“Well then, hurry up and get ready. I’m going with you! You’re not going anywhere without me!” her mother-in-law ordered as she dragged the suitcases inside.
“Well then, get moving! The plane won’t wait. You’re not going anywhere without me!”
Lidia Pavlovna’s voice burst into apartment No. 47 together with the clatter of suitcase wheels on the stair landing.
“Kirill, is that your mother?” Viktoria whispered, though the answer was obvious.
“Seven floors with a suitcase!” Lidia Pavlovna kept grumbling outside the door. “And the elevator in your building still doesn’t work? Good thing I’m in shape!”
The door flew open. On the threshold stood a woman of about sixty—her perfect hairstyle hadn’t suffered from the climb, bright lipstick freshened her face, and in her eyes was the determination of a general marching into battle.
“Why are you standing there like posts? Help me with the bags!” she commanded, hauling the suitcase into the hallway.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Kirill exhaled as he came out of the kitchen.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m going with you! Or did you think you could manage without me?” Lidia Pavlovna took off her coat and hung it on the rack as if she lived there. “Vika, your kettle is boiling!”
“It’s not boiling…” Viktoria started to say.
“Well then, put it on! After the trip I want some tea. And where are your suitcases? Don’t tell me you still haven’t packed?”
Lidia Pavlovna marched into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and gave its contents a critical inspection.
“Vika, ready-made food again? Good thing I came. You need to eat properly at the seaside.”
On the table lay printed tickets, a guidebook to Cyprus, and two passports.
“So,” she said, picking up the tickets, “the flight is at eight in the morning… Cyprus… Larnaca… Only two tickets?”
“Well, yes, Mom, there are two of us,” Kirill said cautiously.
“There were two!” Lidia Pavlovna announced triumphantly. “Now there are three! I already bought a ticket. On your very same flight! The seat next to yours!”
Vika felt something inside her snap.
“But… how… we didn’t…”
“What do you mean, ‘didn’t’?” Lidia Pavlovna sat down at the table and pulled the guidebook toward her. “Weren’t expecting me? That’s why it’s a surprise! Kirill dear, are you happy?”
Viktoria lowered her eyes to the tickets. Their long-awaited vacation—the first in three years of marriage—had just stopped being their vacation.
Viktoria and Kirill had met five years earlier and married two years later. They bought a small two-room apartment on the seventh floor. Since then, they had faithfully paid their mortgage and worked almost without days off.
Vika worked as a manager at a travel agency—an irony of fate: she sent other people on trips while never going anywhere herself. She left at eight in the morning and returned at eight in the evening. Kirill worked as a programmer for an IT company, often staying late, and sometimes even working from home on weekends.
“But Mom, we never agreed to this…” Kirill began.
“Agreed to what?” Lidia Pavlovna sat down at the table, pushing the guidebook aside. “That you would leave your mother all alone? At my age?”
All those years, they had dreamed of a real trip. Not a visit to Kirill’s relatives in Saratov, not a weekend at Vika’s parents’ summer cottage. The sea. A real vacation for just the two of them.
For months, Vika had imagined those ten days: morning coffee on a balcony overlooking the sea, barefoot walks on warm sand, dinners in little taverns, sunset photographs. She had even bought a new swimsuit—bright turquoise—and a light blue dress that hung untouched in the closet, waiting for a special occasion.
“Kirill dear, you’ve lost weight,” Lidia Pavlovna observed, looking her son over. “Vika, are you not feeding him?”
“Mom, I eat just fine…”
“Just fine? I called yesterday at lunchtime, and you said you were eating a sandwich!”
Lidia Pavlovna had always been a constant presence in their family life. She called every day, sometimes several times a day. In the morning—to find out what Kirill would be having for breakfast. At lunchtime—to check whether he had eaten at all. In the evening—to find out what Vika had cooked for dinner and whether she had oversalted the soup again.
“By the way, why is the light bulb in your hallway still so dim?” Lidia Pavlovna got up and walked through the apartment. “I told you to replace it with a brighter one. Bad lighting ruins your eyesight.”
Sometimes she came by without warning. Once Vika came home from work and found her mother-in-law in their kitchen—going through the contents of every cabinet.
“Oh, Vika, good thing you’re home!” Lidia Pavlovna said happily. “I’ve been putting things in order here. You had your grains next to the spices—that’s no way to keep them! And I poured the sugar into a proper jar instead of that glass one of yours. And why on earth do you keep garlic in the fridge? It should be stored in a dry place!”
“But I knew where everything was…” Vika muttered helplessly, staring at the kitchen turned upside down.
“You knew it wrong! And I threw out those strange seasonings of yours—they expired three years ago! I bought proper ones instead: salt, pepper, bay leaf. You don’t need anything else!”
Kirill always reacted the same way:
“Vik, don’t pay attention. She’s just worried about us. She has no one else.”
