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He preferred being berated and called a moron.
* * *
Chapter Two
His idea to buy an island came to him the next day.
He got that this startling decision might seem to some people a little out of left field, but they’d be wrong. There was a very sensible path to this conclusion, which if followed from its beginning, proved he had a logical and extremely practical mind.
He’d been thinking about opioid addiction.
Well, if he had to be entirely honest, something anyone who knew him would assent that he always aimed to be, he’d been thinking about taking opioids: why he wasn’t being given any and how he could get some.
It was only then he’d contemplatedaddiction.
There was a lot of information on the web about this. Mostly exaggerated, he was sure. It was like money, he reasoned. Sage expressions likethe love of money is the root of all evilwere clearly put about by wealthy people wanting to keep their ill-gotten gains to themselves. He was fairly convinced that overblown tales of people ruining their lives due to wanting to be pain free could be attributed to similar motives.
Stupid people who got wealthy ruined it for everyone else.
Stupid people who got addicted ruined a pain free life for him.
But pondering addiction, reminiscing pleasantly, had led him to musing about detox. And that, given he was often laid up in bed unable to concentrate on anything more worthy and erudite than surfing the net, had led him to watching the trial of a celebrity who had apparently undertaken his detox on his own private island. As he’d pointed out to an upside-down and snoring Radulf on the bed alongside him, at least it was better than watching the war. Aleksey wasn’t interested in the latest casualties. He didn’t want to know what Dear Leader thought about anything, especially Ukraine. He particularly didn’t appreciate having the head of some world bank, a megalomaniac with a ridiculous accent, being put in charge of confiscating Russian billionaire’s assets.
He and Radulf both agreed that exceptionally wealthy Russians had a right to their ill-gotten gains, especially when they were lazing around on them watching videos.
It also didn’t help that he’d only just encouraged and paid for Babushka to travel home to Siberia to nurse, as she put it, one of her old cronies. A man, Aleksey suspected, to actually be younger than him, but, by being a man, qualified in Babushka’s mind as being entirely unable to look after himself after a logging accident. Aleksey had suspected she was just a little homesick and had decided to spend the month before Emilia’s return from school back in the motherland. He’d almost been tempted to go with her. Fortunately for him, unfortunately for her, the day she’d arrived in Moscow for her onward flight, the war had started. Technically, she could leave, but she felt disloyal, so she was staying put until her friend was recovered. Sarah had moved into her cottage fulltime to look after Molly, and this arrangement seemed to be working quite well.
So, missing the only person he could speak to in his own language who clearly shared his views of the current war, the depressed looking celebrity had been much more fun to follow. Other people’s misery did wonders for perking anyone up, he supposed.
So, besides feeling smug at having his belief confirmed that stupid people ruin money (and drugs come to that) for other people, he was fascinated by the notion of owning your own island.
Why didn’t he have one?
He was far wealthier than this morose actor, after all. Unlike movies, stocks in armaments weren’t ageist. Aleksey chuckled to himself and privately blessed his favourite Russian president. He hadn’t always been so fond of him, or blessed him very often, but you couldn’t criticise a man who, every few years or so, enabled you to ponder buying an island, could you?
But that thought brought him back to the Dr Evil of Russian confiscations. Seriously, they make a megalomaniac head of the World Bank, allow him to confiscate innocent civilians’ few rubles, and every time you close your eyes you hearwe have vays of making you talk…Aleksey was only glad he didn’t own a yacht.
Islands then. Of course, he wasn’t considering purchasing this little token so he could plan an eventual detox for the inevitable addiction he would develop to the illegal opioids he was weighing up acquiring. He wasn’tthatstupid.
It was just an idle thought to pass the time…
Eventually resolved to stop fixating on the trial so much, he was about to start some research on islands for sale when he heard quick, light footsteps from the walkway alongside the swim lane. He glanced at the time and grinned, swiftly changing this expression to one of suitable gravitas and authority.
Molly ran in and jumped on the bed alongside him with a bounce, just because she could.
Since hisincidentshe had been allowed to make this journey across the swim lane when she got home from school, unaccompanied by a responsible adult, a very new and exciting occurrence, and only permissible, not as Squeezy had pointed out because there wasn’t one of those to hand, but becausepapahad been sent to his basket and was thus unattainable otherwise.
‘I was hoping you might have been thoughtful enough to bring a cup of tea with you. Perhaps a biscuit.’
‘I’m not allowed to make tea because I’m only three, and you’re not allowed to have biscuits. Daddy says you’re getting fat.’
Aleksey snarled very quietly to himself. Two pounds. Two fucking pounds he’d put on since he’d broken his leg, but he was at least twenty pounds under fucking weight to start with, but no, fucking Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen accused him of boredom eating!
‘Your father eats like a pig guzzling from a trough, so I take as much notice of his nutritional advice as I would yours. What do you want? Why are you not doing your homework, and why are you wearing that and not your uniform?’
She slid closer, pressing her cheek into his arm, so he slipped it over her shoulders. He needed to try harder to annoy her. She was tough, this one.
‘It was gold coin day.’
