The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [22]
Stevie took a small table by the window overlooking the soft white valley and ordered a pot of black coffee. Then she sauntered blithely to the buffet and chose a slice of thick black bread, an enormous slice of fresh, unsalted butter and a piece of Emmenthal cheese. She felt better already.
The thermometer outside the lobby read –10 degrees Celsius. Stevie thought she had better take the necessary precautions: her biggest fur hat, her fullest goggles, with mirrored lenses and a bright red frame, her warmest ski gear—which happened to be an all-in-one by Jean-Claude Killy in canary yellow. She looked like a cockatoo.
Busy with her boots in the ski room, she suddenly heard a voice over her shoulder.
‘So you decided to stay?’ The tall man from the dining hall was standing behind her, skis in hand.
Stevie turned back to her boot buckles.
‘Shouldn’t I have?’
‘I’m sorry. I thought maybe . . . but you look much more cheery this morning.’
Stevie saw that his eyes were on her sunshine ski suit.
‘Well, just because circumstances have changed, it doesn’t mean my wardrobe has to.’
‘The colour is perfect. And my name is Henning.’
‘Stevie.’ They shook hands, then Stevie hurried off for the Weisshorn, the highest peak, determined to escape the advances of everyone in the hotel.
And that was how Stevie had met Henning. They became co-conspirators that weekend, if not friends. He had cheered her admirably and without imposing on her and for that Stevie had been grateful.
When everything had fallen apart not long after, Stevie found herself with a broken heart, puffy eyes, lunching in Zurich at the Kro-nenhalle and telling Henning everything over cucumber salad and Zürcher Geschnetzeltes mit Rösti. This gushing was most unlike her and she immediately regretted it. She apologised and explained that it was the first time she had been out since the abandonment. That’s what she called it, even though others might have used a different word.
But Henning didn’t seem to mind and Stevie satisfied herself that Henning had no plans of seduction, at least not in the short term, and that he was probably a decent human being, one who travelled even more than she did and who made a habit of random acquaintances. Stevie was happy to be one of them for now.
Still, flying to Moscow to see him on some secret mission was almost certainly unwise. If Charlie hadn’t unsettled her so with his talk of Joss proposing to Norah Wolfe, if she hadn’t seen his face on every bus stop posing next to the fashion star, she may not have gone at all.
But she wasn’t ready to face the memories all over again—not yet. So, feeling like a coward for the second time that day, she had fled.
A few days in Moscow would be enough for her to gather her courage and return to her responsibilities. She would do the assessment for Henning as a favour then she would go home to her flat in Zurich, surrounded by thick woods, where she could safely hide from the world until David Rice called her back to London.
______________
Thank heavens Henning came to collect her himself from Sherme-tyevo. Moscow’s airport was a battleground, predictably grim at passport control, with interminable forms asking in-coming passengers to list any electronic goods, cash, recording devices and so on in their possession. An accumulation of previous visits had taught Stevie to just answer Nyet to everything. The forms were relics from the time of the Iron Curtain; no one at customs was interested anymore. Nor do they smile, ever.
The arrivals hall was filled with jostling men in leather jackets, fur hats and cheap shoes—touts, thugs, taxi drivers, impossible to tell apart. Henning was waiting near the automatic doors, ready to seize her before anybody else could.
‘Dobri vyecher, stranger.’
‘Henning!’ She kissed him hello on his freshly shaven cheeks. He swooped on her bag, put a protective arm around her shoulders—it might have gone around