you. It’s your mother.’
Oh, God! Katya covered the distance between the two of them quickly and practically snatched the phone from him. Had something happened to one of her siblings or was it just more of the usual?
‘Mama?’
‘Da,’ her mother said.
‘What’s wrong?’ Katya asked, slipping into her native tongue, gripping the phone, preparing for the worst.
‘Katya,’ her mother said reprovingly, ‘can’t I just ring and talk to my daughter without something being wrong?’
Since when had Olgah ever rung just to shoot the breeze with her firstborn? ‘Everyone’s OK, then?’ Katya said. Her youngest sibling was now seventeen but that still didn’t stop Katya fretting over them like a mother hen.
‘Da, da,’ Olgah said dismissively.
Katya breathed a sigh of relief and loosened her grip on the phone. She was conscious in her peripheral vision of Ben’s blatant curiosity. He was sitting in the anesthetist’s chair, pretending interest in a chart.
If there wasn’t something wrong then Katya knew where this conversation was going to head, and she didn’t want Ben to be privy to it. She turned slightly so she couldn’t see him and leant heavily against the wall. She scuffed her feet against the floor, her head downcast, her free hand massaging her forehead.
‘What do you want, Mama?’ Katya asked, feeling herself tense.
‘Katya! How can you speak to your mother like that?’
Katya ignored the indignation. ‘How much, Mama?’
‘I need a couple of thousand. I’m a little behind on the rent and I’ve just got the second notice from the electric company.’
The figure didn’t even make Katya blink. Was it a new dress or a pair of shoes or a new man that had taken precedence over the rent and electricity? Katya sighed. ‘Mama...’
‘Please, Katya. It’s expensive with four teenagers. And if you ever bothered to come home instead of tripping around the world, you’d know that.’
Katya gripped the telephone receiver and bit her tongue, the unfairness of her mother’s statement stinging. Like she’d been on a continuous Contiki tour! She’d been working her butt off in some of the world’s hotspots so she could support her mother and four siblings.
She knew how expensive it was, damn it - she’d been practically supporting the entire family since she’d started work.
‘If it’s too much for you maybe you can ask your rich count for a loan?’
‘Mama!’ Katya gasped.
Was her mother serious? She’d known the minute she’d told her mother that she knew a Count and was going to Italy to work for him in the world-famous Lucia Clinic that she’d said the wrong thing. But her mother had been persistent in wanting to know why she was leaving MedSurg and a steady source of income and Katya certainly wasn’t about to tell her about the baby.
And, just for once, she’d wanted for her mother to be impressed. Proud even. But, as usual, her mother didn’t fail to disappoint her.
‘Don’t be so shocked, Katya. You always were so high and mighty.’
‘Well, somebody had to be, Mama.’
As soon as the words were out, Katya regretted them. Not because they were wrong but because she knew what was coming next. Katya held the phone and listened while her mother gave her the usual hard-luck story. How hard her life had been with five children and no man about the house. How she’d done the best she could with what she had. What an ungrateful daughter she was.
And then the real prize. ‘You think you’re better than me? Don’t forget, if it wasn’t for you, Katya, Sophia wouldn’t be so horribly disfigured.’
No matter how many times she prepared herself for it, how many times she heard it, it still rocked her to the core. The angry little girl inside who had lost her childhood to her mother’s reproductive irresponsibility clawed and begged and screamed to retaliate. To respond with righteous indignation.
But the guilt - the guilt her mother knew how to manipulate so well - paralysed the words, froze them in her throat, every time. She looked up and saw Ben watching her. ‘I’ll send the money, Mama,’ Katya said, her voice shaky, her hands trembling as she cast her eyes downwards again.
‘Good girl.’
No ‘thank you’. No apologies for asking or pretense that this was the last time.
‘You know, Katya,’ Olgah continued, ‘if you played your cards right, were nice to your boss, he might...I know from the magazines he’s a terrible playboy but he might like a nice little Russian girl. We’d never have to worry about money again.’
Olgah was so matter-of-fact that Katya felt physically