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Eve is gazing at herself in the bathroom mirror. It’s 7.15 a.m. on a Thursday and she is exhausted. Her mane of dark waves is wilder than usual, her muscles ache – every last one of them – and it really is too early in the morning to be applying copious amounts of concealer to yet another mark let behind by Villanelle on her neck. She had lost count of the amount of times she had requested these marks at least be scattered in places that, to the rest of the world, could remain easily hidden. Villanelle didn’t seem to see the point in that; she was marking her territory after all. Why bother if no one is going to see it? Eve sighed. The younger woman may as well sling a luggage label around her neck, ‘PROPERTY OF VILLANELLE,’ or slap one of those bright yellow DANGER OF DEATH signs on her back, so everyone would know to keep away.
Eve shared an office with an overweight middle-aged man named Graham who lived at home with his mother, and ate more egg sandwiches than could possibly be healthy; she severely doubted he was about to make any moves on her. And the only other people Eve spent any real time with were Kenny and Elena who, miraculously and unexpectedly, were a couple themselves. How that particular dynamic worked, Eve still couldn’t quite work out, but either way Villanelle didn’t need to worry about Eve leaping into bed with the two of them. Besides, Eve was currently enjoying the most intensely passionate romantic entanglement of her life. Villanelle was absolutely unstoppable – not that Eve for a second would want her to stop and often found herself begging Oksana to do the exact opposite – she positively devoured Eve, and Eve couldn’t imagine wanting anyone else.
Eve dabbed another glob of concealer onto the purplish bruise near her collarbone and smoothed it in. Nope, that wasn’t going to cover it this time. She was meeting Elena for a pre-work coffee, and Eve could hardly open with, “Please excuse the hickey, I’m sleeping with an assassin twenty years younger than me who wants to make sure you don’t try and bang me in the bathroom,” without following it up with, “Yes, that’s right, the supposedly dead Russian assassin who killed our colleague and by the way, she’s not dead.” It was best to dig out a turtleneck or something. Villanelle was sure to disapprove, but it was her own fault.
She loaded up her toothbrush with toothpaste and a yawn, switched it on and jammed it into her mouth. God, she was tired. Keeping up with Villanelle was exhausting. Amazing. But exhausting. And the mornings were the worst. When Eve’s alarm went off at 6.45, it was always the same. Villanelle would grumble into Eve’s hair (where she liked to nestle her face before dropping off to sleep,) that she would shoot that fucking alarm one day. She would take a deep inhale and then sigh as she rolled over and released Eve from her grip so that she could start her day. Eve would stumble off to the adjoining bathroom and Villanelle would stretch languorously across the bed and continue to snooze, cat-like, until God knows what time. She would half rouse herself when Eve kissed her goodbye with a minty mouth to offer a daily, “Have a good day. Don’t do anything I would not do,” with a sleepy smile, before dropping off once more.
Lazy fucking murderer… Eve thought to herself as her toothbrush gave its one-minute beep to tell her to switch to her top teeth. Maybe if I was a contract killer I could stay in bed all morning too… But no. What she now refers to as 'The Accidental Stabbing Incident' was enough of a brush with that lifestyle for her. She still averted her eyes at sight of that oddly shaped scar on Villanelle’s stomach. She couldn’t hack the life of an assassin, and the less she thought about Villanelle’s occupation, the better. It was a bit different now. Villanelle only took on ‘local jobs’ as she called them, the marks that were based in the UK or France mostly, no further afield than Germany or Belgium. It had depleted her workload noticeably, but her handlers knew she was one of the best, so they met her request for the change. Besides, UK intelligence thought she was dead anyway. She was basically a ghost. Who better to carry out illegal kills than somebody who doesn’t exist?
Eve’s toothbrush gave its three-beep salute and then turned itself off. She swilled her mouth and then spat before straightening up.
“Would you love me more if I was not an assassin?”
Eve nearly leapt a full foot into the air.
“Jesus Oksana!”
Standing behind Eve in the mirror, clad in a silk robe and likely nothing else, was Villanelle, hair loose about her shoulders and looking both sleepy and yet somehow still alert. She was always alert really.
“How do you do that? You slink around this house in total silence, I never know where you’re going to pop up!”
Villanelle just shrugged.
“I am trained.”
“I should make you wear a bell or something.” Eve muttered. Villanelle wrapped her arms around Eve’s waist from behind and pulled her against herself. She pushed her nose into Eve’s neck and breathed her in.
“I am sorry I scared you.” Villanelle mumbled into the crook of Eve’s neck, she made eye contact with Eve in the mirror and Eve gulped, feeling the familiar swoop low in her stomach before watching Villanelle close her eyes and feeling lips brushing over her neck. Villanelle placed a row of kisses beneath the older woman’s ear. Eve closed her eyes too and leant her weight back against the strong form behind her. Villanelle began to suck lightly on Eve’s skin, and Eve’s eyes shot open as she stepped forward, out of Villanelle’s reach.
