Dad added something to the circle. “You don’t need to worry about me. I barely ever leave the house, the shops are all closed, they’ve raided the slot machines to build up checkpoint barricades. Where am I supposed to go?”

And you, of course, don’t you worry about me, Dad.

“Would you like something to eat?”

“You didn’t bring any beer, did you? Whisky?”

“No, and I won’t in the future either.”

He nodded in disappointment.

“In that case, how about this? Could you pop out for some white paint? I need a litre tin of matte white paint. Or a spray can, but a tin is better.”

“Are you taking the piss?”

“Just go!” he said, stamping his foot. “I need to kill off a character! I’m sick of her. She’ll be killed by a shell, and the rest I’ll paint over.” He rushed over to the opposite wall and tapped his finger on the circle. “Just bring me the white paint!”

I bit my lip. “Dad, there’s a war going on! It’s scary to go out on the streets! And you have this whole soap opera going on? You want me to walk out there through the bombs to bring you your stupid paint?!” I said none of that, of course. It was pointless. “Like firing peas at a wall,” that’s what Grandma used to say. God, I’ve even started talking like them.

“I’ll go later,” I said, backing out of the room.

He scowled.

“Oh, don’t bother then. I won’t ever ask you for anything else.”

And he turned away.

I went into the kitchen. I repeatedly stabbed at the wooden chopping board with a kitchen knife. “I’ve got to leave, I’ve got to leave,” I told myself over and over. “I have to get out of here.”

Once I had calmed down, I caught my breath and laid out the shopping on the table. Eggs, milk, black bread, buckwheat, bacon and—this was a real stroke of luck—a two-hundred-gram chunk of fresh cheese. I made myself a bacon and cheese sandwich and ate it with gusto. I hadn’t been able to eat properly for several days. The food situation in the city had worsened. Almost all the shops in our neighbourhood were shut, either because of a lack of food or shelling. The ones that stayed open doubled their prices. They said the city was totally surrounded and that food was arriving in small consignments in private cars. This arrangement had quickly become its own little racket: delivery men came to an arrangement with the surrounding Ukrainian troops, providing their always badly supplied checkpoints with rations of groceries and money in return for safe passage; then the food that got through would be sold at exorbitant prices. The word was that soldiers sometimes even traded their guns for food.

“Hey!” he shouted from his room. “Are they still not paying out pensions? It’s already the fifteenth!”

“No Dad,” I shouted back. “The Russians confiscated all the money in the safes. And they haven’t brought over any more.”