LITMIR.BIZ

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was wrong. I didn’t know, then. Are your parents in Uzbekistan?’

      ‘My father and mother are both dead. I have a stepfather still alive, but I don’t care for him. He is a bad man.’ Roxana shrugged, dismissing this as a topic.

      ‘Brothers and sisters?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Nor me.’

      ‘I had one brother but he was killed,’ she said without expression.

      Noah looked harder at her. He didn’t know anything about her and he was becoming aware of how much there was to find out. With Lauren and with other girls, he had been starting from the same place: eighty per cent, he reckoned, of their experiences were comparable with his own even if not strictly in common. Not so with Roxana.

      ‘That’s really very sad. I’m sorry. Was it some kind of accident?’

      ‘In my country there was an uprising, in Andijan, and he was shot by soldiers. Niki came to see me one week before this and told me that there would be violent times, and I told him to be careful because we only had him and me, the two of us, against the whole world. After that I did not see him again.’

      As an only child Noah had longed for brothers and sisters. He had envied those of his friends who had the shoehorned-in, day-and-night constant narrative of close siblings, even though they quarrelled and fought with each other. He could barely imagine the pain of having had a brother and then losing him.

      He would have liked to offer Roxana some protection, maybe to tell her that he would be her defender from now on, if she would like it, but he couldn’t think of a way of saying it that didn’t sound either comical or entirely fake, as if he was trying to set himself up as some kind of hero. He was also quite conscious of his own inadequacy. Whatever he offered, he would be unlikely to be able to actually deliver it satisfactorily. He knew this because Lauren had often told him that he meant well, but meaning and doing were two different things as far as she was concerned, right?

      Instead of any of this he put his hand awkwardly on her arm, above the elbow, where the short sleeve of her strange top protected her pale skin.

      He said as simply as he could, ‘I’m very sorry, Roxana. It must have been terrible for you. And you must be lonely without him.’

      Noah knew that he had been sheltered. Popular at school and university, good at games, adequate at academic work, he had never been without protection and had never felt significantly lonely in his whole life. Bill and Jeanette had seen to that.

      Roxana’s eyes had acquired the red-rimmed look that preceded tears.

      ‘Why are you here, in England?’ he asked.

      She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and at the same time moved out of his grasp. Noah let his hand fall to his side.

      ‘I am working, earning good money, saving it up when I do not get robbed. I am going to be an English girl.’

      She said it with such fervour that he had to laugh.

      ‘Really? Are you sure that’s what you want?’

      She blinked at him. ‘Why not? Where I came from there is no work, people are poor, ignorance is everywhere.’

      Noah collected his thoughts. He said, ‘I suppose, wait a minute – Uzbekistan is your home, the culture is yours, the language and traditions. All that has made you what you are, as well as your family, and everything that’s happened to you since you were born. Why do you want to turn your back on it? I mean, by making yourself English you’ll only be a replica, whereas what you are already is the real thing.’

      Roxana unzipped her suitcase. She took out a few clothes and laid them on the bed, then propped a picture postcard of a beach beside the magazines and piled CDs on Noah’s table.

      In a tone that denied the possibility of contradiction she said, ‘I believe that you can be whatever you want.’

      Yes, Noah had to concede, Roxana probably could be. He had the impression there was determination in her, strong as a rib of steel.

      He checked his watch.

      ‘I’ve really got to go,’ he sighed. ‘I promised my dad I’d be home for Sunday lunch. But I’ll be back here this evening, we could maybe go out for a pizza or a drink, and we can talk some more. Shall we do that?’

      ‘I have to go to work this evening.’

      ‘Really? You do a performance on a Sunday night?’

      He was envisaging a contemporary dance ensemble, something very avant-garde with dancers in white face-paint and stylised costumes. The image loosely connected in his mind with Roxana’s interest in the robot beside the river.

      Roxana frowned and hesitated, obviously trying to come to a decision. Then she said flatly, ‘I work in a club, I think I had better tell you. It’s called The Cosmos. It opens every night of the week. You live here in this very nice apartment, you have a good job, a nice family I’m sure. Perhaps you don’t like to have someone doing this type of work staying with you?’

      ‘Cosmos? I’ve never heard of it.’ Noah believed that he had a good working knowledge of London clubs. ‘What do you do there?’

      ‘I am what is called a lap dancer.’ Roxana tilted her chin up as she announced this. She looked even more like a primitive carving. ‘Do you know what this is?’

      ‘Of course I do.’ Noah was assailed by a series of images. For a moment he thought it best not to say anything more.

      ‘You are shocked?’

      ‘No,’ he managed to say. Shocked wasn’t it at all.

      ‘So?’

      ‘I bet you’re really good at it.’

      Roxana began to laugh. Soon Noah was laughing as well. They laughed until they were both breathless.

      ‘So I’ll definitely be coming to see you.’

      She turned serious at once. ‘No, please, don’t do that. I would find it very embarrassing if you were there.’

      ‘Embarrassing? Would you?’

      ‘Of course. It doesn’t matter when I dance for men I don’t know, it doesn’t mean anything. But with you, because I like you, it would be different.’

      Noah was disarmed. There was such a contradiction in the idea of this girl doing a lap-dance routine in a room full of punters, and at the same time being shy enough not to know where to look as she paid him a mild compliment.

      He tried to think what Lauren or one or two of her friends might say if they were included in this conversation.

      Almost certainly it would be something correct about how places like this Cosmos club were degrading to women. This judgement didn’t quite connect, though, with what he had already learned about Roxana. She needed the money, yes, but it was quite likely that she went about getting it in a way that didn’t damage her too much. She would probably wield more power in the transaction than the men did.

      Noah admired her.

      She was also beautiful, she was like no other girl he had ever met, and now they were looking at each other in the equivocal aftermath of her confession and their shared laughter.

      ‘Will you be all right here while I’m out?’ he asked. ‘I’ll give you the spare set of keys.’

      She beamed back at him, suddenly full of confidence.

      ‘I am safe here with the men downstairs who play rugby. You told me. All I will do is lie in your bed and go to sleep.’

      Noah swallowed hard. ‘Good. I’ll see you later, then.’

      After he had gone, Roxana put her clothes neatly aside. Noah’s room was tidy, she liked that. She curled up under the crisp bedcover and fell asleep.

      

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