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‘Don’t worry about that now. Just concentrate on tonight.’
‘I’m sorry about tonight, for asking for you to nurse him. I know it must be hell for you...’
‘Don’t worry about me, Iosef. I’m fine.’ She turned to go, nails biting into her palms as he called her back.
‘I need to tell you something—and you’re the only person here I think I can tell. It’s about my father. My brother—if the person looking after him can understand...’ And she didn’t want to hear it, yet really she had no choice, and she took the deepest breath before flicking on the light then she walked over, sat on the edge of the on-call bed and gave a nod, hating it that he was still pulling her in deeper, promising herself that tomorrow she’d start to dig herself out again.
‘My mother, Nina, is not Levander’s mother.’
‘OK.’ Staring down at her skirt, she pleated the hem between her fingers.
‘My father had a brief fling with his cleaner, I think before he married my mother—I’m really not sure—but when my mother was pregnant with Aleksi and I, they left Russia to come here.’
‘So Levander stayed behind?’ Annie checked, ‘with his mother?’
‘It didn’t work out like that. Very soon after they left, Levander’s mother died, only my parents apparently didn’t know...’
‘Apparently?’
‘He sent money back, he wrote letters, only it turned out that Levander never got them.’
‘Maybe communication was difficult... And if her family...’
‘From the age of three he was raised in an orphanage.’ He halted her with the terrible truth. ‘He lived through hell, Annie.’
‘That’s why the abandoned baby upset you so much, why you didn’t want to deal with his mother... ’ Annie gulped as she recalled his outburst that day, understood now why he hadn’t wanted to deal not just with the mother but with his own thoughts.
‘My own brother, inadvertently perhaps, but unforgivably carelessly, was abandoned. Raised in adetsky domwith nothing, and no one even knew. We didn’t know about him till he was a teenager and he came to live with us.’
She rued her own words—the spite that had been in her voice as she’d taunted him that she was glad to live somewhere that balked at a parent turning their back on their child.
‘I’m sorry!’ She shuddered out an apology. ‘Sorry for him and sorry for you and for the terrible things that I said.’
‘You didn’t know,’ Iosef responded. ‘No one knows—it’s one of our many family secrets.’ And she wasn’t looking at her hemline any more but at him, listening as he told her about his pain.
‘I could never look at Levander when he came to live with us—he was angry, hostile and I just felt guilty. I tried to talk to him, only not hard enough—I guess I didn’t really want to hear what he had to say. I didn’t really want to know what he had been through because it made me feel worse. Made me hate my parents more than I already did. The only time I have been able to look at him is since he married Millie. For the first time I could see that he was happy, that someone understood him. She knows more about my family than I do.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She knows his past—I don’t, not really. I know that she was able to listen to him, that he was able to talk to her—which is something I have not been able to do. Though I am working on it.’ He gave a wan smile. ‘Since he got married he has opened up a bit. We talk on the phone a lot and sometimes we talk about my work in Russia and we touch on the problems in the family and I think he is starting to accept that I do care—that, in fact, since the day he came to live with us, even if I didn’t show it, I have been on his side.’
‘Does there have to be sides?’ Annie asked. ‘Your parents have to live with their mistakes—it must be hell for them, too.’
‘Nowhere near my brother’s hell. You grow up thinking your parents are perfect and then slowly you find out that they are not, you start to question things…’
‘But they didn’tknowhe was in an orphanage.’
‘They chose not to!’ For the first time in ages they actually looked at each other. ‘I have seen first hand how my brother would have lived and what he must have endured. I know,I knowthat, no matter the excuses, no matter the reasons, what happened to Levander was wrong—he is my father’s son, his firstborn, and he turned his back on him. I have known it was wrong since the day Levander came into our lives and it has been confirmed to me every day since. But this is not about me.’ Frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair. ‘Look after my brother and his wife. I am asking you to understand that this is so hard on them.’
‘It’s hard on everyone,’ Annie attempted, but Iosef shook his head.
‘It is harder on them—please, look out for them.’
‘I will.’ Annie nodded. ‘Come on, come and see him.’
‘I’ll wait here till Levander arrives.’
‘You need to go out there, Iosef. I know you’re exhausted, I know this is hard, but you need to be with your dad.’
