‘Alina!’ he called. ‘Alina,’ Demyan roared as she fled down the stairs.
He caught up with her in seconds.
‘If we have any chance, you have to hear this...’
‘I shouldn’t have to hear this,’ Alina flared. ‘I shouldn’t have to see this. You’ve been divorced for years.’
‘You know the reasons why she’s here, though.’ Alina was the one person he had told, and his eyes demanded that she understand. ‘You need to hear it firsthand.’
‘Demyan, your ex-wife is naked in your bedroom...’
‘This has nothing do with Nadia,’ Demyan said, and to prove it he picked up the clothes Nadia had strewn on her ascent up the stairs.
‘Get out,’ he said to her. It was a voice only a fool would argue with and Nadia, Alina knew, was no fool. Her beauty mocked Alina over and over as she dressed, her confidence, her absolute assuredness that Demyan was hers taunting Alina as she walked past.
‘I fly tomorrow,’ Nadia said, and blew him a kiss. ‘Come and say goodbye if you choose.’
* * *
Alina went upstairs and retrieved her bra and she turned from him as she put it on.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,’ she said.
‘We need to talk,’ Demyan said again.
‘Then answer this—have you thought about getting back with her?’ She turned and looked into eyes that looked straight into hers as his mouth lied to her.
‘No.’
‘I hate that you just lied.’
‘I hate that you gave me no choice but to lie. If I’d said yes you’d have run off before I’d even finished the sentence. What are you running from, Alina?’
‘You!’ Alina shouted. ‘All this. I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it.’
‘I tell you why you run from me. I make you be yourself. When you run from me you are running from you. Why are you dressing in a suit, trying to be a PA...?’
‘Trying?’
‘You’re actually not very good!’
‘Bastard.’
‘Of course I am, but if I said that about your artwork, you’d have slapped me.’
Colour scalded her face. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, you want it hidden in a wardrobe, or hung on a wall in someone’s home when you should be showing it to the world.’
‘Actually, you’re wrong. I’ve just booked a stall at the market.’
‘Market...’ Alina could not possibly have chosen a filthier word for Demyan. His mind flicked back thirty years to a life that every day, every hour, every minute he did his best to forget. To hunger and filth and the tricks his mother had been reduced to just to make the rent. ‘You won’t be working in a market. Your work should be in a gallery. I can—’