The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

      

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

      Copyright © Juliet Butler 2017

      Cover design by Heike Schüssler

      Cover images © plainpicture/Cavan Images

      ‘You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul’, Words and music by Steve Benson © copyright 1985 Blue Obsession Music OHG. Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group Australia. Also reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

      This book is based on the author’s experiences. Some names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed, reconstructed or fictionalised.

      Juliet Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008203795

      Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008203771

      Version: 2018-01-09

       Dedication

      To David Llewelyn – literary consultant – without whose persistence Dasha’s story would never have been told.

       Epigraph

      ‘A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.’

      Helen Keller

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       THE END

       PAEDIATRIC INSTITUTE, MOSCOW

       SCIENTIFIC NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PROSTHETICS (SNIP), MOSCOW

       SCHOOL FOR INVALIDS, NOVOCHERKASSK

       TWENTIETH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW

       SIXTH HOME FOR VETERANS OF WAR AND LABOUR, MOSCOW

       Afterword

       Characters

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       THE END

      12 April 2003, 12:05

      I know I’m dying. I just don’t know how.

      The ceiling rushes past me in the First City Hospital as we’re pushed down the corridor in a white-coated swirl of medics. First City; we’ve been here before. Masha, my Mashinka, you’re here with me. But this time it’s different. This time I’m alone.

      Two nurses are running along with us, one on each side. They’re talking, their voices muffled through their surgical masks.

       How long has she got?

       God knows!

       Where are we taking them?

       Emergency unit.

       Do the doctors know? Can they separate them?

       No, no, of course not, they’d need a team of twenty surgeons.

      Everyone’s always thought we’re fools. That we can’t understand, because we’re Together.

       What do we tell her?

       Nothing, of course. Tell her nothing.

      The nurse bends over me and speaks loudly and slowly.

       Masha’s fine, she’s just sleeping, that’s all.

      I start crying.

       Hush, hush now, everything’s going to be fine …

       PAEDIATRIC INSTITUTE, MOSCOW

      1956

      ‘One cannot hold on to power through terror alone. Lies are just as important.’

      Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party, 1922–53

      Age 6

      January 1956

      Mummy

      ‘I’m bored,’ says Masha.