An unexpected visit and family tension “Natasha, the guests will be here in two hours!” The man on the phone sounded anxious. “Have you prepared everything?” Natalia glanced at Alyona, who had finally fallen asleep after a sleepless night, and could barely hold back tears. “Andrey, I’ve only just managed to get ready to go […]
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Sveta,” drawled her colleague and best friend Natalya, “are you by any chance pregnant?” Sveta came back from the ladies’ room, pale as a sheet. During lunch at the café next to the office she had suddenly felt unwell and, apologizing, had hurried off, leaving half her meal untouched. “Only if it’s by accident,” Svetlana […]
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Her single eye was watering from the wind, her legs wouldn’t obey her, sinking into the loose snow. Anya thought she knew which way the village was, and she hadn’t gone that far, but when she looked back, she suddenly saw nothing: no lights, no smoke, just a curtain of snow. Fear gripped her. She […]
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Anna lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm her wildly pounding heart. Just a few minutes ago she had gone through one of the most frightening moments of her life — a confrontation with her own husband Alexander and his mother, Olga Petrovna. Their little daughter Sonya was sleeping peacefully in […]
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Do you have any idea how I feel when I come home and see that everything’s been moved around?” Polina stood in the middle of the living room, looking at her husband. Her voice was tight with tension. “I’m the one paying the mortgage, and yet your mother has somehow decided that she owns part […]
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Today Masha’s husband upset her badly. And not for the first time. Anything that had to do with his mother had now become unpleasant to Masha. It plunged her into a state of gloom and made her feel unwell. She wanted to run away from this whole family as far as possible, and the only […]
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Evening was drawing to a close, and in the apartment where Nina, her husband Anton, and her mother-in-law Vera Pavlovna lived, it was usually quiet. But today had gone wrong from the very morning. Two-year-old Semyon was cranky, Vera Pavlovna kept finding reasons to be dissatisfied, and Nina felt completely exhausted. She did her best: […]
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Viktor was sitting at the kitchen table flipping through some documents. Tamara was washing the dishes and glancing sideways at her husband. Lately he’d been messing around with papers way too often. “Vit’, what are you digging in there?” she asked without turning around. “Business. Nothing for you to worry your head about.” Tamara flinched. […]
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The evening in the kitchen of their Khrushchev-era flat was not just stuffy – it was suffocating. The air, thick with the fumes of burnt sunflower oil and cheap “Laskovy May” perfume, which Anya had vainly tried to use to drown out the smell of failure, hung motionless like an oily shroud. On the stove, […]
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Nadezhda, dear, I asked you not to touch those documents!” my mother-in-law’s voice sounded unexpectedly sharp when I picked up the folder from the table. Svetlana Ivanovna was standing in the doorway of the study, and her usually friendly face twisted in an irritated grimace. She quickly walked over and literally snatched the folder out […]
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