‘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.