‘No, it’s a … it’s a religion. Or a cult. I’m not sure. Forget it. It’s neither here nor there. Please, if I could just come inside, then I can explain.’
The woman considered this for a moment before stepping aside, directing Beverley in with all the grace of Donald Trump greeting a gathering of black female Nobel Prize-winners.
‘I have gun, so you know,’ said Dr Tataryn. ‘Any trouble, I shoot you in vagina.’
‘What a bizarre target,’ said Beverley. ‘Although I’m sure it won’t come to that. I only want to talk, that’s all.’
She made her way down the hallway, which opened up into a large living room, and was immediately impressed by what she found. It was bright and well appointed, one wall holding a full library of books with broken spines, while the occasional tables and shelves all held interesting objets d’art.
‘You keep a very nice home, Dr Tataryn,’ said Beverley approvingly, running a finger along one of the bookshelves and examining it for dust. It came back spotless. ‘It’s a pity you don’t live in London. You could do very well as a cleaner.’
‘Why I want to clean in London?’ asked the woman. ‘I brain surgeon. I no clean for anyone. I have slut who comes clean for me.’
Beverley smiled. Perhaps, she decided, Dr Tataryn thought slut was a term of endearment.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Pylyp did mention that.’
‘You know Pylyp? He tell you of my slut?’
‘No, he tell me that you are brain surgeon.’
‘I best brain surgeon in Ukraine. Ask dogs on the street. They all know this.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Beverley. ‘And many congratulations on rising to such an important position.’
Dr Tataryn shrugged her shoulders and sat down. ‘Is brain surgery,’ she said. ‘Is not rocket science.’
‘Indeed. May I take a look at your books?’
‘Please,’ said Dr Tataryn, looking a little baffled as to why this complete stranger had entered her home and was now examining her library.
‘All very highbrow,’ she said. ‘Tolstoy, Dickens, Virginia Woolf. I have a Ukrainian publisher, as it happens. I don’t suppose you’ve read any of my books?’
‘You are writer?’ asked Dr Tataryn.
Beverley reared back in horror, as if she’d been accused of doing her weekly shop at Lidl. ‘I’m Beverley Cleverley,’ she declared. ‘I’m a very popular writer.’
Dr Tataryn frowned and thought about it before nodding. ‘I hear of you, I think,’ she said. ‘You write the romances, yes? With the sluts and the doctors who want to save them from life as slut.’
‘Well, I’m not sure I’d describe them in those exact terms,’ said Beverley. ‘But yes, you’re probably on the right track.’
‘Young pretty slut, she meets the doctor when she has the incurable disease, then he saves her life and reveals himself to be secret billionaire, yes? Then they do the bouncy-bouncy together.’
‘The what?’
‘The bouncy-bouncy.’ Dr Tataryn, from a sedentary position, pushed her hips forward in an aggressive and come-hither fashion, like Madonna might do when encountering a twenty-two-year-old Moroccan dancer. ‘The bouncy-bouncy.’
‘If you mean what I think you mean, then not quite,’ said Beverley. ‘They do occasionally make love, it’s true. But usually towards the end of the novel, and not until she has a ring on her finger.’
‘Is all bullshit,’ said Dr Tataryn, dismissing this with a wave of her hand. ‘Doctors in my hospital, most of them fat pigs. Stinky stinky. Most of them whores at night, when shift over.’
‘The doctors in your hospital are prostitutes?’ asked Beverley, frowning. ‘That doesn’t seem likely.’
‘Not prostitutes, no. Men who go to prostitutes. Men who pay the women for the bouncy-bouncy.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘No secret billionaires in hospital.’
‘Of course, what I write is a sort of fantasy,’ said Beverley, sitting down on the sofa opposite Dr Tataryn and using the tone she employed when on stage at the Edinburgh Festival. ‘It’s not supposed to represent real life.’
‘Is all bullshit,’ repeated Dr Tataryn.
‘Perhaps, but is very popular bullshit,’ countered Beverley, feeling stung by the criticism.
A silence fell for a few moments while the two women sized each other up.
‘So why you here?’ asked Dr Tataryn. ‘You are writing the trashy book set in Ukraine, yes? I have story for you. Story of poor girl who grows up without mother or father, but girl determines to make something of life. She work five jobs to put herself through medical school then becomes great brain surgeon in her country. She eats the beef steak every day with eggs and never shaves legs. No man wants to do bouncy-bouncy with her but she smart and she rich. Is good story. Is real story. Is true story.’
‘Is your story?’ asked Beverley.
‘No, friend of mine.’
‘Oh, I just assumed.’
‘Do I look like I eat beef steak every day with eggs?’
‘You do, as it happens. But no, I’m not writing about Ukraine. I actually came in search of Pylyp. Your son. He’s a friend of mine.’
Dr Tataryn’s eyes opened wide in suspicion. ‘How you know Pylyp?’ she asked.
‘We met when I was a contestant on Strictly. He was my dance partner.’
Dr Tataryn rolled her eyes. ‘Ever since he is little boy he is liking the dancing and the fancy clothes and the make-up,’ she said. ‘I want him to be important man. Doctor. Lawyer. Television weather reporter. But no, he spends his days putting the mascara on dolls. His father, he beats him soundly when he is boy to take the evil spirit from him, but it grows, like a fungus between the toes. He says no son of mine is being fudge-packer who sexes the other boys. He would rather die than sit in room and watch him sex the other boys. But I say no, Pylyp is good boy, is nice boy, is just different boy.’
‘Well, he’s not gay, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘I don’t know this gay,’ said Dr Tataryn.
‘He’s not a homosexual,’ she clarified. ‘Pylyp is quite the ladies’ man, as it turns out. Too much of one, as I’ve recently discovered.’
‘He has many girlfriends, all his life. He is fourteen years old and he is bringing girls back here for bouncy-bouncy. Each day I come home, blood still under my fingernails from brain of some slut, and new girl walking out with love hearts in eyes.’
‘A young man has an appetite, I suppose,’ said Beverley, feeling a little miserable at the idea that she was only the latest in a long line of Pylyp’s conquests.
‘Young girls, women, older girls, older women, grandmothers. He is not caring who he sexes,’ said Dr Tataryn. ‘How old you?’
‘I’m fifty-eight,’ said Beverley. ‘Although most people find that hard to believe.’
‘You fifty-eight? I fifty-two.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘I never kid. I tell only truth, all the time. Liars must spend their many years in jail, I think.’