The Unreliable People by Rosetta Allan

Author:Rosetta Allan [Allan, Rosetta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143773573
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

THE CHIMERA

Antonina wakes with a start, even before the alarm. The toilet window. She hadn’t thought of checking that. It may not have been Nataliya who broke the figurines after all. She brushes her hair and teeth with urgency, her brain filling in new spaces of possibility. An outsider. If it was, it was probably just a random act of vandalism. She isn’t sure if that makes it any better, but at least it wouldn’t be personal.

Antonina throws Konstantin’s blankets back in the usual way, but this time she doesn’t run. Hurry up, she says. I need to get some work out of the Academy before it opens. Tit for tat, and she won’t leave him alone until he agrees.

Konstantin moans that he already did the tat yesterday with the glass shit. He sits up and scratches his scalp with such violence it leaves his hair sticking out. Antonina holds out the denim jacket, and he snatches it from her.

His hands are on her when he guides Antonina up and into the cab of the truck. She is left with just a few seconds to hide the rush of blood to her cheeks before Konstantin jumps in himself.

Park at the side of the building, she instructs him as they draw closer to the Academy, and she makes sure to jump down from the cab onto the pavement before he rounds the front to offer her help. She leads him to the side door.

Where’d you get the key? he asks.

There’s no way she’s going to tell him, so she says someone owed her a favour, and he throws out an easy laugh.

The first thing on her mind is to check the small toilet window. It’s locked, but that doesn’t mean it was yesterday. Makar’s office is locked as well, and she searches inside her backpack for the piece of wire the caretaker used to unlock it. While she’s hunting, Konstantin flips open a set of skeleton keys that open like a Swiss-army knife. She gives up her search and raises her eyebrows, fully aware that he knows she is no better than he is, at least when it comes to illegally entering the premises of the Academy. But that’s as far as she will accept their likeness.

Inside Makar’s office, the boxes of figurines are still stacked neatly and remain untouched. The glass man inside the mould is on the trolley too, thanks to the caretaker. While Konstantin moves her boxes to the truck, Antonina searches the drawers of Makar’s desk. She is in the middle of the bottom drawer when Konstantin comes back and catches her.

Getting good at this I see.

She motions him over to unlock the top drawer. Inside are typed sheets of a paper Makar is putting forward for publication. A pair of sunglasses she has never seen him wear, pens, rubber bands, scissors, and tucked to the back she finds what she assumes she was looking for — a blue box of chocolate plums with a small gold bow on the top right corner.

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