face in my shoulder, sobbing.

  “Hey, shh, it’s okay,” I said, patting her back. “No mafia kings tried to pimp me out. I’m fine.”

  Overflowing eyes still scrunched shut, Gloria lifted her head. “Not you,” she whispered. “Sveta.”

  “What about her?”

  “She . . . she’s . . .” Gulpy hiccup, followed by a fresh trickle of cheek-staining tears.

  Aww, hell. Now what? Think fast, Leslyochka.

  I picked up my guitar with one hand. Took Gloria’s hand in my other.

  “Come on,” I said, and marched her over to one of the lobby’s overstuffed chairs. “Sit down.”

  Sniffling but dutiful, she sat.

  I squatted before her. “Just tell me what happened.”

  Gloria took a shuddery breath. “She was fine for most of the evening. Bouncing on the bed, playing with the television remote.” Her mouth curved back in a shaky, nostalgic smile.

  “She get on well with you guys?”

  “Oh, yeah. Did my hair up in a million butterfly clips. Made Jascha give her pony rides till his knees gave out. And then . . .” She gave a particularly sharp sniff, fighting to suck a nascent blob of snot back into her nose. “All of a sudden, she lost it. Total meltdown.”

  For a minute, I was tempted to correct her, let loose with a Dr. P. lecture on how emotions and actions don’t just erupt out of nowhere, but I reckoned that was a lost cause. “What did she—”

  “Ran around screaming. Hid behind the curtains, under the desk. We tried to coax her out, but then . . .” Gloria put a hand to her forehead. “She jumped up and sprinted into the bathroom. Thank God she didn’t know how to lock the door, because when we went in after her, she . . .”

  Gloria closed her eyes. Shook her chin over and over, like she was trying to shake the image loose from her skull. “She . . .”

  I reached up. Folded both Gloria’s hands in mine. Squeezed them tight until her wet eyes flickered open.

  “Lesley,” she said hoarsely, “she was banging her head on the wall.”

  Fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Now my own chin was stuttering. Poor mini-me-after-all. Poor manic sweetpea.

  “We grabbed her before she could do any damage, but God did she fight.” She rolled up her sleeves to reveal a quartet of short but sharp scratches on each forearm.

  My stomach churned, but I willed myself not to look away. “How’s she doing now?”

  “No idea. I came down here half an hour ago.” Her already reddened face went even ruddier with shame. “I hated to skip out on Jasch, but I felt so . . . helpless. Useless. I mean, the only Russian I know by heart is stuff you wouldn’t want a five-year-old hearing, so it’s not like I could—”

  Now I felt useless for having distracted her from her index cards the other night with my existential to-boff-boys-or-not crisis.

  “I figured this would be a challenge,” she whispered, “but I’m out of my league here, Les. I know how to raise a mellow boy, and I guess I’m decent enough at mentoring troubled teenage girls—”

  “Not decent enough,” I corrected. “Tremendous.”

  Her mouth curved into another halfhearted smile. “Don’t happen to have any advice to go with that flattery, do you, darlin’?”

  I sat back on my heels, thinking it over. “Maybe she’s just tired.”

  “Tired,” Gloria repeated.

  “Yeah,” I said. “When you’re knackered, you’re vulnerable, and when you’re vulnerable, it increases your chances of acting out. I mean, that’s the Dr. P. theory, anyway.”

  Her face went stricken. “So she might have an attachment disorder after all?”

  “What the hell you think I am,” I said wearily, “the bloody DSM ?”

  She looked away, one hand up again. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “Look,” I said, “here’s the deal. You and Jascha are over the moon, ’cause she’s a dream come true and he’s back in the motherland and you’ve got the pictures to prove it, right?”

  She nodded.

  “And on top of that, you’ve read heaps of books that say that you absolutely must bond the very first day or else she’s going to hate you and be damaged for life, yeah?”

  Gloria sighed. “More or less.”

  “Okay, well,” I said, “think about it from her perspective. Sure, her new dad speaks Russian, which helps, but she’s just left the only home she’s ever known, and now she’s in a big fancy hotel with clothes she’s never worn and food she’s never tasted. Fun for a couple hours, right, but then it gets towards evening and she starts missing her bed at the orphanage—”

  “And her little friend in the next one over whom she always says good night to, and her white-smocked surrogate babushkas, who would never bail out and go downstairs to contemplate a bottle of Stoli from the lobby bar, unlike me, who did because, God forbid, my new daughter turned out to be more than a grateful tabula rasa.” She shook her head. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  At first I thought she was giving me a telling-off for making her feel guilty, but then I realized her growly huff was directed
inward.

