me?’
‘That’s easily done,’ Dolores told her with a smile. ‘He is actually here now. When I told him that you were coming in this morning, and that I’d speak with you about seeing him, he announced that he would come here to meet you. I did try to put him off, but he insisted, I’m afraid.’
Just as Vasilii would have insisted in the same situation, Alena knew. Such behaviour might be considered by some to be unconventional, but in the world in which her brother moved those men who were the most successful often made their own rules and ignored convention.
‘Of course if you want us to tell him that you would prefer him to see him another time …?’
Alena thought swiftly. It was true that already she could feel a frisson of nervous energy jittering through her tummy at the thought of the responsibility she would be taking on in agreeing to meet this would-be donor. But if she wanted to be taken seriously as a woman whose maturity could be relied upon then she had to behave accordingly.
Straightening her spine, she shook her head. ‘No. I will meet him now.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that. Thank you. This donation would mean such a lot to us. Especially as it would be a regular annual income, guaranteed for the next five years. We’ve asked him to wait in the boardroom—I’ll take you there now. And of course I’ll be on hand with you, to answer any technical questions he might have.’
Alena gave her a grateful look.
The charity’s boardroom had windows that overlooked the street outside. It was decorated in a businesslike and smart colour palette of off-whites and greys shading to black, its leather furniture showing subtle gleams of brushed steel. Its appearance was very much in accordance with the accepted contemporary look apart from the fact that its table was round rather than rectangular. It was the photographs displayed on the room’s walls that caught the attention, though: photographs of children, some of them taken by children and as a result slightly out of focus. They were haunting, strike-at-the-heart photographs that told a story of how a girl in the poorest of circumstances could become a young woman who could hold her head high because of the education and support she had received from this charity.
Normally it was to these photographs and this story that Alena’s attention was drawn whenever she entered this room. Her mother had chosen these photographs herself, and every time she looked at them Alena felt almost as though she could feel her mother in the room with her.
Today, though, it wasn’t the photographs that were the focus of her immediate attention. Instead it was the man standing in front of the windows, outlined by the light coming in through them, his features shadowed and hidden. Alena didn’t need to see those features to recognise him. Her body and her senses had recognised him immediately. Kiryl.
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