Achilles Cleverley
Leaving now
he messaged.
You’ll be hearing from me tomorrow and it won’t just be 5k I need then. You messed up, Jeremy. Big time.
THE HOMEBODY
Beverley was on her sixth glass of white wine when an extraordinary hammering came on the front door. She startled, wondering whether someone was trying to break in. Gathering herself together, she made her way slowly into the hallway, where the banging was growing more insistent by the second.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked, leaning a little unsteadily against the woodwork.
‘Is me!’ called a voice from outside. ‘Is Pylyp!’
She gasped. She’d been waiting to hear from that lying, cheating son of a bitch, and now here he was at last. And he didn’t sound best pleased.
‘Pylyp who?’ she asked, playing for time.
‘How many Pylyp you know? Open door before I kick it down with big Ukrainian foot!’
‘What do you want?’ she cried.
‘I want tortoise of mine!’
‘Well, you can’t have him. You abandoned him. He lives with me now! We’ve grown very close.’
‘Open door!’ he shouted and, anxious that her neighbours might hear the fuss, she did as instructed, standing in the doorway while he remained on the step outside with a furious expression on his face. He’d cut his hair a little shorter since last she’d seen him, and it suited him. Also, he was a little more pumped, his arms and chest bulging in his too-small T-shirt. Taking him in with a hungry stare, she wanted nothing more than to rip his clothes off and commit an act of public indecency on the street. Still, ever the lady, she restrained herself.
‘Well, look who it is,’ she said, swirling the wine around the glass she was holding. ‘I assumed you were dead. Killed fighting those pesky Russian invaders.’
Pylyp had the grace to look a little shame-faced.
‘Was bad of me,’ he admitted. ‘I should have called.’
‘Or texted. Or emailed. Or Skyped. Or Facebooked. Or Tweeted. Or Snapped. Or Insta’d. We live in a world where it’s basically become more difficult not to contact someone than it is to contact them. So yes, you should have called.’
‘I terrible man. I very sorry.’
‘How sorry?’
He shrugged his shoulders, clearly uncertain how apologetic he needed to be. Beverley sighed and opened the door further.
‘Fine. Come in,’ she said, the wine and the earlier Bellinis working their way through her system so enthusiastically that she felt that, even if she was furious with him, one last shag for the road wouldn’t go amiss. And, as an added bonus, it would put that ungrateful ghost in her place.
‘I no come in. I no fight with husband.’
‘My husband is elsewhere.’
‘Where he is?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Out offending people, I assume.’
Pylyp stepped inside and she led him into the living room, where she sat down on an armchair, leaving him standing. She felt a bit like Blofeld staring at James Bond, preparing to reveal her dastardly plan before killing him.
‘So,’ she said. ‘I gather you’re in a new relationship. I’m so happy for you.’
‘Was wrong of me not to say. I thought you go crazy shitbag if you find out, so I say nothing.’
‘Me?’ she asked, adopting an innocent expression. ‘Go crazy shitbag? Oh, please. Speaking as a mother, you can’t possibly imagine that you meant that much to me.’
‘You send me hundreds of messages,’ he replied. ‘Is too much. It makes me think you mad woman.’
‘How dare you!’
‘Is not strange thing to be. So many women go crazy shitbag and become mad woman over me. I very sexy.’
‘If you’d just replied,’ she said plaintively.
‘I sorry for that. I know how much you like sexing me.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I can barely remember what it was like.’
‘But you always go big bang and say, Pylyp, you are best lover ever.’
‘I think you’re mixing me up with someone else.’
‘No, is true story. You ride me like cowgirl at funfair.’
‘Oh, shut up! Just shut up!’
‘But is true story.’
‘It doesn’t matter now anyway,’ said Beverley, finishing her glass of wine but staring inside it, as if she hoped some more might magically appear. ‘As it happens, I’ve moved on too. I met a lovely …’ She ran through countries in her mind, trying to decide which would be the most offensive to him. ‘Moldovan boy. Vladimir.’
Pylyp had the rudeness to look relieved. ‘Is good news,’ he said. ‘Now I no longer feel so guilty.’
‘But you should feel guilty, you fucker!’ she shouted. ‘The last time I saw you, we were at Heathrow Airport and you were swearing lifelong devotion to me. Then you shag your way around Odessa before coming back here and falling for a nobody just because she has a little Ukrainian blood in her veins. The whole thing is ridiculous. And insulting.’
‘Sometimes,’ he said, sitting down now and scrunching up his face as if he was about to offer words of profound wisdom. ‘Sometimes the heart, it is wanting what it is wanting. And we must follow it like the dog after the smell in the grass. We had many happy times together. This we must remember.’
‘And we could have had many more,’ she replied. ‘But now my happy times will be with … Dimitri.’
‘I think his name is Vladimir?’
‘It is. Dimitri is my pet name for him.’
‘Yes, I see,’ he said, and the expression on his face so infuriated Beverley that she threw the contents of her glass in his face.
‘Is more effective when you haven’t drunk it all already,’ he said, remaining bone dry.
She let out a scream, then stood up, reached for the bottle and poured herself another.
‘You go to Odessa, I hear,’ he said.
‘Not for you,’ she replied. ‘It was a research trip for my novel. In fact, I barely thought about you when I was there.’
‘But you call on my mother to say hello and how are you.’
‘I happened to be passing, yes.’
‘This, you should not have done. She piss in my ear for sleeping with old woman like you.’
‘She did what?’ asked Beverley, uncertain that she’d heard him correctly. ‘She pissed in your ear?’
‘Is expression,’ said Pylyp. ‘It means—’
‘I can guess what it means. Unless you Ukrainians do things literally.’
‘You say the racist things now,’ said Pylyp, growing annoyed. ‘Like your husband. Is the way with all the Englanders, yes? You all hate the foreigners. You think you still have the empire but you no have this any more.’
‘My husband isn’t a racist!’ shouted Beverley, forgetting for a moment that he was on her shit list too. ‘Don’t you dare say a bad word against him.’
‘Your husband is the phobic.’
‘That’s not even a word!’
‘Is word.’