Four pairs for three people. There’s an extra pair in this house!” Galina Petrovna demonstratively recounted the slippers in the entryway, bending her fingers as she went. An extra pair? I stepped out onto the landing with relief. Strangely enough, something that felt like joy spread through my chest. For seven years I’d waited to […]
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The key scraped loudly in the lock—too loudly. Ksenia stepped into the apartment and, with a sigh of relief, kicked off her sky-high heels onto the parquet floor. Right away she caught a strange, unfamiliar smell. Odd—her Sasha didn’t usually cook. She walked into the living room and froze in the doorway. On the sofa, […]
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— “Dusty, Darina. I taught you that you need to start cleaning from the top down. First wipe the cabinets, then the shelves, and only then do the floor.” Galina Viktorovna’s voice—level and devoid of emotion—cut through the silence of the entryway. Her index finger, crowned with an impeccable manicure, slowly drew a line across […]
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Marina’s kitchen was exactly the kind every woman over thirty dreams of: spacious, spotless, the tiles gleaming, a tablecloth on the table—not stained with borscht—and food in the fridge that you wouldn’t be ashamed to serve even your mother-in-law. Though, of course, for Tatyana Petrovna you could serve it on a golden tray and she’d […]
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— Olya, you have to understand—we’re not strangers. Stasik wouldn’t approve if he found out you’re treating us like this, Anna Petrovna’s voice—oily and syrup-slow—filled the whole kitchen. She sat at the table Olya had polished to a shine just an hour earlier and acted as if she’d been the one to choose the furniture […]
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A black car came to a silent stop in front of massive wrought-iron gates. Beyond them began a short dead-end street of eight identical, solid houses, cut off from the rest of the world by a tall brick wall. A small, self-sufficient kingdom. A security guard in a uniform jacket, bored inside his glass booth, […]
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May sunshine flooded the Volkonsky family’s living room with a golden glow. Around a large table covered with a snow-white tablecloth sat relatives and close friends. The occasion was special—Alevtina Sergeyevna, Taras’s mother, was turning sixty. Irina smoothed a fold in her emerald dress and glanced at her husband. Taras sat beside his mother, periodically […]
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— An hour of nannying costs six hundred rubles. That’s twelve hundred from you, Lenochka. Transfer to my phone number—you know it.” Larisa Pavlovna wasn’t joking. She stood in the doorway of my entryway, adjusting her flawless blowout, holding a small leather-bound notebook in her hands. In it, she had just—right in front of me—made […]
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The doorbell rang sharply, slicing through the quiet of Saturday morning. Alina flinched, nearly spilling her coffee on the table. Who could it be at nine in the morning? Her friends always warned her before dropping by, and couriers usually called first. She opened the door and froze for a moment, not understanding who stood […]
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Marina slowly set down the calculator she had just used to total up the family budget. A ringing silence hung in their living room. Outside the March sun lit up the roofs of Moscow, but inside the room was half-dark—Igor had deliberately drawn the curtains before the talk. “So you mean your mother is going […]
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