[vicky7]

Thank you very much for the feedback, you are all really kind it means a lot! Here is chapter 6 I hope you all enjoy it.

Chapter 6 – Safe & Sound

Lena was shattered. It was now 7:30am the morning after the terrible night before and she had just switched on the kettle to make herself a cup of coffee, she was really a tea drinker but she desperately needed a caffeine fix to keep her awake. Dominik had finally been satisfied that the drugs were out of Yulia’s system and had helped Lena undress Yulia and put her into bed in the guest room. Her gaunt face had been pale, her swollen eye dried with blood and her body lifeless. Lena had since stayed by Yulia’s side watching her closely determined to stay awake just in case Yulia needed her.

Once she had made her coffee she went back to the guest room noting that Yulia still looked relatively peaceful and yes, she was still breathing. It was Monday morning but Lena knew she couldn’t leave Yulia alone while she went to work so she phoned in sick. She hated to let her patients down but she had to put Yulia first because she needed her more than anyone.

Lena still couldn’t believe what had happened last night. She had only gone to the shop to buy some comfort food because Roman had not called her since Saturday night when he had cancelled on her. She had waited patiently by the phone for him to call in vain but had received no calls. She picked up the phone and dialled his number several times only to put the phone down every time before it even started to ring – she knew there was nothing worse than a nagging girlfriend.

With Roman’s homecoming, the disastrous dinner party and all the drama with Yulia it had been an exhausting roller coaster of a weekend and despite her good intentions she fell asleep and woke up to find herself alone in the bedroom with the sheets pushed back where Yulia had got out of bed. Lena looked at the clock on the bedside table to see it was 2:15pm jumping up off the bed and running out into the living room pleading to god that Yulia hadn’t just upped and left.

Yulia wasn’t in the living room but Lena could now hear the sound of running water in the bathroom. The bathroom door was shut so she decided to knock. “Yulia can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.” Yulia called out to her in a weary voice. Lena pushed the bathroom door back to see Yulia surveying the cuts on her face and splashing her face with water. In the white nightgown that Lena had found for her to wear last night she was reminiscent of a ghost.

“There’s a flannel in the cabinet and a spare toothbrush for you if you want them” Lena said pointing at the cupboard directly in front of Yulia with Yulia smiled shyly at her looking almost embarrassed in response.

“Did you just wake up? I didn’t want to disturb you, you know, I think I’ve caused you enough grief…”Yulia’s voice trailed off as she hung her head a sad expression adorning her features.

“Hey” Lena put a hand on Yulia’s shoulder gently squeezing it “It’s ok, I just so glad that you’re alright. How you feeling this morning or should I say afternoon?” she said correcting herself.

“A bit shitty, my head kinda hurts which is strange considering I took all those headache pills!” Yulia paused seeing Lena’s concerned face.

“God, I don’t know why I’m joking about it, it’s not funny is it?” Another pause followed as they both thought of the seriousness of last night’s drama before Yulia broke the silence.

“Would you mind if I had a bath Lena, I think I’ll feel a whole lot better once I’m clean” Yulia stank of stale sweat, sick and dirt, she felt so horrible and ashamed. Whatever must Lena think of her? A dirty, smelly loser with no home and a thief and a coward to boot – she had even managed to f**k up her own suicide attempt. What a waste of space.

“Course you can, do you want me to run it for you” Lena offered kindly.

“No, I can manage thanks” Yulia managed a smile it was the least Lena deserved from her.

“Alright then, the shampoo’s on the side, I’ll just go and get something clean for you to put on, ok? Oh and how about some food I don’t know about you but I’m absolutely starving?”

“Yeah, I am, so food would be great” Yulia said feeling very enthusiastic about the thought of sitting down and eating some nice food.

“Any requests” Lena said smiling warmly.

“No, I’ll eat anything honestly”

“Pea soup alright then?” Lena offered cheekily remembering Yulia hated pea soup.

“Err, yeah fine” Yulia looked bewildered obviously forgetting what she had told Lena not wanting to be impolite.

