‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no either. I’m sorry I can’t be clearer, but I need some time to think. Is that all right?’

Angela sighed and stood up, putting on her coat. ‘I suppose it will have to be,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I wonder what it is that I ever saw in you, George, I really do.’

She leaned over to kiss him on the top of his head. His thick white hair was one of his most attractive traits, reminding her of a bichon frise puppy. ‘Enjoy your book,’ she said. ‘All eight hundred pages of it. I’ll wait with bated breath for your call.’

DEVIL WOMAN

While George was coming to terms with the concept of being a father again at sixty, his wife of almost twenty-five years was sitting in a Heathrow Airport coffee shop, saying goodbye to Pylyp, her lover of five months, who was leaving London for Odessa, his home city in Ukraine, to attend the funeral of his father. And he’d just upset her greatly by admitting that he would be staying till the end of the week.

‘Oh no!’ she cried, raising her voice in dismay. ‘Wouldn’t two nights be more appropriate? Or even just one? It’s not as if he’s going to come back to life the longer you stay.’

‘But is my mother,’ replied Pylyp, looking at her through the dark brown eyes that had mesmerized her on their first encounter and had continued to make her feel like a teenage girl ever since. It wasn’t just his eyes, of course. It was his face, his hair, his body, his muscular chest and arms, his tight ass, his accent, his entire sexy self. ‘Is in need of big son now that she alone with eldest son rotting to dust in grave and husband corpse now too.’

‘Of course,’ replied Beverley, who had heard the story of Pylyp’s brother’s untimely passing on several occasions during their time together and was, quite frankly, tired of it. Pylyp liked to maintain that he had been killed fighting the Russians, martyring him as he grew into legend, but the fact was that Borysko Tataryn had actually died en route to a military training camp when he’d been stung by a bee, suffering an allergic attack that left both him and his anthophilous assailant dead within minutes. ‘But sometimes,’ she continued, ‘a person needs to be left alone to grieve. That way, they can come to terms with their loss more quickly. After all, it’s not as if you’re going to return to Ukraine permanently, is it?’

‘I do not plan on this, is true. My life is here. In London. My tortoise is here. In London. And you are here. In London.’