Taisiya
My eyes snap open as a bus rumbles by my window, and I realise I fell asleep at some point. Fear prickles my blood as I remember last night.
I expect guilt, anguish, and a torrent of other emotions to flood over me, but they aren’t there. The radio is still on, giving me the morning news and traffic updates. For once in my life, I slap my hand to it to get it to shut up.
Silence descends, and I gulp. I sit up in bed and wait for the knock on the door. For the Met to come to arrest me and throw away the key.
Still silence.
I glance at the clock. It’s only 7AM. I have hours before I can go and stake out that club Ali told me about.
No Bratva arsehole is going to be there before noon at the earliest. I drag myself out of bed and move through my flat to the kitchen, still naked from last night’s shower, because apparently my brain decided modesty wasn’t a priority when survival is on the line.
The dishwasher had finished its cycle sometime while I was sleeping.
I open it and stare at the knife sitting in the basket, clean and gleaming like it didn’t do anything wrong.
I pull it out and wrap it in a tea towel before shoving it to the back of a drawer I never use, the one with the takeaway menus nobody reads, and a garlic press I’ve never once touched.
Then I pull it back out, because it looks way too suspicious, and shove it back into the block I removed it from before work yesterday.
Chewing my lip, I dither, but leave it there. If the police come around and it’s missing, that will cause more issues than if it’s sitting there innocuously, as kitchen knives do.
Next, I turn to the washing machine.
My clothes are twisted into a damp knot. When I open the door, the smell of detergent hits me instead of anything worse. I pull everything out and hang it over the radiator, even though it’s barely warm, because I can’t stand the thought of it sitting there another second like evidence.
It is evidence.
I stand there, staring at the damp pile draped over the radiator like some kind of shrine to my own stupidity, and then I turn away because I can’t look at it anymore.
I need clothes. Real clothes. Something that doesn’t scream ‘I work behind a bar and live off tips and cheap wine.’ If I’m going to walk anywhere near Zatmeniye, I need to at least pass a glance from the door staff before they laugh me back onto the street.
I dig through my wardrobe, which takes all of four seconds because I own approximately six outfits worth mentioning.
But in the back, there’s a black dress I bought for a wedding two years ago that I never returned because I told myself I’d wear it again.
I never did. In fact, I forgot about it until now.
I pull it out and hold it up. It’s plain, fitted, cheap, and wholly unremarkable. But it’s better than jeans and a tee.
First a proper shower, then tea and food of some kind that won’t make me throw up from nerves.
I shower fast, using water hot enough to make my skin sting. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. Every time I close my eyes, I see Gregor’s face. I see his hand on my wrist. I see the shock in his eyes after I drove the knife into his neck.
I open my eyes and scrub shampoo through my hair with too much force.
It was self-defence.
The words sound pathetic in my head, even though they are true.
I finish, dry off, then inspect the bruise on my wrist again. It has turned a vicious purple around the edges. I should photograph it. I should call the police. I should do a hundred sensible things.
Instead, I put on underwear and my dressing gown and sit down to blast my hair with the ancient, second-hand hair dryer that smells slightly of burning, but not enough that I throw it out.
There are still hours before I can get dressed and leave the flat to make my way to Mayfair.
My hands shake so badly that I have to set the dryer down twice before I finish.
My phone sits on the bedside cabinet where I left it last night, black and silent.
Turning it back on feels reckless. Leaving it off feels worse.
I sit on the bed, pick it up and press the button. The notifications load one at a time. There’s a message from work asking whether I can cover Saturday. A bank alert. A spam text telling me my postage wasn’t paid correctly on the parcel I didn’t send.
Nothing from the police.
Nothing from Anton Melnikov.
I exhale slowly, then immediately hate myself for feeling relieved. Gregor is still dead. His family hasn’t simply forgotten he existed because they haven’t texted me before breakfast.
I open my banking app and stare at the number in my account. Thirty-six pounds and twelve pence available in my bank because the rent went out last night.
Placing the phone face down, I choose to ignore it for now.
I make tea and then open the fridge to find something to eat.
I eye up the leftover lasagne in a cheap version of a Pyrex dish and drag it out.
I’m suddenly starving, and if I die, I want one last good meal before I do.
That’s not too much to ask, and I’m twenty-nine years old.
I can eat lasagne for breakfast if I want to.
I pull off the lid and turn the oven on to reheat it, staring at it as I stand there with a cold lasagne in my hands, like some sort of peace offering to the dead.