“No! No, Oksana! I have got through two things of concealer since you’ve been here!”
Villanelle didn’t reply and simply smirked to herself; a smirk that Eve caught sight of in the mirror as she began running a brush through her hair.
“Why are you even awake?”
Villanelle took the brush from Eve’s hand and took over the task of brushing Eve’s hair for her. Eve rolled her eyes but otherwise allowed Villanelle to continue.
“I was thinking.”
“About…?”
“Would you love me more if I was not an assassin?”
“You woke up thinking that?”
“Yes.”
“OK… Well, I do love you and you are an assassin, so…”
“I don’t have to be though. I mean, I love my job, I like killing people, I enjoy it...”
Eve knew these things about the woman currently teasing tangles from her hair, but usually it was a subject they avoided because, if Eve was being completely honest, then yes, a career change for Villanelle would make her more comfortable. Plus there was the whole Bill thing, which Eve had for the most part sealed tight into a little box and shoved into the dark recesses of her mind. There must be a crack in the box though because every now and then a little guilt seeped out.
“Is there a ‘but’ coming anytime soon?” Eve asked wryly.
“But… you don’t like it. And I like you.”
“You like me? Well, gee, thanks.”
“Don’t be annoying. I love you. You know this.” Villanelle tugged on Eve’s hair gently and glared at her in the mirror before continuing.
“Anyway, I could get a different job.” She finished.
Eve glanced at her watch. 7.37. She’d better get a move on. She stepped out of Villanelle’s grasp, leaving her poised with the hairbrush in mid air and headed back to the bedroom to dig out a top that would hide the still glaringly obvious seal of approval from Villanelle.
“Eve! I am talking to you.” Villanelle called after her.
“I know, darling. What sort of job do you want to do instead? A bus driver? A primary school teacher? A nurse? You’ve got the outfit already…” Eve was rifling through the wardrobe. Every day she seemed to lose more of her old clothes and find them replaced with items in her exact size that she had never seen before.
Villanelle appeared in the doorway and leant against the frame.
“No. The busses here smell, children are too loud and I would only kill all my patients if I was a nurse.”
“That’s true.” Eve said, her head still in the wardrobe.
“I could get a job at somewhere like Hot Medica. That could be fun.” Villanelle said decisively.
“What?” Eve reappeared from the wardrobe, “No, you—”
“I wouldn’t have to sleep with those men.” Villanelle continued, as if that was going to be Eve’s main complaint, “They just like a bit of pain, like that one guy who liked his balls… what’s the word?”
“Clamped.” Eve replied with gritted teeth.
“Mmm. I could do that. There are places like that in London. The Brits are filthy behind closed doors.” Villanelle finished with a shake of the head and a rueful smile, to which Eve frowned.
“Let’s keep brainstorming later, shall we?”
“So no Hot Medica?”
“No. No Hot Medica please.”
“Shame. I would be very good at that.” Villanelle shrugged out of her silk robe, and Eve groaned as her earlier suspicion was confirmed; there was nothing underneath the robe. Villanelle slipped back into bed and stretched. “The teal turtle-neck. Second drawer, left hand side. Wear it with those shoes I bought you yesterday and the Burberry coat.” She said, nodding towards the chest of drawers and then closing her eyes and shimmying down beneath the sheets.
“Thank-you,” Eve breathed, pulling the top in question from the drawer and over her head. She grabbed a bottle from the top of the drawers and sprayed a puff of La Villanelle on herself before approaching the bed.
“What are you going to do today?” She asked reaching to stroke a strand of honey-blonde hair behind Villanelle’s ear and watching as those golden-green eyes fluttered open and immediately met her own.
“Maybe go for a run. Go shopping.”
“No more shoes.”
“For food. I will make you dinner.”
“OK. Be good.”
“I am always good.” Villanelle smiled widely. She may as well have thrown in a comedy wink, but she managed to resist. Eve rolled her eyes, something she found herself doing with increasing frequency.
Eve leant down and connected her lips to Villanelle’s, effectively wiping the smile off her face. She felt a strong pair of arms snake around her waist and braced herself as Villanelle pulled Eve onto the bed with her. What was meant to be a goodbye peck turned into a much longer affair. It always did. Eve had learnt not to apply lipstick until she was successfully out of the front door in the morning. Villanelle ran her tongue along Eve’s lower lip, coaxing her to open up, which Eve gladly did for a few moments before pulling back.
“I have to go,” Eve whispered, smoothing her thumb down the side of Villanelle’s face. Villanelle leant into her hand.
“Or you could stay.”
