She said nothing, laying down their travelling bags in the middle of the floor and turning to put on the kettle.
“You should have gone with them,” said Milan, slurring.
“You should get some sleep. You haven’t slept at all.”
“Neither have you. You should have gone with them.”
“I want to be with you. I can’t leave you here on your own.”
He took another swig, another puff and shrugged.
“I can be alone. I’m not a child.”
You don’t have a mother, though. She swallowed back more tears. More tears wouldn’t help anyone.
“Listen, about Evgeny. I should tell you.”
“Oh, fucking Evgeny again. He is gone. Forget him.”
Lydia stared.
“So you know? Mary-Ann told you?”
Milan stubbed out the cigarette on a saucer on the floor and lay down, face in the pillow.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Evgeny’s dead, Milan.”
He sat back up, dropping the brandy bottle so that it spilled into the makeshift ashtray.
“This is a sick joke, right?”
“No.”
She went to sit on the bed beside him, holding his shaky hand.
“He was the one who knocked your mother into the road. He tried to run away from the scene, but I guess in his drunken state he landed up in the river. They tried to save him, but he drowned.”
“Fucking…fucking…what? What is this? Why is this happening?”
Milan fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette and lit it, hand wobbling so dangerously he almost dropped the lighter on to the bed.
“It’s a horrible, horrible accident,” whispered Lydia.
“No,” said Milan forcefully. “It’s not an accident. It’s us, Lydia. It’s because of us.”
“Please don’t think that way—”
“What way am I supposed to think? I have treated people the way I treated Evgeny for years and years. It’s just luck that this hasn’t happened before. I’m getting my bad karma now. What’s wrong with that? It’s fair, isn’t it?”
He blew out a stream of smoke, jabbing the cigarette in the air as he spoke with impassioned delirium.
“You know how many hearts I’ve broken, Lydia? I don’t know myself. I haven’t kept count. I’ve taken the best from people and used it, then thrown it away. I get bored, so easily bored, and my lovers start getting paranoid and needy and I get even more bored and then it all explodes. My mother didn’t want to do anything but love me, but I even got bored with her. I even broke her heart. What kind of man does that make me, hey?”
“Milan, you’re shocked and tired and you need to rest—”
“It makes me a devil. It makes me a killer.”