22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [15]
‘He was blond when he was a baby,’ Janusz says, and Silvana realizes he has been thinking the same thing as her.
‘Like his father,’ Silvana says, nodding.
‘They change so much, don’t they?’ says Mrs Holborn, waving a hand in Aurek’s direction, a gesture Silvana finds comforting, as if the woman is already familiar with their son.
‘My daughter was the same,’ she continues. ‘Born with a mop of ginger curls. You’d have thought she was the milkman’s kid. If you saw her now – she’s grown up and left home, mind – you’d say I was a liar, ’cus she’s a brunette. Not a ginger hair on her head. But look, we don’t stand on ceremony around here. You must call me Doris.’
Janusz smiles. ‘Doris. And I am Janusz Nowak. You can call me Jan if you find it easier. My wife’s name is Silvana.’
‘Right. Well, I’ll do my best, but I’m hopeless with foreign names. You’ll have to forgive me if I get them wrong. I’ve seen you coming and going and I thought you must be moving in. You’ll have to meet my Gilbert when he’s back from work. You might know him already. You work together at Burtons, don’t you?’
Silvana looks out of the window. The sun is turning red in the sky, casting a rosy light across the clouds. There is a chiming of birdsong through the open door, and at the end of the garden Aurek is scrambling up the lowers branches of the oak tree. She thinks of the forest where she and the boy lived. Their hideout will be filling up with soil and leaves. Animals will be taking it over, the tree roots breaking through the earth walls. The forest will already be covering over her past.
Janusz touches her lightly on the shoulder and she jumps. She tries to compose her face into a smile.
‘What is it?’
‘She’s agreed to take our photo. Come on, get Aurek.’
Doris is waving a camera at her and grinning.
‘I’m not very good with machinery. I hope I won’t break it.’
Outside the front door, Silvana stands next to Janusz. She fiddles with her headscarf, pulling it tight under her chin, and tries to relax as she feels his hand on her waist, drawing her closer to him. There is a moment of stillness when the three of them are waiting, posed, staring into the camera’s eye. Frozen already into the image they expect the camera to see. Janusz is straight-backed and serious. Silvana holds her headscarf in place. Aurek is clinging to Silvana’s legs.
When the photo is developed, Janusz puts it in a frame and Silvana stands it on the mantelpiece in the front parlour. Proof, she thinks. She breathes on the frame and rubs the glass clean with her sleeve, polishing the image. There they are in black and white, a father, a mother and their son reunited. Her family. Nobody can take this from her. Not now.
Silvana is in the bathroom rubbing soap on her hands until they are covered with a thick layer of foam. It feels luxurious to have a whole bar of soap to herself. She looks in the mirror and wonders whether to wash her hair. Her short, grey hair. Tears come to her eyes every time she sees herself. So ugly, she thinks.
How can Janusz want her when she looks like this? A convict. That’s what she looks like. Someone guilty of a crime. A bearer of bad news. That’s what she had read in Janusz’s face when she told him she had never gone to see his parents after he’d left Warsaw. The hurt showed clearly in his eyes. She’d disappointed him.
She scrubs the bar of soap all over her head, fingernails catching against her scalp, suds dripping into her eyes, the smell of the soap so sweet and clean and renewing she is tempted to slip the whole thing into her mouth and let the suds rinse her inside as well as out.
‘Are you all right?’ calls Janusz, and she hears him knock on the door. The soap pops out of her hand and falls somewhere under the sink. She searches for it, water running down her face, eyes tight shut.
‘Yes, yes. I’ll be finished soon.’
‘Only you’ve been running the taps for a long time.’
‘Sorry.’ Silvana fishes the soap out from behind the pipes. She grabs