flashback

Though Katya often met uncle Vitya, she never liked the man very much. Of course, he had always been a great friend to her dad and never stopped bragging about their friendship and all the hardships they went through together as kids. But she always felt something was fishy about him, especially as he seemed to be even more present when her father was away on some business trip. He would be taking her mother out to dinner and they would come back home very late.

At first, Katya did not pay much attention to his visits, afterall he was a family friend. However, as she grew older and ‘wiser’ she started suspecting that her mother might be having an affair with uncle Vitya. Not surprising though; Katya’s mum was in her late thirties then and she was very beautiful, red hair and blue eyes, a quite rare combination in Russia. In fact she was a bomb-shell and her dad had definitely hit the jackpot with her. She would make eyes turn as she walked the streets and she loved the attention of men, a trait Katya got from her mum, a spitting image of her mother some would say. And now she could feel her mum’s loneliness as her dad would often be on business trips and he was quite a lover boy. Her mum closed her eyes over her husband’s infidelities so many times and perhaps at a certain point she just felt lonely and uncle Vitya was there to fill the void. However, Katya used to think differently, she used to be pissed at her mum for betraying her dad. She was then 14. That is how one day, Alexei, Katya’s dad was away on a business trip and Katya feigned going to a party at her friend’s. She hid in the garden and waited there, certain that uncle Vitya would come. Anya opened the door and Vitya got in. They both laughed and talked a little before she closed the door shut, nothing incriminating, Katya thought.

Katya decided to be absolutely sure that nothing was going on between the two and so she went to the back door which was usually open when anyone was home. There was no point in closing it really or so she thought. It was locked from the inside, which again fired up Katya’s suspicion. She went to the left side of her house and managed to slide in through her bedroom window. She then heard her mum and uncle Vitya talking. From the muffle voices, she could guess that they were in the kitchen. Katya could not get all the words and it was hard to understand and she could not open her bedroom door without them hearing her. The conversation was strange though. She repeatedly heard the words gun and merchandise. The words were not in context and Katya could hardly catch any structural mark to understand the sentences. Now she was confused. It seemed that her mum was not having an affair afterall but they were definitely into something together.

However, Katya soon dropped the idea of investigating into her mother. She was not cheating on her dad, so whatever this might be was not relevant to her. Anyway, she soon started seeing dating and her mum’s affairs were none of her concern.

Then after her parents died, they only chatted a few times over the phone.