The edge of the large bowl of lilies reflected what was behind him: a brightly lit kitchen door with a shadow moving through it, holding on to the wall to steady herself.
'Well, well, well,' she said, 'if it isn't Jesus H Christ himself.'
She talked in stupid clichés when she was drunk, her French accent coarser and thickening. Phil ignored her and walked across the hall to the bottom of the stairs.
'Where the hell are you going?' He turned. Helena was silhouetted against the light, wearing a long black silk nightgown with lace on the arms and chest. The sort of nightgown an older woman might wear, imagining it to be alluring. Naked and young was alluring, sweet and vulnerable was alluring. Drunk Helena swaying in the doorway, her mouth a bitter button, her eyes blinking slowly, was not.
'I made you dinner,' she said. 'You said you'd be in from work at fucking nine o'clock and I made you a beautiful soufflé.'
Phil stopped on the stairs, holding on to the banister, letting the weight of his body swing him back to face her.
'Supper,' he corrected quietly.
Helena rolled her eyes up in her head, shutting them tightly, and tried to start the argument again.
'I made you fucking dinner-'
'A meal served at that time is commonly called supper. Not dinner.' He swung back to face the stairs, suppressing a smile. 'Supper.'
She was too drunk to think of a comeback. By the time she opened her mouth to start again he was out of sight on the upstairs landing. He heard her draw breath as he felt along the wall. His fingers found the light switch and he flicked it off and left her, flummoxed in the darkness. Silly cow.
He was halfway across the bedroom to their en suite when he heard the first crash from downstairs. She was trashing the kitchen again, smashing up the new set of crockery he had bought her to replace the previous set she had smashed up.
He locked the door to the bathroom, something he hadn't done in weeks. Helena had been up here already, pouring talcum powder on the head of his electric toothbrush, in his aftershave bottles and in his basin. Hers was pristine. The talc was all over the floor, trapped between the biscuit coloured tiles. She'd have to clean it up in the morning or at least arrange for someone else to come in and do it. She never seemed to realize that she was only making work for herself.
Phil went to the cupboard and pulled down a spare head for his toothbrush and a packet of floss. He broke Anya's tooth tonight, knocked part of a premolar right out of her mouth and across the room with a single punch. Anya was beautiful. She had large brown eyes, thick black hair. When he first saw her at the champagne bar it was her legs he noticed. She had a scrawny thinness that made her look like a suspect, a highly strung woman too nervous to eat properly.
Slammo saw him eyeing her up and leaned across the table, dipping his silk tie in a puddle of cheap champagne and cigar ash. 'Is she a drug courier?' he said and Phil laughed.
That was exactly what she looked like. She wore too much make-up, teased her hair in ways it didn't want to go.
The champagne bar was a cheap con serving viscose Cava for twenty quid a glass. The real reason anyone went there was for the striptease and the nearly naked serving women. They were good-looking women though, there was no denying it, but their purpose was to get you to drink more. They got a cut of the tab from their tables. Anya made him buy four bottles, each costing eighty-five quid, before she would sit on his knee. He bought another four for the privilege of kissing her hand.
He had money to spare and he wouldn't be like the other contenders for her affections: he wasn't old or fat. He was a successful broker, not hyper successful and not obsessed with the work. He was never placed on the top table at functions but in her eyes he was a god. He owned a large house outright, he drove a Ferrari, he was generous and handsome and young. Most of the men who went in there were forty or fifty, she said, most of them were fat or sweaty. He was a good catch for her.
They had been together for four months now, long enough to swap sexual histories. He told her about Helena and how they met at a barbecue in Henley, he told her about Helena 's drinking but left the rest of it out. Anya had loved a boy at home but he'd died, sadly, when she was out of town on business for the shop (she worked in an aunt's clothes shop at home – top class, designer things like Dior and Chanel and Versace). She had only had one boyfriend since she came to London, Johnny, who wasn't nice to her. Phil wanted to ask her outright, did he hit you? But he didn't want to sound outraged or disapproving. Part of the grooming was never to talk about it in other than positive terms: there are worse things you can do, at least he loved you enough to do that, he didn't mean it. Set up excuses for himself in the future. Johnny had been very rich but she didn't see him anymore. She didn't miss him at all.
Helena was rattling the bathroom door, cursing him for locking it. Phil ignored her, running the warm water into his basin to wash his face. She kicked it, he could hear her grunting as she did.
He could imagine Anya working in a designer shop at home, the most beautiful girl in her small, mud-encrusted town. It was a shame he couldn't tell the boys in the office about her, but a few of their wives knew Helena from Christmas parties. It was a shame. If he groomed her properly, if it worked out right, Anya could turn out to be sustainable, the woman he could come home to every night, want every night and have. It could work. Russian women had different expectations.
He didn't know where she was from or why she had come here. She told him the name of the place several times and he would play act, shrugging, watching her lips, making her say it again. She finished by smirking and saying, 'It near Siberia, Pheel, you don't know Russia 's towns.' He didn't have to engage with her personal history. She was twenty-three and living in a flat in Soho and working for her cousin Fat Eugene in a champagne bar. Fat Eugene had the flat in payment for some debt and let her use it exclusively because she was family.
Helena kicked the door. 'Let me in, you fucker.'
Every night they went through this charade now, Helena trying to get attention from him by behaving badly and then he'd come bursting out of the bath-room and leather her, slap and punch. 'Is this what you want?' He'd fall on his knees by her side and take out the pocket knife, nick her skin with the business end of the bottle opener. He sharpened it for her, to make the cuts uniform. Helena lay on the floor and took it, groaning like a whore in ecstasy, climbing slowly into bed after him, sorry for all the mess she'd caused.
She kicked the door again. 'Let me in, you fucker. Let me in and I'll fucking kill you. I'll mark you and then we'll see what your friends at work think about it.'
She stood back, waiting for him to open the door and go for her. Her complicity was pathetic to him now, role play, even hardcore role play, wasn't what he wanted, not after Anya's horror and fright. Poor Anya, so shocked by the change of mood in him. He snapped the lock off the door and let it swing open. Helena stood outside, staggered back a little step, bracing herself for the first blow.
'Do what you like,' said Phil, 'I don't give a shit.'
He brushed past her on the way to bed, and as he passed she gave a little inadvertent cry.
'For fucksake, I didn't touch you.' He turned and saw that her eyes were fixed on the back of his hand. Helena 's knees buckled. She slid to the floor, seeming to whither as she did so, still staring. He had fresh cuts on his knuckles. She crumpled to the floor, real tears in her eyes. He had cut the back of his hand on someone else. Phil was embarrassed.