“I’m just kidding! I know you hate that, how about a big fry-up with all the works? I can actually cook that!”

“Fantastic, thanks” Yulia said rediscovering her enthusiasm.

“Cool, I’ll leave some clothes for you outside the door and give you a shout when grubs up” With that Lena left the bathroom shutting the door firmly behind her.


After Yulia had ran the bath she slowly lowered herself into the water. The feel of the warm water around her was so comforting, like being hugged all around and she closed her eyes and relaxed. This was surely a dream or was she in heaven? She was with a nice girl, in a nice apartment all warm and safe.

Yulia got to work on washing her hair and scrubbing her body feeling a bit more like herself. However, her long hair was so straggly and knotted it was a nightmare. She wished she could get it all cut off, she hated it, it wasn’t her at all but at least it was clean now.

There was a knock on the bathroom door just as Yulia clambered out of the bathtub. “Yulia, there’s some clean pyjamas out here for you I figured we’ll both be back in bed before too long. I don’t know about you but I’m completely knackered.” Lena shouted through the door.

“God yeah! Thanks for that I’ll be out in a few minutes ”Yulia shouted back. She dried off and wrapped her hair in a towel and reached outside the door for the pale blue pyjamas Lena had found for her. They were too big on her – she was skin and bones at the moment. She rubbed the towel through her hair until she was satisfied it was fairly dry and ran a hairbrush through her long mane until she had got most of the knots out and left the bathroom. Lena was in the kitchen, preparing some food that to Yulia smelt absolutely wonderful.

Lena was surprised how cute Yulia looked in the oversized pyjamas and it suddenly hit her that if she had decided to follow Yulia out of the shop she more than likely would have been dead by now – thankfully she had followed her intuition.

Yulia gulped down the dinner Lena had made for her greedily scraping every last morsel of food off her plate like a woman possessed. Lena watched her amused deciding to pull some ice cream out of the freezer for dessert before Yulia had worn the pattern off the dinner plate. The ice cream was gratefully received, Yulia looking childlike with chocolate ice cream around the corners of her mouth that Lena couldn’t help but laugh.

“What you laughing at?” Yulia said looking wide eyed and completely baffled by Lena’s laughing fit, the expression on Yulia’s face only succeeding in making Lena laugh all the harder.

“You’ve got ice cream all round your face.” She said pointing at Yulia her side beginning to ache now she was laughing so much. Yulia wiped the back of her hand across her face in an attempt to remove off the ice cream but managed instead to smear it all over her cheeks to Lena’s amusement.

“I’ve seen babies with better table manners than you, come here.” Lena picked up a dishcloth wetting it under the tap and wiping Yulia’s face clean. “There you go, all clean!” Lena said smiling fondly down into Yulia’s face.

“Thanks Lena, do you want a hand with the dishes” Yulia offered keen to prove how grateful she was to Lena.

“Yeah that would be great thanks.”
By the time they had cleaned up the kitchen darkness was setting in outside and as they were both tired they settled down on the sofa to watch a bit of television, comfortable in their silence each occupied in their own thoughts. After a while Lena decided to probe Yulia realising that despite feeling so comfortable in the girl’s presence she knew virtually nothing about her.

“Yulia” Lena said in almost a whisper feeling a little nervous about questioning Yulia not wanting to push her too much.

“Yeah, that’s my name” Yulia shifted her position on the sofa until she was directly sat facing Lena. “What’s up you look kinda… I don’t know..nervous I guess”

“Well, it was just I was thinking I don’t really know anything about you not even your surname, I’d just like to know something about you” Lena nervously twirling her curls around her fingers concerned that Yulia may think she was being nosy.

“Ok my surname’s Volkova, some people call me Volk. What else do you want to know?” Yulia answered.

“Well seeing as I asking you questions, you can ask me things if you want as well. My surname’s Katina.” The questioning continued for a while with Lena finding out that Yulia did a design course at university, had a dog called Rada when she was younger, her favourite colour was pale blue and her idol just like Lena was Madonna. They were having such a good night the more they found out about each other the more they liked and felt more comfortable with each other. However, Lena decided not to probe Yulia about how she had ended up on the streets because she was worried she was not ready to talk about it, she would let her tell her when she was ready.

