I run down the stairs and as I pass the first floor I see that he has closed his door. Suddenly tears start pouring down my face. He can hear me running down the stairs. He knows I am leaving, but he doesn’t come out of his room. Just lets me go.
On the last flight I can see that there is no one at the landing. All I have to do is open the door and run out into the night. There are always taxis around and I can just hail one and go back to Stella, but in my mad dash I miss a step and tumble down the last few steps, my hands flailing, trying to grab the banister, and missing. I land sprawled and in pain on the floor.
I make a ruckus with my involuntary scream, and the clattering noise of my fall carries all through the house, but Zane doesn’t come out of his room to see if I am OK.
Fresh tears of pain and hurt run down my face.
‘Son of a bitch,’ I swear, and get up onto my hands and knees. I’m sore, but fairly unhurt. I hear footsteps coming from the kitchen.
Twenty-three
Dahlia Fury
I look up and Olga is standing there. She walks up to me and helps me up to my feet.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
For a moment I forget to be hurt and wounded and furious. ‘You don’t speak English.’ I say stupidly.
‘Of course, I do,’ she says briskly.
‘What? Then why?’
‘Oh, child. Every time a new woman comes in here, it’s the same damn thing. They fall in love with him and expect me to listen to their pathetic stories. I got sick of it, and unless it was a Russian girl, I just pretended I could speak nothing but Russian.’
This house is full of liars. ‘I don’t believe this,’ I say shaking my head.
‘Well,’ she says dryly. ‘Try listening to the same idiotic story again and again.’
‘I’m leaving,’ I tell her.
She glances at the bag that is lying on the first step of the stairs. ‘No, you’re not.’
I sniff pitifully. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well, come and have a cup of coffee first.’
‘No, I don’t want to stay under his roof for another minute.’
She points to a little red light blinking in a corner of the hallway that I have not noticed before. ‘See that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s a camera. Yuri is watching you right now from that small room there. The moment you try to open the door he will come out and quickly escort you back to your room. That is his job. No one gets in or out without Aleksandr’s say-so.’
‘I’m a prisoner?’ I ask incredulously.
‘Not exactly, but you cannot run out in the middle of the night. If I was Aleksandr I would not allow it either. It is not safe for a young woman to be wandering about alone at this time of the night. Why don’t you come into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a little chat?’
I sniff. ‘Coffee and a chat?’ Everything seems so surreal.
She goes over to my bags and picks them up. ‘Can you walk or do you need help?’ she asks.
I cough. ‘I can walk,’ I say, and begin to limp towards the kitchen. She holds the door open.
The kitchen is fragrant with the smell of baking.
‘Are you cooking at this time of the night?’ I ask, my mind latching onto meaningless inconsistencies around me in my moment of shock and betrayal.
‘Yes. I don’t like waking up early in the morning. I prefer to work at night and have an extra hour in bed in the morning.’
I hobble over to a stool and sit on it. She puts my bags on the floor next to me, and slides a box of tissues towards me. ‘Now, let’s get you some coffee.’
I pull out a couple of tissues, wipe my eyes and blow my nose.
She puts a mug of coffee in front of me. ‘I’ve already put the right amount of sugar in it.’
‘You know how many sugars I have in my coffee?’ I ask, weirdly and helplessly exploring more meaningless inconsistencies.
‘Of course.’
I wrap my hands around the hot mug. ‘Did you know that he kidnapped my sister too?’
She nods. ‘I might have heard something to that effect.’
‘And Noah? Does he knows too?’
‘Of course. It doesn’t take a genius to work it out.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You come to this house in a tight dress—’
‘It was a uniform,’ I correct automatically.
‘OK, a tight uniform and run out like a bear was on your tail and three months later your sister gets kidnapped. In Aleksandr’s world, glaring coincidences like that don’t happen unless they are made to happen.’
I stare at her unperturbed face. ‘But you don’t think he has done a terrible thing?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t think it was so bad. It is an English saying no, “all is fair in love and war”?’