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Daniil didn’t like gifts.
Birthdays at the orphanage had meant an extra piece of fruit with lunch and knuckles on the head from his peers. He had never received a wrapped gift, chosen specifically for him, until he had come to live in England and had quickly found out that always, always, they came with guilt or conditions attached.
He remembered getting a tennis racket when he hadn’t liked the game and finding out later that their late son, Daniel, had been a gifted tennis player.
There had been clothes, books, instruments, computers and electronics, too, that had supposedly been chosen for him, but Daniil had known the thought had been with their late son.
At eighteen he had stood awkwardly as he’d been handed a bunch of keys and taken out to the drive where a luxury navy car sat wrapped in a bow. He had caused tears when he had refused to perform for the video camera and take his gift for a drive.
It hadn’t been a gift in the true sense.
Daniil had known that again it would come at a price.
How grateful he should be, he had often been told. Didn’t he understand just how lucky he was?
Lately his gifts had been of the serious corporate kind but they, too, had come with their own quiet sway.
He looked up to Libby, who was waiting expectantly for him to open her gift.
‘Come on...’ she urged, as he undid the ribbon.
‘Too much pink,’ he commented.
‘You can never have too much pink,’ she said, as he peeled back the paper. ‘It’s not very exciting,’ she warned as he opened the box. ‘Well, it’s exciting to me but I just...’ Her voice trailed off as her gift was revealed.
It was a porcelain, hard thing. A bit like a grey-silver bear with pieces of glittery wool stuck to it, and it had a smiling face and eyes.
He removed it from the paper and saw that it had very long legs with the ends dressed in pink ribboned ballet shoes.
He tried to stand it on his desk but Libby laughed.
‘It sits on your bookshelf,’ she explained, and put it at the end of the desk so that its long legs dangled over the edge. She looked around his office. ‘You, Daniil, are lacking in knick-knacks.
He didn’t like pointless things.
Daniil had never been attached to a thing for the sake of it.
And, yes, this was possibly the most pointless thing that had ever graced his desk.
‘I’ve ordered loads,’ Libby explained. ‘I might give them as little prizes.’
‘I see.’
He didn’t.
‘Well, I have to go,’ Libby said. ‘I’ve got to get back for my mirrors arriving...’
‘What else did you want?’
‘Nothing.’ Libby beamed. ‘Just to say thank you. I know now that I couldn’t have done it without you. I tried by myself at the bank and I truly believe he was about to laugh me down the street when I produced your business plan. Honestly, almost the moment I did he offered me a coffee and I got two chocolate biscuits.’
Daniil looked at her and smiled. She, like the thing, was now sitting on his desk, only she was chatting away happily.
‘How’s your back?’ Libby asked.
‘Well, for a couple of days I struggled even to put a shirt on and if your ears were burning that was me, cursing your name every time I moved...’
‘But then?’ she said.
‘Amazing,’ Daniil said. ‘If your ballet school flops you can—’
‘Don’t even say it!’ she said. ‘I’m terrified.’
‘There’s no need to be,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t put my name to any business plan that I didn’t consider had every chance of succeeding.’
‘Really?’ She frowned. ‘You weren’t just being nice?’
‘I don’t lie about business,’ he said. ‘I was just being nice to you...’
‘I didn’t think you played nice,’ she said, as he pulled her from the desk and onto his lap so that she was facing him.
‘Occasionally I do,’ he said, arranging her legs so she was half kneeling on the chair with her arms resting on his shoulders.
‘I’d love to kiss you—’ she sighed ‘—but I have far too much lipstick on for that.’
‘Poor excuse.’
‘Valid excuse,’ she said. ‘I really came just to give you your present. If they weren’t going to let me up then I’d have left it with the misers at Reception. You haven’t opened your card.’
‘I will,’ Daniil said. Right now, though, his hands were on her hips. ‘Before you arrived I was about to call your father.’