A week before the trip, what Vika would later call “Operation Infiltration” began. Lidia Pavlovna started calling Kirill five or six times a day.
“And what room do you have? Sea view or mountain view?” she pressed.
“Sea view, Mom.”
“And are breakfasts included? Buffet or continental? … Continued just below in the first comment.”
“Well then, hurry up and get packed! The plane won’t wait. You’re not going anywhere without me!”
Lidiya Pavlovna’s voice burst into apartment No. 47 together with the clatter of a suitcase rolling across the stairwell.
“Kiril, is that your mother?” Viktoria whispered, though the answer was obvious.
“Seven floors with a suitcase!” Lidiya Pavlovna kept complaining from outside the door. “Does the elevator in your building still not work? Good thing I’m in shape!”
The door flew open. On the threshold stood a woman of about sixty — her perfect hairstyle hadn’t suffered from the climb, bright lipstick freshened her face, and in her eyes was the determination of a general marching into battle.
“Why are you just standing there like posts? Help with the luggage!” she ordered, dragging the suitcase into the hallway.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Kirill exhaled, stepping out of the kitchen.
“What do you mean, what? I’m going with you! Or did you think you could manage without me?” Lidiya Pavlovna took off her coat and hung it on the rack as if she lived there. “Vika, your kettle is boiling!”
“It’s not boiling…” Viktoria started to say.
“Then put it on! After the trip I want some tea. And where are your suitcases? Don’t tell me you’re still not packed?”
Lidiya Pavlovna walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and gave its contents a critical inspection.
“Vika, processed food again? Good thing I came. You need to eat properly at the seaside.”
On the table lay printed tickets, a guidebook to Cyprus, and two passports.
“Well now,” she said, picking up the tickets, “an 8 a.m. flight… Cyprus… Larnaca… Only two tickets?”
“Well yes, Mom, there are only two of us,” Kirill noted cautiously.
“There were two!” Lidiya Pavlovna announced triumphantly. “Now there are three! I already bought a ticket. On your flight too! The seat right next to yours!”
Vika felt something inside her snap.
“But… how… we didn’t…”
“What do you mean, ‘didn’t’?” Lidiya Pavlovna sat down at the table and pulled the guidebook closer. “Weren’t expecting me? That’s what makes it a surprise! Kiryusha, are you happy?”
Viktoria lowered her eyes to the tickets. Their long-awaited vacation — the first in three years of marriage — had just stopped being their vacation. Viktoria and Kirill had met five years earlier and married two years later. They bought a small two-room apartment on the seventh floor. Since then, they had been faithfully paying off the mortgage and working almost without days off.
Vika worked as a manager at a travel agency — irony of ironies, she sent other people on vacations while never going anywhere herself. She left home at eight in the morning and got back at eight in the evening. Kirill worked as a programmer for an IT company, often staying late, and sometimes even working from home on weekends.
“But Mom, we never agreed on this…” Kirill started.
“Agreed on what?” Lidiya Pavlovna sat down at the table, pushing the guidebook aside. “That you’d leave your mother all alone? At my age?”
For all these years they had dreamed of a real trip. Not a visit to Kirill’s relatives in Saratov, not a weekend at Vika’s parents’ dacha. The sea. A real vacation for just the two of them.
For months Vika had imagined those ten days: morning coffee on a balcony overlooking the sea, barefoot walks on warm sand, dinners in little taverns, sunset photos. She had even bought a new swimsuit — bright turquoise — and a light blue dress that had been hanging untouched in the closet, waiting for a special occasion.
“Kiryusha, you’ve lost weight,” Lidiya Pavlovna declared, examining her son. “Vika, are you not feeding him?”
“Mom, I eat just fine…”
“Just fine? I called you yesterday at lunch, and you said you were eating a sandwich!”
Lidiya Pavlovna had been a constant presence in their married life. She called every day, sometimes several times a day. In the morning — to find out what Kirill would have for breakfast. At lunch — to check whether he had eaten at all. In the evening — to find out what Vika had cooked for dinner and whether she had oversalted the soup again.
“By the way, why is the lightbulb in your hallway still so dim?” Lidiya Pavlovna got up and walked through the apartment. “I told you to replace it with a brighter one. Bad lighting ruins your eyesight.”
Sometimes she came over unannounced. Once Vika came home from work and found her mother-in-law in their kitchen, sorting through the contents of every cabinet.
“Oh, Vika, good thing you’re home!” Lidiya Pavlovna said cheerfully. “I tidied up a bit. You had your grains next to the spices — that won’t do! And I poured the sugar into a proper jar instead of that glass one of yours. And really, why do you keep garlic in the fridge? It’s supposed to be stored in a dry place!”
“But I knew where everything was…” Vika muttered in confusion, staring at the kitchen turned upside down.
