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Chapter 1
White Rook
Theodora
Myvoiceislockedinside my chest, and my father holds the key.
It’s always that way when he’s around, although he’s not around much. I see him maybe once or twice every few years. He’s a busy man, and he lives in Russia. He’s involved in politics, though I’m sure he’s not a politician. I don’t know because he never talks about work. He never talks about much at all.
And since I’m being educated in England, where I live with my mother and grandmother in their ancestral home, my father and I rarely see each other.
Sometimes, I wish I saw him more often. Part of me is just a little girl who wishes her dad would spend time with her and hold her when she’s sad or scared.
Most of the time, I wish I never saw him at all.
When he comes to visit, my father always brings gifts. Perfect gifts for perfect little girls. Dolls, dresses, jewellery, all packaged beautifully in pastel paper the colour of sugared almonds, bound with thick satin ribbons.
The receiving of the gifts is a ritual: I must take the box and thank him, I must sit at his feet in the parlour and slowly pull on the ribbon to undo the bow. I must lift the lid and delicately set it aside, then push aside the tissue paper, which crinkles like desiccated skin underneath my fingertips.
Finally, I must lift the gift from its pastel coffin and widen my eyes and say, “Thank you, Papa.”
That’s the hardest part. Because during the entire ritual, my voice is a marble egg in my throat, suffocating me.
It happens every time my father is near, and his dark eyes are fixed on me, and his hard face is set in that permanent scowl of his. All it would take is a smile from him for the egg to melt and my voice to become my own again.
But my father never smiles.
So I swallow and swallow, trying to shift the marble egg—it doesn’t. It never does. When I speak, my voice comes out strangled and warbling, like I’m about to cry.
Except that crying isn’t allowed. Crying would draw my father’s wrath as suddenly as the awakening of an angry god. Crying would shatter the ritual, which would end suddenly.
“I must accept that God did not give me a son,” my father would say. “But I refuse to accept that God would give me such a weak child.”
There lies the key to my father’s dissatisfaction. He only ever had one child with my mother, and he’s a pious man, too pious for divorce or affairs—so I am his only child.
Not a son, strong and bold and proud. But a scared, weak little girl who can hardly bring herself to speak without weeping.
If I don’t cry, and manage to thank him without the trembling of my voice breaking into a sob or a whimper, then my father looks at me and gives a tyrant’s nod.
It’s how he signals that the ritual is over, that my performance was good enough, and that I may retreat. I carefully replace the gift in its box, pick it up, stand and leave, walking calmly when I would prefer to run.
When I get back to my bedroom, I open the closet set into the wall and place the new present on top of the old ones where they live, all untouched in the darkness.
My father’s anger spins a web of fear around me, a mantle I can never shake off. It makes talking in front of him difficult, it makes my stomach squirm with nausea when he’s near, and it fills my sleep with dark nightmares.
But it teaches me things, too. How to appear like the perfect daughter, how to turn myself to ice so that no emotion can seep through.
How to lock my tears up deep inside and never, ever let them out.
I’melevenyearsold,and the summer is almost over. My father came from Russia to visit my new school with me. He has a list of demands and rules he wishes the headteacher to know before I start my secondary education.
In Russia, my father is surrounded by staff: cleaners and cooks and drivers and bodyguards and secretaries and accountants. They do whatever he says. When he comes to England, my father thinks everybody is staff.
Even people that don’t work for him, like waiters in restaurants and police officers and teachers. Even, apparently, headmasters.
Spearcrest Academy—my new school—is like a place from a storybook. I hold my breath when I first see it, eyes wide, like Alice arriving in Wonderland or like a Pevensie entering Narnia.
I try to take it all in—the sight of it, the feel of it. Red bricks and façades feathered with ivy. Pines and firs and spires, all pointing straight into the blue sky—siniyblue—the blue of the Russian flag.
