30th January
10.00 P.M
Okay so I am really tired now, and ready to sleep, but I will have to update my diary first.
I've just realized that in my worry and agitation this morning, I completely failed to put in anything about Katiya.
I am starting to see her slightly differently, now. She is an actress, I think. She is putting on a show for everyone. She wants us all to see her as a `big girl', who can cope with anything that happens. She has seen a great deal in her young life, that is true, and Illya has told me before how impressed he was with her when he first met her. But watching the way she is with her papa in the medical bay at UNCLE headquarters, and how she behaves when she gets home again, she really is just a little girl. Vulnerable, scared and uncertain. Thrust into a world she is still trying to learn about, vastly different from the world she knew back home. She is also, I think, aware that we are Polly's mummy and daddy, not hers. She is constantly trying to be on her best behaviour with us. The fact that she had that screaming fit a couple of weeks ago, is evidence that she is having trouble coping with it all.
In medical, with Illya, she could be a twenty-year old from the way she behaves, but at home the cracks start to show. I really think that Winston and I have not done as good a job with her as I had at first believed. I sometimes wish that I could turn back the clock and do some things over again in order to get it right.
I wish I knew more about Illya's childhood. The kind of child he was, and how he coped with things he went through. If anyone can help her the best, it is him. I have to say that I have lost people, and suffered sadness and heartbreak, but nothing like Katiya and certainly nothing like her papa. I really cannot begin to understand the traumas there under the surface. All I can do is try. Perhaps a visit to the beach, now the weather has eased up slightly. A walk down the beach, the four of us, and try to get Katiya to open up a little and talk.
Katiya and I have been staying at headquarters. A car has been put at my disposal so that I can take her to school every morning, whereupon I am free whilst she is at school, and I can take care of chores at home, and making meals for my husband to warm up when he is finished on the farm. At the end of school, I pick up both my little girls and bring them back here to UNCLE, where they are fed in the commissary, and then taken down to see Illya and Napoleon. Wint arrives after a couple of hours, spends half an hour staring sadly at his unnaturally still and silent brother, then he and Polly head back home to New Jersey. It is a strain, but we are coping. Katiya, poor child, is watching her papa get weaker as each day passes, and I know she is secretly afraid that he will never get well again. UNCLE have the best medics and scientists in the world working for them. If there is an answer available, they will find it. I just hope they find it in time.