Chapter 14 Nina

Chapter 14

?Nina

"Okay," I manage, unsure if I should be grateful or insulted by any, or all, of that.

Regardless, I follow the young man through the opulently chintzy house—the polar opposite of Anderssen's Opening—out onto an enormous French-Riviera-style terrace overlooking a long Greco-Roman-style pool and beyond it a lake with a small blue rowboat bobbing on its surface.

At a wrought-iron table, a well-preserved woman in her late fifties, with perfectly coiffed hair and a wide-brimmed sun hat, turns to take me in.

"Sit," she tells me brusquely, waving a hand vaguely at the chair beside her. I'm not sure if it's her accent, or her age, but I do as I am told.

She extends a hand toward me expectantly, but when I offer mine, she looks at me like I have completely lost my senses. "No. Note. Let me see note." The hand flaps at me, again, brusquely, so I quickly divest myself of the crumpled paper.

The woman squints at the words, her bottom lip jutting. She grunts then hands it back to me, her eyes skimming me up and down.

"You are English?" It's a rhetorical question but I nod regardless.

She looks past me and clicks her bony fingers high in the air for the man in the uniform. "Iced tea," she croaks at him.

Then she leans across to my seat and touches my arm, giving it a gentle squeeze, almost as if to gauge my body-fat ratio. "Cake?" she asks me, lowering her sunglasses to reveal two amused eyes.

"Lovely, yes, please."

"Cake," she shouts past me. "Bring trolley."

The man disappears and the woman stares out at the view. She doesn't look at me as she talks.

"Note is a warning. Not a threat. Warning."

I stare at her in profile, and after a beat of silence she turns to look at me again.

"A threat would be ‘or else.' There is no ‘or else' here." She jabs a finger at the creased paper on the table before us, then changes tack. "You know, company is nice. I forget it is nice to meet new people. What's your name, new little neighbor?"

"Um. Nina. Yes, it's nice. Sorry, what was your—?"

"Oksana." She pauses for a moment before adding, "Zaytsava." I can tell from the way she breezes over her surname that I am supposed to recognize it, but I do not. I do know it's Russian, though, having had an art history housemate at Cambridge with very present Russian relatives. I can only assume, by Oksana's inflection, that her family, or a specific member of it, is famous—or, perhaps, infamous.

"Well, nice to meet you, Oksana," I say, then jump slightly as the man in the uniform appears beside me with a drinks tray and places a frosted glass of iced tea down in front of me before gliding around to furnish Oksana with the same.

Oksana takes a sip and gives the man a grunt of appreciation, which he acknowledges, like a connoisseur, before heading back inside.

"He is very good. You need good people out here. There is nobody on the island—everybody has a job already. You have to find people back home and bring them out with you. Nightmare. You have people?" she asks, side-eyeing me.

"No, no people. I just, as I said, I just took possession of the house."

"Ah, divorce?"

"No, my father died. He left me the house. I didn't know we even had a house out here. It's all been a bit odd really. I mean, wonderful, I guess, but incredibly odd." I look at the woman I am nervously jabbering at and I wonder if our ideas of normality and oddness would even tally.

But she nods.

"Ha, yes. Death opens a lot of strange boxes," she muses. "You can't hide anything once you're gone. God knows what my children will find out when I go." She lets out a little chuckle.

I look at her afresh, this otherworldly woman, with a realistic lens, and I know for certain there is no way a woman like Oksana knew my father.

"Oksana, did you ever meet my father? Do you know any of your neighbors?"

She erupts with another chuckle. "Of course not. I come here to get away from people. I don't give a fuck. What am I going to do—have a barbecue? Small talk? No. But you are fun. Little red face. You can be my new friend." She pats my leg like you would a medium-sized dog as the uniformed man approaches with a shuddering cake trolley.

Little red face?

I instinctively raise a hand to my cheeks and they are burning hot. I forgot sunscreen, of course I did.

Oksana peruses the cake trolley then singles out a slice of Black Forest gateau that glistens in the sun as the man places it on bone china.

"I'll have the same," I tell him when his gaze falls on me. "I don't suppose you know anything about the house, do you?" I ask her as he places the cake on my plate.

"Your house? I see them building it, trucks in the road. Years ago, now. And there was a woman—" She stops to fork a chunk of dark sponge into her mouth.

"A woman?" I ask, trying to mask my deep sudden interest.

She nods, chews, swallows, then sips her tea. "Yes, young woman about your age. Nice. Pretty. She stayed there. I don't recall when exactly, but she stayed. I never saw a man, though. But I saw them build it. They took a lot of rock, on trucks, they dug down, deep. It is a big house?" she asks finally.

I consider, then look back at the proportions of her much larger property behind us. "No, no, it's three bedrooms. But there is a private beach, so—"

Oksana tuts. "Perhaps rock was from another house," she muses. "You have a basement?"

I pause long enough for her to look back at me and lower her sunglasses.

"Yes, yes, there is a basement," I tell her.

"And what you got down there?" She chuckles. "Basketball court?"

"Funny you should ask: I have absolutely no idea."