‘I tell you this in airport. Only the leafy greens. And the crickets. He is the crazy tortoise for the crickets, I tell you this!’
‘But you don’t know how hard it is to get crickets in this part of London,’ protested Beverley. ‘Perhaps if I lived in the north, it would be easier, but here—’
‘None of these After Nines.’
‘After Eights. I can’t believe you’ve never had them, actually. They’re divine.’
‘You must obey me on this!’
‘Oh, Pylyp,’ she said, laughing a little. ‘You’ve gone all masterful. It’s quite a turn-on. Anyway, don’t worry, I’m taking good care of your little pet.’
‘He is not pet. He is best friend of me. We are like the poets, Byron and Shelley. Locked in the eternal embrace.’
‘As it happens, I’m growing rather fond of him,’ said Beverley. ‘Honestly, when you gave him to me, I didn’t know how I was going to cope. But I’ve started to understand why you’re so fond of him. He’s very loyal, isn’t he? He follows me everywhere I go, although, of course, if I leave the room it takes him so long to get out that I’m already back before he can make it to the door. And he causes no fuss. George nearly sat on him last night, though.’
‘What?’ cried Pylyp.
‘Nearly,’ said Beverley, waving her hands in the air. ‘I said nearly. I shouted at him before he landed on the sofa. Anyway, when will you be home? I need you.’
‘I am not sure. My mother—’
On cue, the sound of wailing rose from the room behind him and he turned around for a moment, shouting something out in Ukrainian.
‘What on earth was that?’ asked Beverley.
‘Is my mother.’
‘It sounded like a goat being castrated.’
‘No, we do not do that in house. It was definitely her. Is eleven fourteen in morning. And she always starts crying at eleven fourteen.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘This is when my father collapses and finds out that he is dead. Is strange bizarrity, but she spends entire life complaining about him, telling everyone what shit man he is, but now that he rots into the corpse, she says she cannot think of the life without him. Maybe she misses having someone to kick around.’
‘Get her a dog.’
‘My mother would never kick dog. She not Moldovan.’
‘Is there anything that might distract her? Does she have a job?’
‘She is brain surgeon.’
Beverley blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said. ‘I thought you said that she was a brain surgeon.’
‘I did say this.’
‘All right, well, that’s unexpected. You never mentioned that before.’
‘She is brain surgeon for many years. She cuts open the heads with the scalpels and plays with all the brains inside.’
‘I see. Well, it’s good that she’s a career woman anyway. It will give her something to focus on. Widowhood can play strange games on the bereaved. I wrote a novel once about a woman who went so out of her mind with grief when her husband died that she tried to persuade her son to come home and live with her, but he refused. He’d built a wonderful life with an older but still very attractive woman in England and knew that was where he should be. Eventually, he—’
She stopped mid-sentence, noticing a figure moving behind Pylyp. A young woman had wandered into the room wearing a pair of barely-there shorts and a T-shirt that Beverley recognized as one that she had given her lover a few months earlier. The girl walked over to the fridge, removed a soft drink, glanced in Pylyp’s direction, saw the open computer screen and then scurried out of sight again.
‘Who was that?’ asked Beverley.
‘Who was what?’
‘That girl. The one who just came into your kitchen.’
Pylyp turned around and looked, even though she was already gone. ‘There is no one,’ he said. ‘Is my mother perhaps?’
‘Is your mother around twenty years old, with big tits and legs that go all the way down to the floor?’
Pylyp considered this. ‘She is quite chesty,’ he admitted. ‘And where else would legs go? They must not stop in mid-air or she falls over and lands with the bang.’
‘It’s a saying. I didn’t mean it literally. Anyway, you must know who I’m talking about. She was standing right behind you.’
‘Was ghost, maybe.’
‘Pylyp, it wasn’t a ghost. It was a person.’
‘A ghost of person.’
‘Pylyp!’
‘Was maybe my cousin, Ulyana. She stays here for now to help look after my mother.’
‘I see,’ said Beverley, unconvinced. ‘So why didn’t you just say that when I asked?’
‘I forget,’ he replied. ‘My mind is in the upstairs and downstairs place and I not thinking clearly. I miss my tortoise. And I miss my father, who beats me and calls me the pansy.’
‘And me? Do you miss me?’
‘Of course. Then you.’
‘It’s nice to know how deeply you care.’
Beverley drummed her fingers on the desk and glanced towards the corner of the screen when an alert pinged. An email from her ghost had arrived with the subject line Pages. She clicked the red x in the corner to make it disappear.
‘And how is my beautiful Beverley?’ asked Pylyp.
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
‘I ask now.’
‘I’m fine. I’m lonely. But I’m keeping busy. The new novel is taking all of my attention. I hired a new ghost yesterday and she seems very dedicated. She was messaging me all last night with questions about the characters and the plot and the this and the that and the blah blah blah. Honestly, I’m absolutely exhausted. At this rate, I might as well be writing the bloody thing myself.’
‘This is not something you like to do?’
‘Well, I basically do anyway,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I mean, the stories are mine and I come up with the titles, so all the ghost really has to do is think up the actual words and put them on the page.’
The young woman appeared again in the background, saying something to Pylyp in Ukrainian, and he turned around to answer her. She kept her hand on his shoulder throughout the exchange, then leaned forward and stared into the screen, her face filling Beverley’s laptop so completely that she looked as if she was about to burst through it, like the little girl in The Ring.
‘Stara zhinka,’ she said, spitting out the words, and Beverley scribbled the phrase down on a notebook phonetically, thinking that she might look it up later. She glared at the woman and the woman glared back.
‘Pylyp,’ she said. ‘Pylyp, could you tell your cousin to step away from the camera?’
He said something and the girl disappeared.
‘I don’t see any family resemblance,’ she said. ‘Are you sure she’s your cousin?’
‘She is being adopted when she will be little girl,’ said Pylyp. ‘My uncle and aunt could not have the babies of their own. They find her by side of road under huge pile of cardboard boxes and take her in.’
‘I see,’ replied Beverley. The doorbell rang and she looked around, rather relieved to be able to bring this conversation to an end. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘There’s someone at the door. Shall we talk again tomorrow?’