Read Online The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith - Free Book Online Page B

for you and for Elena, but also for me.
    Leo stopped, remaining silent, waiting to see if she’d ridicule the notion. She didn’t move or speak. Her lips were clamped together: her body was rigid.
    – Can’t you… try?
    Her voice trembled, her first words:
    – Let go.
    – Zoya, don’t get upset: just tell me what you’re thinking. Be honest. Tell me what you want me to do. Tell me what kind of person you want me to be.
    – Let go.
    – No, Zoya, please, you have to understand how important this is.
    – Let go.
    – Zoya…
    Her voice became higher, strained-desperate:
    – Let go!
    Stunned, he pulled back. She was whining like a wounded animal. How had this gone so wrong? In disbelief he watched as she recoiled from his affection. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was trying to express his love for her. She was throwing it back in his face. Zoya was ruining this, not just for him. She was ruining it for everyone. Elena wanted to be part of a family. He knew she did. She held his hand: she smiled, laughed. She wanted to be happy. Raisa wanted to be happy. They all just wanted to be happy. Except for Zoya, stubbornly refusing to recognize that he’d changed, childishly clinging on to her hatred as if it was her favorite doll.
    Leo noticed the smell. Touching the sheets he discovered they were damp. Even so, it took him a second or two to understand that Zoya had wet the bed. He stood up, stepped back, muttering:
    – That’s okay. I’ll clean up. Don’t worry. That’s my fault. I’m to blame.
    Zoya shook her head, saying nothing, scrunching her hands against her temples, clawing at the sides of her face. Leo became short of breath, perplexed that his love could create such misery:
    – Zoya, I’ll take the sheets.
    She shook her head, clutching the piss-stained sheets as if they were protecting her from him. By now Elena was awake and crying.
    Leo turned to the door and then turned back again, unable to leave her in such a state. How could he fix the problem when he was the problem?
    – I just want to love you, Zoya.
    Elena was looking from Zoya to Leo. Her being awake resulted in a change in Zoya. She regained her composure, calmly telling Leo:
    – I’m going to wash my sheets. I’m going to do it myself. I don’t need your help.
    Leo left the room, leaving the young girl he’d hoped to win over sitting in piss and tears.
    Entering the kitchen, Leo paced the room, drunk on catastrophe. While he’d tidied away the files, the sheet of paper from Moskvin’s printing press was as he’d left it:
    Under torture, Eikhe
    An appropriate companion: a reminder of his former career, a career that was going to shadow him forever. Picturing Zoya’s reaction in the bedroom, Leo was forced to contemplate something he’d only minutes ago dismissed as unthinkable. The family might have to be broken apart.
    Had his desire to hold them together become a blind obsession? It was forcing Zoya to pick at a scab that would never heal, infecting her with hatred and bitterness. Of course, if she couldn’t live with him then neither could Elena. The sisters were inseparable. He’d have no choice but to find them a new home, one with no connection to the State, perhaps outside of Moscow in a smaller town where the apparatus of power was less visible. He and Raisa would need to search for suitable guardians, meeting prospective parents and wondering if they could do a better job, if they could bring the girls happiness, something Leo had so utterly failed to provide.
    Raisa appeared at the door:
    – What’s going on?
    She’d come from their bedroom. She didn’t know about the bedwetting, the conversation, referring instead to Nikolai, the phone call, the midnight meeting. Leo’s voice was cracked with emotion:
    – Nikolai was drunk. I told him we’d talk when he was sober.
    – That took all night?
    What was he waiting for? He should sit her down and explain.
    – Leo? What’s wrong?
    He’d