“Ok, I’m running out of questions now…ermm what’s your star sign? I’m a Libra” Lena was finally tiring of the Q and A session for the night.

“Pisces” Yulia replied.

“Pisces, so your birthday is any time now then, when is it?” Lena thought it was a harmless enough question to ask, she wasn’t prepared for Yulia’s response.

“It was yesterday, I was twenty-two and I nearly killed myself, that’s really f**ked up isn’t it?” she said blue eyes shining with tears.

“Oh god, Yulia” Lena kneeled down in front of Yulia taking her hands and squeezing them in her own. “I don’t know why you ended up out there or why you felt so bad that you wanted to…you know” Lena couldn’t bring herself to say ‘die’ it would make what had happened seem all too real again when she had spent the last few hours enjoying Yulia’s company like she would with any of her close friends. “But, it’s over now you can move on, be happy it won’t be easy but you can do it, I know you can.” Lena held Yulia close for several minutes until the doorbell rang and Lena went to answer it.

It was Dominik looking very tired, dressed in his suit obviously having just returned home from work. “Hi Lena, I just thought I’d come and see how you two girls are”

“Come in, would you like a coffee or something” she said ushering him into the lounge area.

“No, I can’t stay long but thanks” Dominik sat down on the sofa next to Yulia.

“Hello Dominik” Yulia wanted to make sure he knew just how much she owed him for saving her life but she didn’t feel she could ever express her gratitude as much as she should “I’m so sorry about all the trouble I caused you last night I don’t know how I can ever thank you” she said looking into his kind brown eyes.

“No problem” Dominik responded with a wink. He was relieved to see she looked far removed from the frightened, desperate homeless child he had saved the previous night. “I just want to do a quick check up if you don’t mind”

Half an hour later Dominik had left after he had reassured them both that Yulia was fine and there were no long-term consequences from her suicide attempt. They were both so tired at this point that after they had had a bit of supper and a glass of milk Lena went to change into her plaid pyjamas and led the way to the guest room.

Once there Yulia smiled to herself, noting that Lena had changed the bedding on the double bed and the green bedside lamps were switched on casting the room in a green soothing glow, it looked so cosy; she couldn’t wait to get into bed. Lena pulled back the covers prompting Yulia to get into the bed. Once Yulia had climbed in Lena pulled the covers up around her neck, gently tucking her in. “Well, goodnight Yulia” Yulia looked deeply into her eyes pleadingly “Lena, could you stay with me please, I don’t want to be alone.”

“Yeah, sure” she pulled the covers back and climbed into bed next to Yulia. She looked at Yulia noticing her face was pensive something obviously on her mind. “Hey what’s up Yulia is something worrying you?”

“I was just thinking how relieved I felt when Dominik said I was going to be alright. I nearly took it all away…” Yulia once more gave into her tears, she was mad at herself never in her life had she been weak but she had given in and the only reason she was still alive was because of Lena and Dominik.

“Yulia, you’ve been through a lot but you’re safe now” Lena grabbed Yulia’s hand squeezing it gently and with her other hand gently wiped the tears from Yulia’s eyes. “Everything will be fine now I promise” Lena’s optimism was heartfelt. Feeling her tears being brushed away and her shaking hand being caressed made her feel secure for the first time in nine months. She closed her eyes; she had missed this feeling so much. After a minute she felt Lena’s breathe against her ear “You know I can’t tell you how much I’m glad you’re here, I really like you Yulia, I really do”

The final thing she remembered was the circular motion Lena was making on her hand and the last of her tears stroked off her face, she was content and now in a deep sleep.

Lena watched Yulia as she drifted off she looked so peaceful, she kissed her now rosy cheek and continued to stroke her face and hold her hand until she also gave into sleep, fingers still entwined with Yulia’s, also contented for the first time in a long while…