“You knew wrong! And I threw out those strange seasonings of yours — they expired three years ago! I bought normal ones instead — salt, pepper, bay leaves. You don’t need anything else!”
Kirill always reacted the same way:
“Vik, don’t pay attention. She’s just worried about us. She has no one else.”
A week before the trip began what Vika would later call “Operation Infiltration.” Lidiya Pavlovna started calling Kirill five or six times a day.
“So, what room do you have? Sea view or mountain view?” she pressed.
“Sea view, Mom.”
“And is breakfast included? Buffet or continental?”
“Buffet.”
“I hope they’ll have proper porridge and not that muesli you people eat. Kiryusha, you know your stomach is sensitive.”
The next day:
“And have you arranged a transfer? Don’t be stingy with taxis, it’s better to organize everything in advance.”
“Mom, we’ll figure it out ourselves.”
“Yourselves, yourselves… You don’t even know the language! Vika studied English in school twenty years ago, and you studied German.”
Vika felt a growing anxiety. Every call from her mother-in-law brought an unpleasant tightness to her chest, as though something inside were being squeezed.
In the evening, four days before departure, Vika came home earlier than usual. Kirill was in the kitchen, talking on the phone. She stopped in the hallway when she heard her husband’s voice:
“Mom, please, no… Yes, I understand… But this is our vacation…”
Someone was saying something loudly on the other end. Vika could only make out fragments from the speaker:
“…at my age, I can’t keep putting it off…”
“…I might not live to see next summer…”
“…doesn’t your own mother deserve…”
Kirill said nothing. He was silent for a long time.
That was the exact moment when Vika first thought: Dear God, what if she decides to go with us? But she pushed the thought away at once. It couldn’t be. Even Lidiya Pavlovna wasn’t capable of that.
How wrong she was.
On the eve of departure, the apartment looked like headquarters before a major operation. Vika methodically packed things into the suitcase: sunscreen with maximum protection, a light sunhat, two pairs of sunglasses, a guidebook bookmarked at interesting pages. Her blue dress lay on top, carefully wrapped in a special garment bag.
“Kirill, did you take the passports?” she asked for the fifth time.
“Yes, Vik, I took everything,” Kirill said, nervously checking the documents. “Passports, insurance, printed reservations.”
“And the chargers?”
“The chargers too.”
It was half past nine in the evening. Tomorrow at six a.m. a taxi would come for them. Vika was already imagining how they would sit on the plane, hold hands, and finally—
A sharp ring at the door shattered the idyll.
“Who could that be at this hour?” Kirill asked in surprise.
He went to open it. Vika heard the lock click, then silence, and then her mother-in-law’s voice:
“What are you standing there for? Help me with my things!”
Lidiya Pavlovna stood in the doorway. Behind her was a large wheeled suitcase, in her hands a travel bag, and tucked under one arm a folder with some papers. On her head was a brand-new straw hat.
“I arranged everything!” she announced triumphantly as she walked into the apartment. “I called the hotel this morning. They’ll change the room to a triple. We had to pay extra, of course, but I already transferred the money.”
Vika felt the ground slipping out from under her feet.
“What?” was all she could manage.
“Well, what do you mean, ‘what’?” Lidiya Pavlovna put her bag on the floor and opened the folder. “Look, I’ve thought it all through. Here’s the excursion plan. Monday — a city tour. Tuesday — a boat trip, but only on a large boat so I won’t get seasick. Wednesday…”
“Mom, wait…” Kirill started.
“On Wednesday we’ll go to the mountains. There’s a twelfth-century monastery there. Very good for spiritual development. And here,” she pulled out another sheet, “I wrote down all the nearby health resorts. We can do a course of mud therapy. You know my joints…”
Vika stood there as if struck by lightning.
“And this,” Lidiya Pavlovna said, pulling out a notebook, “is an approximate menu. We are excluding seafood entirely. Kiryusha, remember how your cheeks turned red after one shrimp when you were little? That could be an allergy!”
“Mom, I was five…”
At that moment the doorbell rang again.
“Oh, that must be Tamara Ivanovna!” Lidiya Pavlovna said happily. “I asked her to bring me some sunscreen — her daughter brought back a good one from Egypt.”
The neighbor came in carrying a bag.
“Lidochka, here’s your cream! And I brought that new hat you asked for. Specially for the sea! Oh, what a wonderful idea — the whole family going on vacation together!”
The apartment was rapidly turning into headquarters for a family holiday, with Lidiya Pavlovna in command, Tamara Ivanovna handing out advice, Kirill standing there helplessly silent, and Vika’s opinion of absolutely no interest to anyone.
Vika couldn’t take it anymore. She turned on her heel and stormed into the bedroom, slamming the door hard behind her. Her hands were shaking with anger. She yanked open the suitcase and began pulling out the neatly folded clothes, throwing them onto the bed.
