A look of deep sorrow and fear comes into her eyes. She clasps her pink, shiny hands on the table top because they have started trembling.

I love my grandmother and though I knew she would not approve, I never expected to see her look so desolate or frightened for me. It’s not like I’ve hurt anybody. I just took something for myself and I have been careful not to cause consequences to anybody. I reach for her hands and cover them with mine.

‘Oh, Baba, please, please, don’t be sad or scared,’ I plead. ‘Nothing bad happened and nothing will. I wanted him for a long, long time and I would have always regretted if I had not taken this night for myself, but now I’ve had him I can move on. I can put it all behind me and be a dutiful daughter to Papa.’

She blinks slowly. ‘You wanted him for a long, long time?’ she echoes in a daze.

‘Yes, for a very long time.’

She shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Have I not known you at all, Solnyshko?’

‘You’ve known all of me, Baba. This is just something my heart wanted.’ I smile. ‘It’s like how you sometimes still crave for your babushka’s smokva.’

‘Smokva? Yes, we called it dried paradise apple in our village,’ she says, her eyes misting with the memory. ‘It was very precious, but I have never crawled over a wall in the middle of the night, or … risked a man’s life for it.’

I take my hands away from hers. ‘Papa will never find out.’

She shakes her head. ‘You could have been caught. Someone could have seen you.’

‘No. I was very, very careful. I told no one. Not Mama, not even you.’

She sighs sadly. ‘Do you know smokva originally meant dried figs, but because they were too expensive for the ordinary person, somebody had the idea to boil up locally available apples, quinces, plums and rowanberries in honey or sugar syrup? Smokva was the poor man’s substitute for figs. You don’t need to make do with a substitute, Tasha. You can have the real thing.’

I stare into her eyes and whisper, ‘That was the real thing, Baba. That was the real thing. What I will have after him will be the substitute.’

Her eyes widen and she gasps. ‘Who is this man?’

‘You wouldn’t know him.’

Her eyes narrow. This is when she looks closest to Papa. ‘But my son does?’

I nod.

She draws her breath sharply. ‘This man, will he tell, boast to anyone about you?’

I shake my head. ‘He’s not a kid. He understands it could cost his life.’

‘And he will not try to make trouble?’

I shake my head again.

‘Will you see him again?’

‘No,’ I say and it is a wretched sound. I can see that it startles my Baba. ‘It was just the once,’ I say miserably, ‘so I’d know what dried figs taste like.’

‘Oh, Solnyshko, you don’t know what you have done.’

‘I have done nothing. It was just this once. I did it for me. My whole life has been one long Lent and just this once I indulged.’

‘You think you have had one taste of carnal pleasure and now you can walk away and never look back? You have only awakened the demon of desire.’

We are both staring at each other when the door to the kitchen suddenly opens. Both of us jump and swivel our heads towards it. Papa is standing at the doorway. He is still dressed in the clothes he went out in last night. My father is a balding, short, barrel-shaped man. If you saw him in the street you wouldn’t even notice him, but if ever you chanced to look into his black eyes you would shudder with something unnameable. Like looking into the eyes of an insect. Not evil. Just soulless. This man could kill a man with the same emotion with which he sneezes or takes a piss.

His cold, pitiless eyes narrow at the sight of us: my grandmother in her dressing gown and me all dressed as if to go out or … no, the thought will not even occur to him that I could engage in a dirty stop out night. Surreptitiously, slowly, I push the black bag with the rope ladder deeper under the table.

‘Good morning, Papa.’

‘Why are you dressed at this time of the morning?’ he asks, a frown marring his forehead.

‘The child has her first wedding dress fitting this morning and she is so excited about it she woke before the birds were up.’

My father’s face relaxes. He turns to me. ‘Who are you going with?’

‘Lina.’

‘Good.’ He comes into the kitchen. I stand and, walking over to him, dutifully peck him on his cheek. He smells of alcohol and perfume, a strong cloying scent. It makes me step away from him quickly, afraid that he will smell Noah on me, but he absently rubs his cheek where I have kissed him, and turns to look at his mother. When I was younger, I thought he didn’t want me to kiss him, and he was actually rubbing away the kiss, but when I stopped kissing him the next time I saw him, he looked at me with his cold eyes and asked me why I did not kiss him. ‘Never forget to kiss your Papa,’ he told me sternly.

‘Vasily is coming from Moscow this afternoon,’ Papa tells my grandma, ‘and he is bringing Ptichie Moloko from The Prague restaurant for you.’

Ptichie Moloko or Birds’ Milk Cake is made from French marshmallows and chocolate and set on a cake base. It is the king of all Russian desserts and Baba’s favorite.

Grandma keeps her eyes on me while she smiles, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

‘Oh good. No one makes it like they do at The Prague restaurant. All the rest are plastic imitations.’

A dull heat spreads up my throat and into my face. My father looks at me. ‘You’re blushing. Why?’

I swallow hard.

‘Leave the child alone, Nikita. She is excited about her appointment,’ Baba says reaching for her cup of tea. She sips the cold liquid calmly.

Papa just grunts.

It never fails to amaze me the tone my grandmother uses on her son. This is the man who makes grown men shiver. He has never raised a hand to me. He has never needed to. The only time I saw something cruel and frightening in his face was when I came home from school and called him Daddy. Like all the other children in my school did. His head swung around so fast it was like the strike of a snake.

‘What did you call me?’ he asked, so softly I felt goosebumps rise on my hands. Anyone would have thought I’d used the f or the c word.

I thought he must have had misheard. ‘Daddy,’ I repeated.

‘I’m not your daddy. I’m your Papa. Don’t ever try to be like those miserable creatures you go to school with. You can mix with them and pretend to be one of them, but never forget you are Russian and only Russian. You have my blood in your veins. Never let me hear you exchange your culture and your Russian ways for theirs again.’

He had totally discounted my English heritage. The blood of my mother. Of course I never said anything. My mother tells me. Let sleeping dogs lie. Wake them up and they will bite you.

‘Yes, Papa,’ I said immediately, and since then I have never done anything that has earned that soft, menacing tone from him again.

The kitchen falls suddenly silent.

‘It’s been a long night. I’m going to bed,’ Papa says into the strained silence.

‘Sleep well, Papa,’ I say, and step forward to kiss his cheek again. My father reaches out a hand and plucks a one-inch-long twig from the elbow of my cardigan and drops it to the ground. I freeze with fear, but he doesn’t realize the significance, and turns towards the door. I watch him go out of the door with relief and hear the sound of his shoes on the marble floors echo through the empty house.

‘I suppose I better go to my room as well. Sergei will be waiting,’ I tell my grandmother.

She nods.

I bend to pick up the black bag and she grasps my hand suddenly in hers. The steely strength of her grip surprises me and my eyes fly to meet hers. Something strange and dark lurks in them.

‘Solnyshko, if you ignore your dreams they will limp away from you to die a sad death,’ she warns urgently.