“Nope,” Eve said, popping the ‘P’ and leaning in for one final kiss before standing up again. “I’m meeting Elena in… eight minutes.” She headed towards the door.
“Say hello from me.” Villanelle said loudly.
“Very funny.” Eve muttered. And then, as she stepped out of the room, “Feed the chickens please!”
Eve paused on the landing momentarily and heard a grumble from the bedroom in response to her request.
“Thank-you darling!”
Eve rushed into the café around the corner from her house, the bell on the door clanging as it shut behind her.
“Sorry, sorry, I overslept.” She let out as she flopped down into a chair opposite where Elena was already seated, already sipping on a cup of coffee.
Elena narrowed her eyes slightly at Eve before looking beyond her to the counter at the back of the café.
“Another one of these please, Terry.” She called.
“Comin’ up sweet’eart.” Came the response.
“Thank-you Terry.” Elena smiled sweetly beyond Eve, before setting her sights on the woman in front of once more.
“Nice coat, Eve. Is that Burberry?”
“Oh. I… Uh… Yes. It is. It was in the sale though.”
“Yeah? Bargain, I bet.”
Eve shrugged the coat in question off her shoulders and onto the back of the chair behind her.
“Nice top, too. Is that new as well?”
“This? Oh. No, I… I’ve had it for years.”
“I’ve never seen it before. Never seen you in a turtleneck actually. People only usually wear them to hide incriminating marks…”
Eve let out a loud bark of laughter, making a couple of the other café patrons glance at her and Elena raised an eyebrow.
“There’s not something you’re not telling me, is there Eve? You have seemed very relaxed recently. I mean, when you got back from Paris you were sort of stiff as a board, and no offence but you were looking rough as, you know?”
Eve opened her mouth to respond to that but found there was little she could say. It was true, after all.
“But, I guess, you had just, you know…” Elena lowered her voice, “…killed a woman…. that probably fucks you up a bit, doesn’t it? I never knew you had it in you. It was kind of hot, actually. But yeah, you looked like shit after.”
Terry appeared with a mug of coffee and two croissants.
“Thanks babe.” Elena winked at the man in the grubby apron and he grinned at her.
“No problem, darlin’.”
Elena watched Terry’s retreat back to behind the counter, then leant forward and whispered conspiratorially to Eve, “Free croissants.”
“Score.” Eve said, nodding slightly confusedly at Elena.
“Exactly. Speaking of scoring, my point was that you look like you’ve been getting it on the regs. Someone must have fucked all that murder guilt out of you.”
“It was self-defence! Not murder.” Eve lowered her voice at the end, glancing around anxiously.
“Whatever. I’m glad you’re getting some. Niko always seemed a bit of a, you know, missionary style kind of man. Yawn!”
Eve cleared her throat and took a sip of her coffee. The fact was that actually Elena and Villanelle would probably get on. They both had that flare for brutal honestly. The thought set off a quiet ache in Eve.
“How’s Kenny?”
“I will accept that avoidance tactic, but only because the boy is driving me nuts and I want to bitch about it. I won’t forget about your secret sex pet.” Elena pointed a finger at Eve with one hand and took a bite of croissant before continuing, mouth full of pastry, “Last weekend he played on that stupid games thing for five hours straight. FIVE HOURS Eve! I mean, what the fuck is that about?”
Villanelle had peeled herself out of bed soon after Eve had left. She hadn’t been joking about the thoughts that woke her up that morning. They were frustrating, these thoughts, she would rather be snoozing. She adored fucking Eve, and being fucked in return, but she was human and she got tired too. This new life she had landed herself actually suited her well. Eve made her feel things she had only felt shadows of in the past. With Anna, she had imagined a life like this. But she had been stupid. Anna was never going to leave her husband. Anna was an innocent. Eve was not. With Eve, Villanelle had found the home that Oksana had always wanted. The two halves of herself were beginning to entwine. Eve was sewing them together again, stitch by stitch. And now Villanelle had a fear. Fear was something she had left behind in her father’s home, and now it was back. Now, she had something to lose. It was very annoying.
Eve was not Anna. Eve was not horrified at the prospect of Villanelle’s work. She was fascinated by it. A morbid fascination, sure, but the shelves in her office that creaked under the weight of her books on women who kill spoke to Eve’s lack of aversion to the subject. But there were case studies in books, and crime scene photos pinned on corkboards, and then there was the reality of two toothbrushes in the bathroom, one of which belonged to a woman who had lost count of how many people she had disposed of.
