‘I am very serious. I am serious as the cancer. You know this song? I am serious as the cancer when I say the rhythm is the dancer?’

‘I think I’ve heard it. It always struck me as a little distasteful, if I’m honest.’

‘The rhythm is the dancer,’ said Pylyp, starting to sing in a tuneless voice. ‘It is the soul companion. You must be feeling it everywhere.’

‘At least you know what to do if you do start to feel upset.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Dance,’ said Beverley. ‘It’s what you love, after all. Have you danced since you returned home?’

‘I cannot dance the month my father is dead,’ replied Pylyp, shaking his head. ‘I from Ukraine. Not—’

‘Not Moldova, yes. Is that something they do over there?’

He turned his head and spat on the floor in disgust. ‘They are having none of the respect,’ he said. ‘This is why I despise them. But their sunflower seeds are better than anyone else’s. You have eaten the Moldovan sunflower seeds?’

‘I mean, I suppose it’s possible,’ said Beverley. ‘I’ve eaten bread with sunflower seeds on it, but I’ve never enquired about their provenance.’

‘I bring some back to London with me. They make you crazy.’

‘But you won’t be going to Moldova.’

‘Oh yes. Is good point.’

‘You’ll be coming straight back to London.’

‘Is plan, yes.’

‘And it’s important to stick with plans. Otherwise, things fall apart.’

‘Like the house of Lego.’

‘A house of cards, I think you mean.’

‘The Lego cards.’

Beverley sighed and glanced across the room, where a photograph stood of her and George on their wedding day, next to the enormous eight-hundred-page biography that her husband had brought home the previous day. They both looked deliriously happy and in love. George’s mind, his intellect, his wit had wrapped around her like a warm blanket back then. What had gone wrong in the meantime, she wondered? How had they lost each other?

She turned back to the screen, where Pylyp appeared to be counting his fingers to make sure they were all still present and correct.

‘And your mother?’ she asked. ‘How is she holding up?’

‘She rips out the hair and cries through the day and the night. I must not leave her alone for long or she hangs herself from the lightbulbs. But I do not want to talk about Odessa any more. There is someone I miss so badly in London.’

‘Oh yes?’ asked Beverley, brightening up.

‘Yes, I think about him constantly.’

‘Him? Don’t you mean her? I know pronouns are a subject of much mind-numbing debate these days, but I can assure you that I am, and will always remain, a she.’

‘I mean Ustym Karmaliuk, who is boy.’

Beverley tried not to give away her irritation that Pylyp’s first thought was for his tortoise rather than her. ‘He’s quite well. Look, he’s here with me now.’ She adjusted the laptop’s camera and angled it towards her lap, where the tortoise was sitting comfortably, munching on an After Eight. It paused for a moment, looking up slowly as if it was aware that it was the subject of attention.