Ira had only just taken off her apron and sat down at the table when the whole family was already gathered for dinner. She poured her mother a glass of compote from the pitcher, then turned to her mother-in-law and offered her some too.
“No, thank you,” her mother-in-law said, shaking her head. “I’ve got my cherry liqueur. Better not dilute it.”
Oleg was sitting across from Ira, already devouring the meat and serving himself a second helping, when the doorbell rang. Ira started to get up, but her husband beat her to it. He set his fork down on the edge of his plate and headed to the hallway.
She heard him open the door, heard the muted sound of his voice, then his laugh. She kept pouring the compote and waited.
A minute later, he came back with a woman Ira had never seen before. She had bright red hair styled in large waves and bold lipstick on her mouth.
The scent of her perfume flooded the living room at once—thick, sweet, cloying—and Ira almost winced. Fragrances like that always gave her a headache.
“This is Svetochka from work, a good friend of mine,” Oleg said with a wide smile, clearly very pleased with himself. “I just had to invite her tonight. She’s the one who spoke to the director for me and helped me get promoted.”
“You could say we wouldn’t even be celebrating tonight without Svetochka.”
Ira exchanged a look with her mother, who was sitting at the far end of the table beside her father. One glance was enough. Ira understood everything.
Her mother pressed her lips into a narrow line and flushed slightly. She was burning with shame that her son-in-law could stage something like this in front of his wife, in front of the entire family, and actually bring another woman into their home without even pretending to feel embarrassed.
Ira decided to act as though she noticed nothing. She drew the perfect hostess smile across her face and said evenly,
“I’ll bring another chair from the kitchen. For now, please sit on the sofa.”
Sveta looked at her with an air of indulgent approval and said,
“How polite you are.”
Ira gave her a practiced smile in return and slipped into the dim hallway. In the kitchen, she stopped by the window and stood still for a few seconds, gripping the edge of the counter with her fingers.
Then she heard footsteps behind her.
Her mother came into the kitchen and quietly pulled the door shut.
“This is beyond disgraceful,” her mother whispered, though her voice trembled with outrage. “Did you see the earrings? Did you see them?”
Ira gave no sign that everything inside her was boiling over, no sign that she wanted to grab the first plate she could reach and smash it against the wall. She answered shortly,
“I saw them.”
Then she picked up the chair standing in the corner of the kitchen and carried it into the living room. Her mother watched her go and clicked her tongue, but said nothing more.
Ira knew perfectly well what earrings the uninvited guest was wearing. She had recognized them instantly the moment Sveta walked into the room.
Six months earlier, in mid-September, Ira had been sorting through winter clothes in the wardrobe. She wanted to pull out an old sweater to wear to the dacha and accidentally knocked into the stack of her husband’s things on the top shelf.
Several sweaters tumbled onto the floor, and with them fell a small box. A deep red velvet jewelry case, the kind used for fine accessories.
Ira picked it up and opened it. Inside was a pair of gold earrings with amethysts.
The stones flashed violet when she tilted the box toward the light. They were beautiful—delicate, refined, obviously expensive.
Her breath caught with happiness.
At once she assumed her husband had bought them as a surprise for her birthday. There were still three weeks left until then, and apparently Oleg had bought the gift early so he wouldn’t forget at the last minute.
Ira carefully placed the box back under the sweaters and spent the whole evening smiling to herself. During dinner Oleg asked why she seemed so cheerful, and Ira said she was simply in a good mood.
For those three weeks, she felt truly happy. She imagined how Oleg would pull out the box during her birthday celebration, how he would hand it to her, how she would open it and pretend to be surprised.
She had even bought herself a new dress with an open neckline, dark blue like the color of the case, so the earrings would look especially beautiful on her.
When her birthday finally came, Oleg rose from the table, stepped out into the hallway, and came back carrying a large box tied with a red ribbon. He was smiling broadly, looking very pleased with himself as he placed it in front of Ira.
“Happy birthday, darling.”
Ira untied the ribbon and opened the box.
Inside was a dinnerware set.
Six plates and six cups with a floral pattern around the edges.
Ira stared at the set and, completely unexpectedly, started hiccuping.
Her mother brought her a glass of water, and Ira drank it in one gulp, then another. The guests laughed and joked that the birthday girl was simply overwhelmed by her present.
Oleg looked thoroughly satisfied with himself.
That evening, after the guests had left and her husband had fallen asleep in front of the television in the living room, Ira quietly got up from the sofa and went to the wardrobe. She pulled down the pile of Oleg’s sweaters from the top shelf and checked the hiding place.