A minute later the door opened a crack. Kirill stuck his head into the room.
“Vik, what are you doing?”
“I’m not going,” she said without turning around.
“What do you mean, you’re not going? We have tickets…”
“You have tickets. You and your mother.”
Kirill stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Vika, come on, don’t be like this. Mom just…”
“Just what?” Vika spun around sharply. “Just decided that our vacation is her vacation? You know what, Kirill? I can’t keep quiet anymore!”
The words poured out like water through a burst dam.
“Three years, Kirill! Three damn years I’ve put up with this! Remember our honeymoon? Your mother called us ten times a day! On our honeymoon! Asking if you’d forgotten to take your vitamins!”
“Vik…”
“Don’t interrupt me! She checks our fridge every week! Tells me what to cook, how to wash your shirts, when to air out the apartment! I’m not living my own life — I’m living by Lidiya Pavlovna’s schedule!”
The door flew open. Her mother-in-law stood on the threshold.
“I can hear everything!” she cried indignantly. “What ingratitude! I’m helping you! Without me you would’ve divorced long ago!”
“Exactly!” Vika turned to her. “Without you, we’d be living our own lives!”
“Kiryusha, do you hear this?” Lidiya Pavlovna theatrically pressed a hand to her heart. “Your wife is insulting me!”
Vika looked at her husband. He stood between them, confused, silent.
“Kirill,” Vika said quietly. “Choose. Either we go together, the way we planned. Or I stay here.”
“Vik, why are you doing this…”
“Choose!”
Kirill looked at his mother. She stood there wearing the wounded expression of a righteous martyr. Then he turned his gaze back to his wife. And once again, he said nothing.
That silence was enough.
Vika took out her phone, opened the airline app, canceled her ticket to Larnaca, and bought another one. For that same day. The first available flight to the Black Sea.
“Have a wonderful family vacation,” she threw at them, and began stuffing her things into a backpack.
An hour later Vika was already sitting in a taxi. The city’s night lights drifted past outside the window. On her phone was the booking confirmation for a ticket to Sochi. Not Cyprus, of course, but still the sea. And most importantly — her sea.
Kirill and his mother remained in the apartment. Recovering from the shock, Lidiya Pavlovna started grumbling:
“Let her go! Big deal, she got offended! She’s spoiled, Kiryusha. You’ll see, in a couple of days she’ll come running back.”
She was already planning out loud:
“You know what? Since things turned out this way, the two of us will go! Just like in the old days, remember? We used to go to Crimea, and you liked it so much… And in the summer we can go to a health resort. I found a nice one in Kislovodsk…”
But Kirill wasn’t listening. He stood in the middle of the now-empty bedroom, staring at the scattered вещи. A strange emptiness was growing inside him, as though something important had left the apartment together with Vika.
On the kitchen table he noticed an envelope. His name was written on it in Vika’s familiar handwriting. Inside were two documents: a divorce petition and a short note.
“Kirill, I spent too long trying to become part of your family. But now I understand — there is no place for me in that family. There is only you and your mother. The third person will always be the outsider. I’m sorry I couldn’t accept that. Vika.”
“Kiryusha, what’s that?” his mother called from the hallway. “Come pack the suitcases! We have to get up early tomorrow!”
But Kirill already knew — tomorrow he wasn’t going anywhere.
Vika sat in a small beach café. The warm evening wrapped around the shore, and the sea murmured softly just a few steps from the terrace. On the table in front of her was a large plate of shrimp, mussels, and octopus — everything Lidiya Pavlovna had categorically forbidden Kirill to eat.
“More wine?” the waiter asked.
“Yes, please. And the check too.”
The phone on the table vibrated. On the screen: “Lidiya Pavlovna.” Already the fifteenth call that day. Vika picked up the phone, but instead of answering, she tapped the contact name and selected “Block.”
“Are you sure?” the phone asked.
“Absolutely,” Vika said out loud.
Then she opened her contact list and began methodically blocking numbers. Tamara Ivanovna — the nosy neighbor-spy. Her mother-in-law’s friend Galina Sergeyevna, who was always giving housekeeping advice. Even one of Kirill’s distant relatives, who asked every single time, “So, when are you planning to have children?”
There were no messages from Kirill. Only one, from the night before: “I’m sorry.”
Vika put the phone aside and looked out at the sea. The sun was setting, painting the water in golden-pink tones. She stood up, slipped off her sandals, and walked toward the water. The warm sand pleasantly tickled her feet.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” someone called to her.
Vika turned around. A woman about her age was standing nearby, alone as well.
“Very,” Vika smiled.
“First time here?”
“Yes. And you know what? This is the best vacation of my life.”
The woman nodded in understanding and continued down the shore. Vika looked at her footprints in the sand. Lonely? Maybe. But for the first time in a very long while, they were leading where she herself wanted to go.
And those footprints were free.