Would Eve prefer her if she didn’t kill for a living? Or would it take away some of that fascination? She didn’t think Eve would ever ask her to stop. That wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. But just because Eve didn’t ask for something didn’t mean she didn’t want it. They just didn’t talk about it. When Villanelle went away for work, she would send Eve postcards – postcards with no hidden agendas, postcards on which the ‘I miss you’ messages were genuine – she would message her throughout the day and tell her about the sights she had seen and the food she had eaten. She would ask whether Eve had bothered to cook for herself and try to coax the older woman into phone sex to sate Villanelle’s ever-present urges. So far she hadn’t been successful on that last one, but Villanelle was nothing if not determined. The point was though, they never discussed the kills. Perhaps it was simply because it would be a conflict of interest for Eve. She still worked for MI6, albeit back on a boring desk job and in a different department, but with a paycheque disproportionate to her role in order to secure her silence on certain matters. Or perhaps – and this seemed more likely – Eve didn’t want to hear that the hands that lovingly caressed her were also capable of crushing windpipes. She knew this, of course, but it’s amazing what the human mind can convince itself to ignore. But could Eve ignore it forever? That was the question that was keeping Villanelle from sleeping off the morning’s boredom.
Whether Villanelle could give up her job was another issue. That buzzing murderous energy was unlikely to just ebb quietly into retirement. How would it manifest itself? A bored Villanelle was a dangerous one. That fact simplified matters slightly. Whether Eve wanted her to quit the killing was secondary to the fact that Villanelle needed something to fill the gaps between jobs, between Eve leaving in the morning and coming back in the evening.
For now at least, Villanelle had been left with a job to do. Feed the chickens. She was wearing bottle green Hunter wellingtons and a classic Barbour jacket and looked for all intents and purposes as though was about to go striding across the English countryside with a shotgun and a spaniel as opposed to crossing the short length of Eve’s West London garden. Eve had howled with laughter when she had first seen this particular outfit and Villanelle had scowled in response until Eve had apologised with a kiss.
The chickens, Villanelle had decided, were disgusting. They scrapped and scraped about in the dirt and laid shitty eggs and needed constant protecting from the overly confident London foxes. They were useless. She could buy eggs at the supermarket. But Eve seemed to like them for some reason. She had even named them, though Villanelle could not bring herself to learn the names of these feathery idiots with their beady eyes that stared at her and their beaks that snapped sharply at the grains she scattered for them. There were four of the bastards and Villanelle hated them all equally.
She had let herself into their coop and thrown their food around with a touch more violence than was probably necessary. The grain they ate was dry and dusty and it made her hands smell. Their water needed refilling because, as usual, the stupid creatures had spilt half of it out into the mud. Villanelle grumbled to herself as she carried out the task before crouching to place the container back on the ground. That was when there was a sharp, bruising, peck on the back of her hand.
“You should never bite the hand that feeds you.” Villanelle said to the fat white hen that was eyeing her accusingly and cocking its wobbling head from side to side.
It was nearing 6.30 p.m. when Eve closed the front door of her home behind her and pulled her arms out of her coat, stepping out of her shoes at the same time.
“Oksana, I’m home!” She called down the hallway
“I am in the kitchen!” Came the reply.
It had been a long day at the office, a pile of tedious paperwork to make her way through, a meeting that was at least forty minutes longer than it needed to be, and the discovery of one of Graham’s half eaten egg sandwiches from at least a week ago, quietly festering in the filing cabinet. She had spent the day mulling over Villanelle’s job question from that morning and had come up with a couple of ideas. One of which involved translation. Villanelle spoke at least four languages that Eve was aware of, and probably more that she wasn’t. There was always a need for good translators, she knew this herself after enlisting the help of Niko’s teenage friend to decipher the Polish for ‘Flat-chested’. Eve must remember to ask Villanelle about that. She now knew with upmost certainty that Villanelle was not flat-chested, so what had that witness been on about…
Eve shuffled into the kitchen, ready to shake off her day, and sighed. The sight that greeted her spread instant warmth throughout her body. Villanelle, in an incredibly soft-looking and definitely expensive dusky pink sweater and fitted designer jeans, barefoot and shaking a spoonful of flour and sprigs of rosemary into a pan of par-boiled potatoes.
“Hello baby, how was your day?”
“Long. Boring. Yours?”
Villanelle transferred the potatoes into a roasting tray and slid them into the oven. She turned and prowled towards Eve like a panther with its sights set on its prey.
“Surprisingly satisfying. I worked out, showered—”
“Yes, thank-you for that photo. It made me spill coffee on a personnel file.”
Villanelle wrapped her arms around Eve and pulled her body flush against herself before backing her slowly into the kitchen counter.
“You are welcome. Then I went to the supermarket and started preparing dinner.”
“It doesn’t sound particularly satisfying.” Eve mumbled before closing the distance between them and capturing Villanelle’s lips with her own. She felt Villanelle moan against her as she opened her mouth and allowed her tongue to tangle with its counterpart for a moment, before pulling back.
“What is for dinner anyway? It smells amazing in here.”
“We are having roast chicken.”