The box was gone.
Ira sat in the kitchen until dawn.
Then she opened an online marketplace on her phone and found the exact same dinner set Oleg had given her.
Two thousand four hundred rubles.
A cheap present from a husband who earned well over a hundred thousand a month—and who had hidden gold earrings with amethysts in the wardrobe for another woman.
That was when Ira understood that their marriage had cracked. She still did not know who the earrings were meant for, but she knew the woman existed.
All that remained was to count down the months until everything finally came apart.
And now Ira was sitting at the table in her own living room, facing that woman, and in Sveta’s ears were those exact amethyst earrings. Ira would have recognized them among thousands.
The stones glimmered purple with every movement, every turn of her head.
Sveta seemed determined to make sure everyone noticed them. She kept pushing her hair behind her ears, adjusting loose strands, touching her earlobes.
Ira watched those gestures and knew Sveta was doing it on purpose. Perhaps she even knew Ira had found the box in the wardrobe.
Perhaps Oleg had told her, and perhaps the two of them had laughed together at the wife who thought the gift had been meant for her.
Ira’s mother moved closer to her and watched with open disapproval. Ira knew exactly what she was waiting for.
Her mother wanted Ira to rise from the table, point at the earrings, and loudly ask her husband how a stranger ended up wearing jewelry that had been hidden in his wardrobe. She wanted Ira to make a scene, to expose him in front of the whole family.
To knock over the salad bowl. To fling a fork. To shout the truth into the face of that brazen redhead.
Ira had no intention of doing anything of the sort.
Over the past six months, she had already taken every step necessary to ensure her husband would walk away with nothing.
Tonight was simply the final drop that made her patience overflow.
Her mother-in-law sat at the head of the table, pouring cherry liqueur into tiny glasses. She went on and on about what a wonderful son she had, how much he was appreciated at work, how he had earned his promotion through his own hard work.
Ira’s father ate his salad in silence and tried not to look at the unwelcome guest. Sveta laughed louder than anyone at every one of Oleg’s jokes and kept touching his arm whenever he spoke.
Oleg did not pull away. He did not move his hand. He did not even pretend to feel awkward.
And Ira smiled.
She passed the bread. She refilled everyone’s compote. She asked if the meat needed warming up.
She was the perfect hostess—attentive, warm, caring. Her mother looked at her with confusion and growing anxiety, unable to understand why her daughter was enduring such humiliation.
The guests began leaving around ten that evening. Ira’s mother-in-law was the first to rise from the table and announce that she needed to go, that she had to get up early the next morning.
Oleg was about to walk his mother out to her taxi when Sveta got up too and started gathering her things.
“I’ll see Svetochka home and come right back,” Oleg said to Ira, without meeting her eyes.
Ira pretended she fully supported this noble gesture. She went to the hallway, took his scarf off the hook—the gray plaid one she had given him last New Year’s—and handed it to him.
“Put it on. It’s cold outside. Don’t catch a chill.”
Oleg took the scarf and wrapped it around his neck. He did not even look at Ira, because at that moment he was helping Sveta into her coat.
Sveta said goodbye to everyone, flooding the hallway with another wave of her heavy, sugary perfume, then left together with Oleg. The door shut behind them.
Five minutes later, Ira’s mother-in-law left in a taxi. She was clearly annoyed that her son had not walked out his own mother, but instead had rushed off after some random woman from work.
She did not say a word aloud, but Ira could see from her pursed lips that she was offended.
Ira’s father helped clear the dirty dishes from the table and carry them into the kitchen. He did not say anything either. As he passed by, he simply patted his daughter on the shoulder.
Her mother stood in the hallway putting on her coat and looking at Ira with a silent question in her eyes.
Ira stepped closer and whispered in her ear,
“Everything will be all right. Don’t worry about me.”
Her mother parted her lips as if to speak, but Ira shook her head.
Not now.
Not here.
Her mother sighed and followed her husband out.
Ira was alone in the apartment. She locked the door, turned back toward the living room, and opened the window to air out the smell of someone else’s perfume.
Oleg was gone for an hour and a half.
Ira was not surprised. It was exactly what she had expected. She knew he would come back and invent some story.
He would say Svetochka had invited him to a café for coffee to thank him for the lovely evening, and that he was simply too polite to refuse a colleague. Or he would make something up about a taxi breaking down, or traffic, or a long wait at the café.
Ira washed the dishes without hurrying. She scrubbed each plate carefully with the sponge, rinsed the foam away under running water, dried everything with a towel, and put it back in the cupboard.