  One last rueful chin-jerk, and then Gloria leaned down, took my face in her hands, and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Thank you,” she said. “From the bottom of my unrealistic-expectation-filled, idealistic heart, thank you.”

  • • •

  When we got back to the room, we found Jascha sitting on the end of their mattress, bent double with his hands laced between his knees, his face numb.

  “Still can’t get her out from under the desk,” he said hoarsely.

  Gloria’s lower lip trembled. She went over and huddled on the bed behind him. Draped her arms around his neck.

  “You’d think I’d know exactly what to do,” he said, his voice quaking as, stroking his wife’s wrists, he looked up at me. “I speak her language, I’m a former child émigré, but I just can’t . . .”

  Gloria pressed her cheek to his. “Hush,” she said. “Don’t beat yourself up, love. It’s not the same.”

  He plucked a still-clinging plastic butterfly from the lock of her hair that brushed his chin. “But I just want to—”

  “Let me try,” I said.

  They watched as I set down my guitar case, knelt on the floor, and crawled over towards the desk. From where I crouched behind the chair, I could see Sveta rocking back and forth in her cherrywood-walled hideout, her glossy head bowed, her knees drawn up, her arms loosely circled round them. Put a pair of headphones in her elfin ears, and she’d have been a dead ringer for me my first night at the hostel.

  “Hey, Sveta,” I said softly.

  Quick upwards glint of her almond-shaped eyes, too wary to even be called a gaze, followed by a scoot farther back inside her refuge.

  “Nyet, it’s okay,” I said, putting a hand up. “You don’t have to come out until you’re ready.”

  As I spoke to her and slid closer, I kept my voice low and steady and even, same as Dr. P. had when I’d paged her during my three a.m. freak-outs. No pleading, no over-the-top attempts to soothe, just matter-of-fact calm. Wasn’t like Sveta understood my actual words, of course, but I figured she could get the gist from my tone.

  “I bet you’re pretty overwhelmed, huh? Everybody up in your business, giving you presents and wanting you to call them Mum and Dad. Which you’ll want to later on, believe me, ’cause they’re brilliant people. The best.”

  From behind me, I heard Gloria let out a touched whimper.

  “But right now,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about any of that, because we’ve plenty of time to hang out and get used to each other, and I’ll make your mum and dad take it slow. Promise.”

  Sveta raised her head again, slower this time, her stare at me less guarded, more constant.

  “I’m sure you don’t know what to make of me, either,” I said. “I mean, I’m just some weird-looking person along for the ride. But guess what? I’m also like you.”

  Curious now, Sveta stopped rocking and wriggled her bum forward till she was midway between the back of the desk and its opening.

  I could have taken that positive response as my cue to elaborate about how I’d once been scared and overwhelmed and at the mercy of well-intentioned strangers, or make grand, sweeping statements about the simpatico bond that would deepen between us.

  But she was five, and we were both exhausted, and her shattered parents were hanging by a thread whose opposite end I clutched in my tentative hands (no pressure there!), and I was almost out of words, so, right quick, on the fly, I pulled the one phrase I remembered seeing on Gloria’s flash cards from my brain like a stubborn splinter.

  “Ja znaiyu.” I know.

  Sveta hunched in on herself so tightly I thought for sure she was going to rock again, but then she curled down onto her knees, her narrow little shoulders bunched all the way to her chin, her palms flat on the carpet.

  “If you come out with us,” I said, “I bet we can ask the front desk people to bring you up a cot. Nice and cozy, just like the ones at the dyetski dom.”

  At the sound of the Russian phrase, she raised her head, suddenly emboldened and alert.

  I held out one arm. “What do you think? Should we give it a go?”

  Silence. Her eyes darted from the floor, to me, to Gloria and Jascha on the bed, then back to the floor.

  “You don’t have to,” I said gently. “I can always give you my blanket if you’d rather sleep in there.”

  Tucking her chin down, Sveta walked her hands forward. Dragged her knees, scuff by inexorable scuff, across the inches between us. Collapsed onto her elbows and into my lap.

  My held breath released with a sigh so deep I could feel the rush of air into my belly. “Oh, there’s a girl,” I said—both in praise of her and with amazement at the fact that, yes, of her own brave volition, there she was.

  When she sat up, I gathered her into my arms. Drained, she leaned against me, her face cuddled into the space between my unbuttoned shirt and my tank top, her warm cheek and sharp chin pressed against my breasts.

  Caressing her tangled, sweaty hair, I rocked her with a rhythm so instinctual it came as both a shock and a delight. Lean forward, draw back, so smooth and serene I could have done it forever.

