Killing Eve: Bloodline (6)

The sixth episode of a new Killing Eve adventure, published exclusively on Substack

            Dinner proceeds along formal lines, with the six of them disposed around a long table that could have accommodated twenty. Eve is seated between Sergei and Valentin, who appears acutely conscious of his father's presence, and says little. Villanelle, meanwhile, chatters away with Anastasia, their conversation switching animatedly between English, French and Russian.

            Eve feels tongue-tied. She's unsure how to present herself, and how much to assume. Sergei clearly knows all about her recent history. So, almost certainly, does Nikolai. But Anastasia? Valentin? Something lands on her lap with a thump, and she's so surprised she almost jumps out of her chair. Looking down, she sees a large cat.

            'Is that Mishka?' Nikolai asks. 'Sorry, she's extremely bad mannered. But don't worry, I've had her declawed.'

            Eve looks down. Mishka is extending her paws, spreading her toes, ineffectually trying to get a purchase on her skirt. Eve takes a paw in her hand and thumbs the soft fur. There's something horrifying about Mishka's missing claws, and the way that she has been robbed of her essential cat-ness. Gently, Eve replaces her on the floor.

            At the head of the table, Nikolai is trying to persuade Valentin to read The Iliad. 'You'll love Homer's descriptions. Fleet-footed Achilles, the wine-dark sea... Rosy-fingered dawn... '

            Valentin smiles faintly. 'Lucky Dawn!'

            Everyone falls silent. Nikolai's face is stone. Eve steals a glance at Villanelle, who is staring straight ahead with a wide-eyed, fixed expression, trying not to laugh.

            'What is it?' Anastasia asks, looking round the table. 'What did I miss?'

             'This sole is absolute perfection,' Sergei says.

            Much later, when Eve reaches her room, she finds a ribboned package at the end of her bed. Unwrapping it, she finds a selection of robes, nightdresses and pyjama sets in midnight-blue silk and satin. She lifts the garments from their tissue paper, and they run through her hands like water.

            Arraying herself, Eve starts to make her way to Villanelle's room. Eve's bedroom is in one of the towers, at the top of a staircase lit by a shaft of moonlight. Approaching the stairscase, she stops dead. On the half-landing below her, sitting on its hindquarters and lit like a filmstar, is a rat. A very large rat, more than a foot tall. It subjects Eve to a beady, insolent stare, and twitches its hairy tail. Eve hisses at it to shoo, to clear off, but the rat is disinclined to move. Its body language indicates that it's just fine where it is, thank you very much.

            'Fuck off,' Eve mouths, and slowly starts to descend. She has a vision of the rat running up her pyjama leg and subjecting her to a ghastly frenzy of biting and clawing and sexual mutilation, but something keeps her going. She's staying at one of the most exclusive addresses in London, and she's damned if she's going to back down from a rat. The standoff continues until she’s almost on the half-landing, at which point the rat gives her a final, baleful glance and slinks into the shadows.

            When Eve reaches her destination Villanelle is sitting up in bed, dressed in fuschia pink pyjamas, reading a bound edition of Ivan Ilyin's 'Resistance to Evil by Force.'

            'I need reading glasses,' she murmurs as Eve gets into bed beside her.

            'Are you having trouble with your eyes?'

            'No. I'd just quite like some. I think I'd take myself more seriously.'

            'That book looks pretty serious.'

            'I found it by the bed. It's good.'

            'I'm glad. Don't stop.' She lays her head on Villanelle's shoulder, and half-closes her eyes.

            Villanelle reads for a further five minutes, then closes the book and places it on the bedside table. 'Poor Valentin. That father.'

            'I know. The whole set up is so weird... I saw a rat on the way to your room.'

            Eve feels Villanelle's body tensing. 'Where?'

            'On the stairs. Big motherfucker.'

            'That's what happens when you declaw the cat.' She shudders. 'Where did it go?'

            'Just away, like they do. Angel, are you OK?'

            'I really, really... hate rats. When I was growing up, they were everywhere. The orphanage kitchens, the dormitories... They'd run across our legs at night. God, I'm scared to turn the light out now.'

            'I'll guard you.' Eve pulls her close.

            'You'd better.'

            'Always.' She kisses the scar on Villanelle's lip. 'Do you have the first idea what we're doing here?'

            'Not really. But something's going on. Something that we're not being told about.'

            'Involving Valentin?'

            Villanelle shrugs. 'Maybe.'

            'Don't shut me out of your thoughts.'

            'I'm not. I'm just waiting until it all makes more sense.' She touches her nose to Eve's. 'I like you in those pyjamas.'

            'Do you now.'

            'I do. Dorky but adorable.'

            'Adorkable.'

            'Exactly.' Taking Eve's hand, Villanelle pensively nips the ends of her fingers. 'How come you've got no female friends?'

            'I used to have. At Thames House.'

            'What happened?'

            'You happened, angel. As you well know. And I could ask you the same question.'

            'I had a friend in Paris. Anne-Laure.'

            'A girlfriend?'

            'No. Just a partner in crime. It was in my boy phase.'

            'Ah, your boy phase.'

            'Anne-Laure was married to a high-up guy in the Treasury. She and I used to go out on the town together... God, we were awful. I blush to think of it.'

            'When was that?'

            'When you were first hunting me.' Villanelle closes her eyes. 'Or was I hunting you?'

            'I'm not sure. It was all very confusing.'

            'Romantic, though. I remember climbing into your room in Shanghai and watching you sleep.'

            'You should have just got into bed with me.'

            'You'd have died of fright, detka.'

            'True.'

            'Are you still afraid of me? Just a bit?'

            'No.' Eve slips a hand under Villanelle's pyjama top and encloses a warm breast. 'Not even a bit.'

            'You don't wish I was more... normal?'

            'No.' She thumbs Villanelle's nipple. 'I can't bear to think of you without your claws, like that poor cat. I love you as you are.'

            Villanelle unbuttons Eve's top, and kisses the scoop of her throat, her collarbones and her breasts. 'That makes you...'

            Eve breathes the thick smell of Villanelle's hair. 'Tell me.'

            'It makes you worse than me.' Villanelle slides her palm down Eve's belly, and into her pyjama pants. 'Because you're supposed to be of sound mind.'

            'I know.' Eve sighs. 'I know.'