Bitter Remedy Read Online Free PDF Page A

and online scams.
    That was all a lifetime ago. Years passed, Harry Potter was replaced by reality stars and boy bands and Alina left school to become a hairdresser. But apart from three Saturday afternoons sweeping up hair from the floor of the beauty salon at the north end of Bulevardul Oituz, she did not go far. And yet, she had not quite let go of the dream of London, or at least somewhere that was not the town of Onesti in the snow, a place whose greatest claim to fame was a gymnast from sometime long ago in the previous century and the Rafo refinery, where Michael had failed to get a job.
    Nadia stayed on in school a little while longer, but she was never going to take the final exams. Her father had long ago vanished ‘abroad’. All that remained of him in her mind was the memory of a smell of oil, though he had not worked in the factory or been a mechanic.
    Nadia had once had an older brother, of whom she also had little memory. Apparently at the age of fifteen he had been crushed by a reversing cement mixer. He lived on in agony for three months before dying, and her father – she had to work out the chronology herself – had left 1 month later.
    Her mother, who had kept her figure and for whom alcohol had a thinning rather than a fattening effect, suddenly lost all her teeth. They came out one by one over three weeks. Saliva and blood was everywhere in the bathroom, even in the kitchen, along with crushed tissues lying around the house that Nadia dared not open.
    On the day her last teeth fell out, a front tooth and a molar, Nadia’s mother howled and yelped like a tortured dog. Her gaping mouth with black gums spoke unintelligible angry words. The following day she was silent and motionless, and so she remained for three years.
    In the meantime, Alina and Nadia had been deliberately hanging out with the wrong sort of people. Older boys, men even, who would buy them beer, snacks, take them for drives. The older men were always the same, but the turnover among the younger ones was fast. Some tearaway aged sixteen would arrive, get into trouble, hang around a year, and then he’d be gone, off on his adventures in Europe, England, Italy, France, Germany. The girls, too, came and went, and one night, drunk, sitting in the back of someone’s car, Nadia turned to Alina, or Alina turned to Nadia – neither of them could ever say for certain who it had been – and said, ‘We have been here too long.’
    One of the ways out was through the wife of a man who worked as a city clerk, handing out building permits. Olga was her name. It was not easy to get a meeting with her husband, let alone Olga. When they did, it was in a bar outside the town-planning department, and he demanded a fee before telling them that he was not sure if they would be lucky enough to get a meeting with his wife.
    No one liked Olga, even those who had never met her, but all agreed that she made things happen, moved people on, arranged contacts, knew people abroad, and, it was said, spoke six languages. There was talk about Milan, possibly a Vidal Sassoon Academy, but the details were vague and the trip would be a roundabout one.
    They heard nothing for months. Olga’s husband refused to speak to them, refused even to acknowledge Nadia when one day she tried to waylay him as he left the office. A day later, the two of them turned up, but so did two men, who threatened them.
    And then, on the day the clocks went back, Olga got in contact. She phoned both of them, and invited them round for tea in her house, which was outside the city. She sent a man to pick them up. Olga’s house was brand new, so new it still smelled of cement and new carpet, and it was stiflingly warm. They had salami and pickles, cakes, tea, coffee, a few liquors. Nadia and Alina were not the only girls there. The mood became quite raucous, and they all left in high spirits. Olga winked at the girls a lot, and many jokes at the expense of men were whispered. The girls