She looked at her smartphone screen, it said “4,886 kilometers.”
“M-m-m,” Yulia moaned, “I want something real.”
She opened the email from HR again. Her business trip would last five days, and the tickets were already booked.
“Well, okay,” she shook her head and closed the mail.
“Hi, it’s me,” the young man shouted from the threshold, closing the door behind him.
“Hi, David,” a woman’s voice said from the kitchen, “Dad’s still at work, come on in.”
David’s father and stepmother live in a small house in Stratford, near Manchester. The father works at the soccer stadium and the stepmother is a part-time bookkeeper.
David left his backpack in the living room and went into the kitchen. A pleasant smell wafted in from there. Joan was making a vegetable stew and roasting two large pieces of meat. Surely both pieces were destined for only one person – David’s father.
“Joan, hello,” David said as he entered the kitchen.
The stepmother turned to the doorway and smiled very warmly. She wiped her hands with the kitchen towel and hugged David tightly. She knows how to hug in a special way. David calls it a ‘proud hug’ – a little longer than a welcoming hug and a little warmer than a friendly one.
“How pretty you are,” she covered her eyes.
Joan stroked David’s shoulder, looked sympathetically at his thin face and over his frail body.
“Dad said you’ve moved out of the apartment. Will you move your things here for now? I cleared out the closet in your room. How are you? You quit your job, too? And that girl?” she paused, but she seemed to have a dozen other things to say.
She spluttered her hands in the air, which meant in her language "asks me for my tactlessness," and went to the stove.
“Stuff in the living room. I have only a backpack,” David smiled.
“Whoa! Fire or psychological breakdown?” stirring the stew, the stepmother asked.
“Psychological fire,” David laughed and sat down at the table.
Joan poured the lemonade and the conversation flowed as if six months before they had not seen each other had never happened. She began to talk about her work, to ask how things were going in London, and many other things. So they talked for about an hour. David sat on a chair and watched Joan walk around the kitchen, adding spices to the dishes and stirring them.