Free The White Russian by Vanora Bennett

disapproval in her brown serge and apron, who was bearing down on her, weighed down by her tray and her rage against the music.
    ‘
Encore …!
’ Marie-Thérèse muttered in long-suffering tones as she passed, just loud enough for Constance to hear. ‘
Mais j’en ai marre de cette musique!
’
    Constance bit her own lip to stop herself smiling. It was no secret to her that her housekeeper disliked all immigrants, but loathed the many Russians living in Paris most of all. And now this music … Marie-Thérèse pushed open the kitchen door with an energetic, angry swing of the hips and passed through into her domestic domain, and Constance grinned as she heard her cross voice again, much louder, from the other side of the door: ‘
Sacrés Russes!
’ (‘Darn Russians!’)
    Eventually Constance settled down in her bedroom. It was a little quieter there. She fished in her bag for the wire she’dgot before lunch from Le Havre. She put on her spectacles.
    ‘HOPE YOU GOT LETTER STOP ARRIVING EVENING TRAIN STOP EVIE’, it still said. (She’d been half thinking, all through lunch, that when she looked again it might turn out to say something quite different.)
    She’d had no inkling, until it appeared, that this was about to happen. Evie’s letter, presumably sent many days ago, before the ship set sail, had not arrived.
    Just as it had this morning, the sight of that telegram form set Constance’s stomach churning. It was one thing to put out tentative feelers in the hope that something might come of them and that maybe someday … and quite another for it to just
happen
like this, with no time for mental preparation.
Altogether
different. Altogether hellish.
    Constance wasn’t a strategist by nature. As she was always telling her artists, spontaneity was more her thing. But the idea of improvising
this
visit, with all its complications, was making her feel sick. ‘
Mon Dieu
,’ she said wanly, out loud. Then, perhaps still influenced by Miller’s change of languages earlier, she added, ‘
Bozhe moi
,’ and watched her reflection in the dressing-table glass shake its dark head and put hand to brow. For all her worry, she was – just a little – impressed by the elegance of the reflection’s gesture. She put back on the chic modern black-and-white geometric bangle she’d taken off when Miller was due. Somehow, that made her feel better.
    What did she even look like now, that excitable little girl? Constance tried to picture her stretched and straightened and twenty-one, but her imagination failed her.
    There would be so much to catch up with. So much to find out … but also (don’t get distracted, she warnedherself) so much to tell. That was the part she needed to think out – what to say to the child; how to explain herself; and what was she going to say to Miller? And when?
    Explanations, so unimaginable … But she mustn’t let it all crowd in at once. One thing at a time.
    The important thing was not to panic. She started to try to picture herself relaxed and calm, speaking to this unknown Evie … an adult Evie who behaved like a friend, who wasn’t full of the stuffy, huffy spite of the rest of the family, who’d learned to read and think independently while away at school and was easy to talk to, a girl who loved pictures and ideas as much as she did.
    ‘I always wanted to know you and be close to the family. But it seemed too difficult, for a long time,’ she told her reflection in the glass tentatively. ‘Then, three years ago, quite by chance, I met someone I’d known when I was young in Russia, playing chess right here in the Jardin du Luxembourg, under the lilacs. And, even though our lives had each taken such different paths since those young days, we fell in love. And that inspired me to try again. To write to your mother. To offer you an education. To send you books …’
    There were so many other things they’d move on to, later, once they’d got to know each other. But that would do,