Then she wiped down the table in the living room, pushed the chairs back into place, and swept the floor. She carried the trash out to the landing and came back inside.
After that she went into the bedroom and pulled a large wheeled suitcase out from under the bed.
At half past eleven, Ira heard the key turn in the lock. She was standing in the hallway, waiting.
Oleg opened the door, stepped inside, and immediately stumbled over the suitcase. The smile dropped from his face.
He looked at the suitcase, then at Ira, then back at the suitcase.
“What is this supposed to mean?”
Ira said nothing. She stepped toward him quickly, bent down, and pressed her nose into his sweater.
She inhaled the fabric greedily, then the collar of his shirt, then the scarf. Everything smelled of Sveta’s perfume.
That heavy, sickly sweetness had seeped into every thread, every seam.
“All your things are in that suitcase,” Ira said calmly. She had been preparing these words for months, and now they came out easily. “Take it and get out.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Oleg shouted. “This is my apartment too! I live here!”
“You’re only registered here. The owner is me.”
“Did you forget?”
Oleg fell silent. Of course he remembered. Many years earlier, at the very start of their relationship, he had sworn eternal love to Ira and trusted her with everything.
Back then he had debts from his private business, banks refused to give him loans, and so Ira had put the apartment in her own name. The car too. And the country house his parents had given the young couple as a wedding gift had also been registered to her.
Oleg looked at Ira. He saw something new in her eyes—something hard, something unshakable that had not been there before.
He understood that she had known for a long time, had endured it for a long time, had kept silent for a long time—and that now her patience was over. He understood that pleading would not help, shouting would not help, nothing would help.
Oleg took hold of the suitcase and left.
Ira went back into the living room and pulled her phone from the pocket of the apron still hanging over the back of the chair. She opened her contacts and found the number she needed.
She had gotten that number three months earlier, when she began studying Sveta’s social media page. Ira had found her by chance through a photo from a company party at Oleg’s workplace.
Oleg had posted the picture on his own profile, and Ira noticed the red-haired woman standing much too close to her husband. She found Sveta’s account and there saw photos of another man—her husband.
One caption said they were celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary. In another photo, Sveta’s husband was standing beside the company director, and the caption explained that he sat on the board of directors.
Ira told him everything. About the gold amethyst earrings her husband had bought for another man’s wife instead of a birthday gift for his own.
About the hour and a half they had spent together that evening while Ira stood at the sink washing dishes.
Sveta’s husband listened in silence. Then he thanked her for telling him and said he would deal with it.
His voice was calm, but Ira could hear the cold fury underneath.
She set the phone down on the table. Her husband had decided that at forty-five he could play the charming womanizer.
That he could fool around, bring his so-called good friend into the house, gamble with his family, and face no consequences because his wife would put up with it, forgive it, stay put no matter what.
He was wrong.
A week later, Oleg came back.
Ira heard the doorbell ring. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then he started pounding on the door.
“Ira! Open up!”
“Please, open the door!”
Ira stood on the other side of it, smiling faintly. She already knew what had happened over the course of that week.
Oleg had been fired in disgrace. Sveta’s husband, who sat on the board of directors, had made sure he was dismissed for violating corporate ethics.
Sveta had been fired too. Her husband had not forgiven her for such betrayal and refused to have her in the same building with him. Ira learned all this from one of Oleg’s former coworkers, whom she happened to run into three days earlier while waiting in line at the post office.
The woman told her everything with badly concealed satisfaction.
“Ira! I understand now!”
“Forgive me! Let’s forget it all and start over!”
Oleg kept banging on the door, begging, promising, swearing. He said Sveta had meant nothing to him, that it had been a moment of madness, that he loved only Ira and had always loved only Ira.
Ira stepped away from the door and went into the bathroom. There she ran a full bath of warm water and poured in bubble foam.
The bubbles rose high, white and thick, trembling on the surface.
Warmth wrapped around her body. Oleg’s voice at the front door grew fainter and fainter, because the bathroom was at the far end of the apartment.
Lying in the bath, Ira thought about how soon there would be a divorce. She had already found a very good lawyer who specialized in marital cases.
The lawyer had reviewed all the paperwork and told her Oleg had no chance of getting anything at all. The apartment belonged to Ira. The car belonged to Ira. The country house belonged to Ira.
Oleg was merely registered in his wife’s home. Nothing more.
Ira had no intention of leaving him a single thing.
Not the apartment. Not the car. Not the country house.
Not even one plate from that cheap dinner set he had given her for her birthday instead of the amethyst earrings.
