Read Online The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne - Free Book Online

protect him. My cousin, the Tsar, mentioned in his most recent communication how he was looking for just such a young man and asked whether I knew anyone who might make an appropriate companion. Someone closer to his own age, that is. The Tsarevich has many guards, of course. But he needs more than that. He needs a companion who can also tend to his safety. I believe that I have found what he is looking for. I intend to make a gift of you to him, Georgy Daniilovich. Assuming that he approves of you, that is. But stay here for now. Recover. Get well. And I will see you in St Petersburg at the end of the week.’
    And with that he stepped outside our hut, leaving my sisters staring at him in awe, my mother looking as scared as she had ever been, and my father counting his money.
    I forced myself to sit up even further and as I did so, I could see through the door on to the street beyond, where a yew tree stood, in full flower, strong and thick and hearty. But something was not quite the same. A great weight appeared to be swinging from its branches. I narrowed my eyes to identify it and when I finally focussed, I could do nothing but gasp.
    It was Kolek.
    They had hanged him in the street.

1979
    I T WAS ZOYA’S idea to make one final journey together.
    We had never been great travellers, either of us, preferring the warmth and security of our peaceful flat in Holborn to the exhaustion of holiday-making. After we left Russia, we moved immediately to France; once there, we spent a few years living and working in Paris, where we married, before settling ultimately in London. When Arina was a child, of course, we made our best efforts to take a week away from the city every summer, but it was usually to Brighton, or perhaps as far as Cornwall, to show her the sea, to allow her to play in the sand. To be a child among other children. But we never left the island shores once we arrived. And I thought we never would.
    She announced her idea late one evening as we sat by the fire in our living room, watching as the flames diminished and the black coals hissed and spat for the final time. I was reading Jake’s Thing and set the book aside in surprise when she spoke.
    Our grandson, Michael, had left half an hour earlier after a difficult conversation. He had come for dinner and to tell us of how his new life as an acting student was progressing, but all the joy of the evening had been swept away when Zoya broke the news to him about her illness and the spread of the cancer. She didn’t want to keep anything from him, she said, although she didn’t want his sympathy either. This was life, after all, she suggested. Nothing more than life.
    ‘I’m already as old as the hills,’ she told him, smiling. ‘And I’ve been very lucky, you know. I’ve been closer to death than this.’
    Of course, being young he had immediately looked forsolutions and hope. He insisted that his father would pay for any treatments that were necessary, that he himself would leave RADA and find proper employment to pay for anything she needed, but she shook her head and held his hands in hers while she told him that there was nothing that anyone could do, and there was certainly nothing that money could do either. This thing was incurable, she told him. She might not have many months left and she didn’t want to waste them searching for impossible cures. He had taken the news badly. Having spent so many years without a mother, it was natural that he hated the idea of losing his grandmother as well.
    Before leaving, Michael had taken me aside and asked me whether there was anything he could do for his grandmother to ease her comfort. ‘She has the best doctors, right?’ he asked me.
    ‘Of course,’ I told him, moved by the tears that were pooling in his eyes. ‘But you know, this is not an easy disease to battle.’
    ‘She’s a tough old bird, though,’ he said, which made me smile and I nodded.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, she is that.’
    ‘I’ve