  16

  The minute we got home, Francesca hit the ground running: lining up therapy for Sveta, ringing every week to check on how her adjustment was going. (Perennial answer from Gloria: “Fabulously, thanks to you.”) Don’t get me wrong, Sveta was still a spunky whirlwind, just a far less destructive and disregulated one. Doing her Auntie Lesley proud.

  I was proud of Gloria, too. Once she got over the initial shock, she embraced her second go-round at motherhood with her usual ferocity and warmth. You should have seen her when the headmaster of Sveta’s school was being a dick about her special needs. (“I’ve seen Russian orphanages with better person-centered planning. You will not treat my daughter like a second-class citizen. Are we clear?”) She came home that night fuming, but I went upstairs after dinner to find her and Sveta curled up together on Sveta’s bed with a pile of picture books, their dark-haired heads nestled against each other, her formerly enraged face tranquil as she helped Sveta sound out words, pausing every few pages to lavish her with encouraging kisses.

  And as for me? My own adjustment period at university was easy-peasy. The college was in South London, so I stayed in student housing to avoid a nasty commute from the Kremskys’ place. All the “Welcome to Higher Education” leaflets cautioned about how this might be a “challenging life transition,” but I just sat back and watched, amused, as my residence hallmates accidentally shrank their clothes in the launderette’s washers, and phoned their parents weeping with homesickness, and struggled to remember which class met where and what day such-and-such essay was due, and got shit-faced all weekend.

  Not saying I was a perfect angel, mind you, ’cause I failed a few exams and drank so much vodka one night that I got sick all over my shoes, but generally I had a damn good handle on things—after all, I’d been living in quasi-dorms for years.

  I wasn’t the only one in that streetwise position, either. The school I’d accepted a place at was on Francesca’s “We Heart Former Fostered Kids” list, and they were keen to get us together for study sessions and social dos.

  It was at one of those orientation picnics that I met my best friend, Imogen. Straightest girl I’ve ever met, and an über-femme fashion design student to boot, but we got on smashingly right from that first moment when, bored in the sandwich queue, we commenced composing mock football anthems for Team Six Percent (named after the percentage of foster care leavers who go on to university). Best one went like this: “We’re the ones who saw it through, hell and back, badass and true, so sod off, you posh entitled fuckers, ’cause Team Six Percent’s gonna bury you!”

  (Yeah, I know, hardly as iconic as “England Till I Die.” But when you’ve been beaten down for as long as Immi and I have, you’ll take all the cheeky morale-building you can get.)

  The next three years were briskbusy fun: command
eering the mixing board at school concerts, taking the train to visit Curran at Oxford, pushing Sveta on park swings. I developed a serious following as a DJ, too. Standing gig every Friday at a club in Hoxton called the Bin.

  Immi swore the whole dance floor was crushing on me. Whenever she said that, I’d blush and brush it off with a snort—“Ha bloody ha, you just want me to hook you up.” But then I’d program a long set, go into the ladies’ toilets, and check myself in the mirror: new turquoise Asian brocade dress, old shit-kicker boots, now-chin-length cute choppy hair.

  Not bad, Leslyochka, I’d think. Not bad at all.

  Then I’d fetch my free drink from the bartender, knock it back, and disappear into the crowd, twirling like a dervish in the heat, beneath the lights.

  Every so often, I’d wind up making out with some guy or girl, the two of us pressed against the wall, my palms in his pockets, my hands in her hair. Their mouths tasted delicious; their fingers’ trailing stroke down my spine made my body half-sigh, half-shiver.

  And every so often, one of them would murmur in my ear an equally delicious proposition for a private gig up in the booth or back at their flat. I’d lift my head from a warm shoulder, pull my mouth away from a warm neck. Mumble an excuse about being too tipsy, too tired. Whatever it took to dodge.

  I didn’t mean to play anyone. I just wasn’t ready. Well, mentally, anyway. I’d go home frustrated as hell—at the fact that I wasn’t getting any, sure, but also at the pitiful person whom my smack-talking brain whispered I was: a former psych ward seductress turned cowardly tease.

  Fucking freak, I’d think, lying in bed at two a.m., fighting the old urge to bloodlet my self-deprecating vitriol. Eventually I’d page Dr. P., and we’d talk it out, and I’d curl up tight in my blankets and wrap my arms around myself and whisper, “There now, Lesley-lovely,” soothing myself to sleep without a single pop of a blade cap.

  When I graduated with honors in sound recording (on time, and as the first in my family to earn a degree), it was with a whole entourage in the audience: not just the Kremskys but also Francesca, who’d even brought a professional photographer along. “Come on, let’s get a picture for the Children’s Services website,” she said, motioning me in front of a banner at the official university reception.