The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [56]
‘The music rooms are not, unfortunately, located in the main building,’ he said in greeting. ‘They are around the back.’
Stevie and Vadim strode out into the black-and-white park, the only movement in an otherwise frozen landscape. It was exceptionally cold. The blacks were growing blacker, the whites whiter, the greys taking sides.
Dumps of rusting metal, steel containers, corroding beams lined one side of the snowy track—for the neat path by now had become a track. On the other side was the music building. A staircase ran up to the front door on the first floor, but some of the steps were missing and it was obviously not viable. Stevie thought at first that it was an abandoned block, but then she noticed that lights were on and, some of the windows not being boarded and taped, that students were eating at a communal table on the ground floor. Like a threadbare jumper, the concrete was eaten away in patches, exposing a jumble of wires, more beams. Three stray dogs ran about the foreground, obviously starving and manic with cold.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks inside. It’s warm at least.’ Vadim looked down at Stevie puffing along beside him. ‘You’re shocked?’
‘It’s the dogs really, Vadim. They make it all feel so . . . desolate, so deeply forsaken. Is my nose red?’
Vadim smiled. Of course it was.
Inside, the halls were dimly lit, the ceilings a patchwork of waffled squares stained by years of water damage.
‘Anya’s music teacher is a gentle, kind woman,’ Vadim told her. ‘Her name is Galina Alexandreyevna Ovchinnikov. And there is someone else I want you to talk to. She works in the room next door to Galina, a friend of hers. She might have some information that will help us find Anya.’
Galina’s music room had managed, by one of those small miracles that turn up the colours of life for those standing still enough to notice them, to completely reject its surroundings. It smelt of pine—rosin dust from violin bows—of cinnamon biscuits and freshly printed ink. The light was warm with hints of gold around the edges, it bounced from the corners of a highly polished upright piano, the rim of a music stand filled with sheets; the arm of a metronome, trapped behind its clasp, was still.
Galina herself was golden, in her mid-forties, dark-blonde hair in a waved bob, greying a little in single strands sketched here and there on her head. She wore a hand-knitted jumper in thick moss-green wool, lovingly embroidered with strawberries. She smiled as Vadim entered, then rose to greet Stevie.
‘I am waiting for a pupil,’ she said, as if apologising for seeming idle. She kissed Vadim hello, and her hazel eyes told Stevie she knew Anya was missing.
With the delicacy of a refined sensibility, Galina intuited why Stevie had come and spared her the awkwardness of having to ask the first question.
‘Anya is exceptionally talented, even amongst my own pupils. But she is at that age—glitter is everything.’ Galina gestured to a small chair next to the piano. ‘Please.’ Stevie turned it to face Galina, who sat back down on her piano stool. ‘She wants to be a model in New York. We had an argument in her last lesson. I told her I couldn’t understand why she would want to kick her musical gift into a corner and show her legs to strangers for money instead. But Anya is starstruck. She says she needs to experience life before she can really play. But I don’t think she ran away. I believe deep down she still wants to be a serious musician.’
‘Did she mention any new friends to you, new people she had met recently?’ Stevie asked.
‘No. Not anyone new.’ Galina frowned. ‘She became very close to Petra this year but they have known each other since they were children.
I don’t think Petra was a good influence on her. Petra’s talent is mediocre at best. She can afford to let it drop for a bit. Anya is in a different league. They both loved to talk about film stars and models, you know, chasing glamour.’
‘Yes, I met Petra and I think I know what you