The oven clicks as it heats. I put the dish on the counter and pick up my phone again, because I enjoy causing myself distress while I wait for the oven to heat.
I open the news app.
Gregor’s name isn’t there.
Not yet, anyway.
My heart stops when I see news about a stabbing, but it’s in Brixton.
I read it anyway, but it’s just a brief mention beneath a story about a train strike and some politician caught lying about expenses.
Police appeal for information after a man in his sixties was found injured. He later died at the scene.
Definitely not Gregor then.
The light clicks off on the oven, and I put my phone down to pop the glass dish in and turn the timer. I get a plate out with a knife and fork, and fuck it, a glass of the Chardonnay that’s open in the fridge. I need the courage.
I pour the wine and take a large swallow before I can reconsider.
The lasagne takes forever. I pace between the kitchen and the living room, checking the news every few minutes, then checking the lock on my front door. At one point I stand at the window and peer through the gap in the curtain.
A man walks a dog across the road. A woman in scrubs waits at the bus stop with a to-go cup in her hand. Two youths argue outside the off-licence.
Nobody looks up at my flat.
Nobody knows what I did.
When the oven timer beeps, I jump. The flat is too quiet. I flick the TV on and let the breakfast show chatter in the background. I pull the dish out with an oven glove and place it on the counter. Then I glare at it and move it to the table.
Balls to it.
I dig in and enjoy it more than I probably should given the circumstances.
As I eat, the TV voices fill the room. A presenter talks about the weather. Rain. More rain. Everyone acts surprised that it rains in England in autumn.
By the time I finish, the Chardonnay has taken the edge off my nerves. Not enough to make me stupid. I hope.
I place the glass and the fork into the dishwasher and then stare at the knife. On impulse, I snatch it up and use it to carve the burned cheese and sauce from the edge of the dish, giving myself an excuse to throw it back in the dishwasher.
I cringe at the obscenity, but it’s better than it sitting in the kitchen block next to the innocent knives.
Then I photograph my wrist.
I take six pictures from different angles. The bruise looks worse on my phone screen. Dark purple, red at the edges, with clear marks where Gregor held me.
My throat closes.
I save the photos to an email addressed to myself.
The thought of deleting it crosses my mind.
I don’t.
Then I get to work on cleaning down the surfaces as the heat kicks up a notch and the scent of my damp clothes wafts around the flat.
I don’t look at the time. Not yet. I need to keep busy so that when the time arrives for me to dress and head out on the bus, it hasn’t felt like my life dragging on for years in this limbo.
My blood chills when the thought of heading out into the open world where Anton waits to avenge his brother hits me.
But I can’t stop here to be gunned down in my own home either.
I need to speak to this Voronov guy, get a new passport, and hide out until I can leave the country.
I’ll fly cheap to Turkey and from there to Russia.
I have an aunt, or great-aunt, in St. Petersburg.
She will house me, hide me from the Bratva if they come knocking.
Maybe.
I check the time anyway.
Ten forty-three.
Too early to go to Mayfair. Too late to pretend I can settle down and wait.
I pull the black dress on, then stand in front of the mirror with my hair hanging around my face and realise I look exactly like what I am: a terrified woman wearing a dress she bought on sale for someone else’s wedding.
I need to look more chic. Hair up, cheap dark sunglasses on.
The long coat that I usually reserve for the dead of winter.
The less like myself—jeans and tee girl—the better.
I pin my hair into a high knot with enough clips to qualify as a weapon.
The sunglasses hide half my face. The coat hides the rest of me.
It also makes me look not like me.
Good.
If Anton is scouring the streets, he won’t be looking for… this.
I stare at my reflection for another second, then grab the second-hand tote bag I bought on a whim and never use because it’s impractical for all the shit I carry around. My purse goes in with my phone, a charger, and the four thousand pounds stuffed in the book at the bottom.
I pull my boots on and stand by the front door.
This is the part where a sensible person calls the police, gives a statement, tells them everything Gregor said and did. She stays put while someone official decides whether she is a victim or a criminal.
She is not me.
Not today.
Today, I’m a woman on the run from the Bratva and need to be someone else before they find me.
I unlock the door.
The hallway outside is empty. Mrs Patel’s television mutters through the wall opposite. Someone has left a bag of rubbish beside the stairs despite the sign telling them not to. Normal building problems. Normal morning.
I head downstairs, keeping my head lowered as I pass the ground-floor flat and head out into the rainy morning, using it as an excuse to pull my hood up as I cross the road to the bus stop.