broom down the chimney to clear the abandoned birds’ nests inside. She cut down the sapling that had grown up through the porch steps, chopping it into lengths for firewood. She painstakingly rebuilt the steps, planing, sanding and weatherproofing the wood then adding curved banisters on either side. In her head was her father’s quiet voice: ‘Slow and easy, now; don’t cut corners or that’s where the rot will set in.’
She scrubbed the interior of the cabin, clearing out age-old spiders’ webs, the skeletons of small rodents and clusters of fungi. She patched a couple of gaps in the walls forced open by creeper roots and hired a local firm to empty the septic tank. They confirmed her water came from a well and advised her it couldn’t be drunk because of rust in the supply pipes but was perfectly good for washing.
Every morning she set herself tasks for the day: replacing the window glass, scrubbing the ancient grime on the bathroom fittings, digging a fire pit for barbecues, reconstructing the swing seat … there was always more to do. She bought a camp bed, a little folding chair and a coolbox to keep insects out of her food supplies, but otherwise left the cabin unfurnished, apart from Dmitri’s old desk and the stove that looked nice but was too rusty to use for cooking. Her bags were piled in one corner of the spacious main room, and the only decoration was a bunch of wildflowers thrust in a plastic tumbler on the desk. She rather liked the minimalist look.
At the end of each day, when she had achieved her goals, she had a long swim round the tip of her bay and into the next, to cool down and cleanse the dirt and sweat from her pores. Afterwards she sat on the edge of the porch with a glass of wine, letting the breeze dry her hair, looking out over the lake and planning what she would tackle tomorrow. Thoughts of Tom hovered in the periphery but she kept them there. As an only child she was good at managing without company, but it wasn’t easy to forget a marriage; at some point she would have to decide what to do. Later. For now she was focused on making her cabin perfect. The surroundings were so stunning that she wanted to do them justice; she decided this would be her finest building project ever.
Jeff at the vacation park proved very helpful, letting her drop in to recharge her power tools and advising on local suppliers. One day when she stopped by he handed her a parcel: the copy of Dmitri Yakovlevich’s novel Interminable Love had arrived. Its old-fashioned cover with a pattern of bottle-green, taupe and black swirls gave no clue as to the contents, and there was no description on the inside flaps of either the story or its author. She took it back to the cabin and sat in her little canvas chair by the water’s edge, naked because the heat of the day was stifling. She kept a big t-shirt nearby in case any ramblers appeared but clothes seemed superfluous so far out in the wilderness.
The story began with a young country boy called Mikhail who sees a local girl, Valerina, falling off her bicycle and rushes to help. The grazes on her hands and knees are bleeding and obviously painful but she bites her lip and blinks away the tears and at that moment he finds himself starting to fall in love with her.
The translation of the text was uneven with some awkward phrasing but Kitty was soon hooked as young Mikhail explored the sensations of love: he wished he could get inside Valerina’s skin and experience her every thought and feeling so that he would never say or do the wrong thing; he was tortured with jealousy when he saw her in conversation with anyone else; he felt as though he was losing his mind to some overpowering affliction that brought more pain than it did reward. Soon his devotion paid off and she fell in love with him too but he found it hard to believe. His emotions swung from exhilaration one moment to anxiety the next and, without meaning to, Kitty found her thoughts wandering back to her early days with Tom.
She had first spotted him playing his songs to a small group at the students’ union, and she liked his absorption in the music, his unruly hair, the striped Pierrot t-shirt and braces he was wearing, and his grin when everyone applauded at the end. For a few weeks she stalked him, looking for a way to introduce herself, but in the end he made the first move, appearing by her side when she was placing an order at the bar and saying, cheekily, ‘Mine’s half a bitter.’
‘Can you add half a bitter?’ Kitty asked the barman, and Tom was shamefaced.
‘I was joking. You don’t have to buy me a drink. Let me give you the money.’
She insisted on paying and he followed her over to join the group she was with, introducing himself around the table. He was affable and everyone seemed to like him, but Kitty was so attracted to him at close range that she could barely focus on the conversation. She longed to place her hand on his thigh, nestle into his shoulder, press herself against him. She’d never felt such lust for anyone and wondered how he could be oblivious to the sheer force of it. But it seemed he wasn’t: at the end of the evening, as the others rose to leave, he took her hand and whispered, ‘Can I come back with you please?’
Kitty was staying in student accommodation, where they weren’t supposed to have overnight guests, but she sneaked him in. As soon as the door closed behind them they ripped off their clothes and spent the night in a frenzy of steamy, compulsive sex that left her head feeling as though it was stuffed with cotton wool. When she got up to make tea in the morning, Tom said, ‘This is a little awkward, but I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’ And they both collapsed in giggles; it still made her giggle now. And then she remembered Karren with the double ‘r’ and stopped abruptly.
She got up and laid the book to one side while she waded into the cool waters of the lake. It was shallow close to shore but she always swam out until the cabin was barely distinguishable amongst the dense woods that surrounded it. From that distance she could see how isolated it was, with no other man-made structure for at least a mile on either side.
It was three weeks since she arrived at Lake Akanabee and she hadn’t been in touch with anyone back in England. She knew this might be construed as eccentric behaviour but the solitude was feeding something within her. She could feel herself getting stronger with each day of self-sufficiency and she supposed before long she would be tough enough to go home and deal with her marital problems. Perhaps she could also deal with her discontent about the whole fabric of her life. She was thirty-five years old and it was time to decide how she wanted to spend the next few decades. If she wasn’t going to be with Tom, she should look for someone else before the wrinkles and grey hairs set in. She shook her head to dispel this image. The thought of being with another man filled her with dismay: all that adjustment as you learned someone else’s tastes, their sleeping habits, their moods …
She dived down through the clear, cool water. She could see the bottom but it was further than it looked and she had to turn and come up for air before she reached it.
The heat was too intense for hard physical work so Kitty decided to take a day off and immerse herself in her great-grandfather’s novel. It was strange to get a glimpse of his personality through the story while living in his cabin and walking in his footsteps. She felt a kinship with him as she lay in the shade of the trees he must have looked up at, and read Interminable Love, his first novel.
Civil war separated Mikhail and Valerina when their families were sent to opposite sides of the country and he was forced to fight, but their love remained strong as ever. Neither would marry; neither could contemplate being with anyone else, so they lived half-lives shadowed by the memory of their first and only love.
As the sun set, Kitty lit a fire, cooked herself a burger on a rack set over the flames, opened some wine, and continued to read in the orange flickering glow. In the final chapter, Mikhail tracked down the remote Siberian village where Valerina now worked on a collective farm. He asked around to be told she was out in the fields operating one of the new-fangled tractors that had just been delivered. Modernity was often portrayed as evil in the novel, with machines taking the place of people in a metaphor that suggested the unquestioning obedience to the regime of its cowed citizens. Mikhail spotted Valerina from afar and began to run towards her. She saw him
