One Day in the Life of Ivanka the Bitch, A Novel, Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Doorstep Challenge

8.07 am — Slithering Slugs and Other Animals I Have Known

Join businesswoman Ivanka Tupolevka on the day she’s about to lose everything in the apocalyptic gulag of her divorce, with no HRT, Brexshit and surrounded by ‘fuckers’, will she ever escape the psycho ex and save her daughter?

Still networking with the ladies…

So who’s this? Oh god, she’s dressed like she’s ready to take the dogs for a walk. Oh, she is. Donna the Dogmother. Dog Behaviourist and Communicator. Communicator?

So apparently great dogs are not born great, they grow great, and, great growling jowls, she’s prepared to make me an offer I can’t refuse! Jesus Christ, straight out of the Lisa playbook. She must be her biggest fan. I didn’t read the book, obviously, but she’s all ‘take no prisoners’, yes it’s all coming back to me now. Huh, all that without even qualifying me as a possible lead! Nah, I know, it must be her amaaaazing psychic skills!

I should have known. OK let’s take a pragmatic view of all this. You have to take the rough with the smooth. Make the most of it, I’m here now. It’s not who they are, it’s who they may know, six degrees of blah blah blah… Lisa promised me that I was going to be introduced to some really useful contacts, so it’s not a waste of time and money really, just bear with it, be polite and move on and you’ll find someone who’s not totally barking.

It’s just that, well, my time really is precious, I’m running out of resources at an alarming rate and need to make an impact quickly. Find a rescue package, anything. She’s in my way.

But then again, we all started somewhere and my first forays into business networking probably came over rather manic with nerves and I should be more understanding. Smiles, sense of humour, love and support, that’s what I bring to the table. There’s a strong not for profit element of what I do after all. So, let’s dampen our tinder shall we?

Tinder, phhhhh. I didn’t even know about all that, I just tracked him down to Plenty of Fish. I bet he’s all over that shit now, swiping here, there and everywhere. That poor stupid cow he got to take him in. She won’t see it coming. Just like when he used to wait for her to go to bed so he could start sending me abusive texts all night.

I tried to warn her that time I doorstepped her. I said to her, “be very careful”. And then I lost my nerve and had to walk away. The stupid cow was smiling! A great, fat wide open, no conscience grin! I just hadn’t expected that, it threw me right off course. I suddenly wanted to slap the stupid out of her! So badly… Why wouldn’t she listen? Not like she was young and naïve. I’d have listened to me! Makes sense to get to know the monster you’ve let into your house, into your children’s lives. A girl’s got to do her homework!

But no, and what’s worse he then turned my reaching out to her into me ‘threatening’ her, when it was quite the opposite. I was trying to warn her about him! Her kids are not much younger than mine. God knows what they’ll witness once the mask slips.

Me, cast as the villain! What a gift to his predatory narrative. You just can’t argue with a narcissist and their victims!

That was the hardest lesson I had to learn through all the court cases: quitting justifying, explaining, defending. Psychos love all that attention. But it’s just white noise to them, all they get from it is “she wants me, she wants this and I’m going to give it to her.”

Content? They don’t give a shit about content! They’re not going to analyse your arguments any more than they analyse their own thoughts and behaviour! It got me nowhere but deeper in debt financially and health-wise. In the end, the only way is non-engagement. It’s the one rule I stick to hard and fast now, hard as it is to resist trying to fix it, just cut your losses and run. You can’t save him, you never could, he doesn’t want that any more than a hungry spider wants to hear from a fly.

She’ll just have to find out for herself like I did. Oh yes, I can just see him now, swooping down to ‘rescue’ her from the mad door stepper! Then, job done, he’ll have been stretching out his poor limbs, all knackered from carrying his ungrateful family and lunatic wife, sitting back, slimy tentacles ever so slowly unfurling, unnoticed under her coffee table, all the while spinning yarns of a life of sacrifice and betrayal. Yeah, gradually yawning more loudly, spreading his self-satisfaction outward, taking up her whole sofa and quietly easing her off it and up to go upstairs like a good girl and warm her bedsheets for him now she’s finished feeding him.

And the second she’d have been out of sight, bottom dollar he would have shrunk back to the dregs of the vastly superior sauvignon he brought over to impress her while slouching, slavering over that filthy, seedy screen of his, sloth-stalking new prey, like a big fat salivating slug, slithering sticky-fingered into some other poor cow’s unsuspecting psyche.

Yeah, he’ll still have a few on the go. Hundreds more probably since all the miserable profiles I discovered. Steeped there in his inbox, at various stages of fermentation, a grisly collection of already suffering self-esteems ripe for zesting, squeezing and stirring with subtly infused bitters into a twisted nightcap cum cheap aphrodisiac. I mean how else is he going to get it up if he’s not got to the torture phase with her yet? Eurgh, where’s the salt!

“Yes. Yes! I do, I did, I used to have a poodle, a toy one and a Jack Russell. I mean, I still do. It’s complicated.”

Oh no, it’s just dawned on me, can she smell them? Is that how she qualified me? Am I actually unwittingly starting to stink of all those bloody dogs? Jesus Christ! This is so fucking depressing.

“Yes, it was expensive getting her groomed and she hated it, but poodles are clean and clever and fun so that is the only downside. Buster, the Jack Russell? Well, he just used to moult all over the place and what cost to your pocket and time, all the cleaning? White hairs everywhere, all over your clothes. Lol, you always knew who’d been in your house though. Sitting on your sofa… Drinking your sherry… Whether she wanted to admit it or not! But you can probably tell all that with your spidey senses, can’t you! Er… can you…?

“Oh, it’s time to move on? But your spring deal is still on is it? Oh yes, it is unrefutable. Let me take another card for my Mum, she loves a bargain!”

To think, I used to call him the glow-worm, sounds cute, doesn’t it? I’d wake to find him hunched over his pillow, his face lit up by his phone and he’d say he was just sending an email to Jakarta or Tokyo. They’re just getting up you know, gotta catch that early bird… Hmm yes. And to think I was worried how overworked he was and would cuddle the poor man back off to sleep, once he’d finished all his important messages, never any energy left to hug me back. Him the power behind the throne, the wind beneath my wings toiling away at all hours to make my life work. So that I didn’t have to bother my pretty little head anymore with the details of the finances or growing company structure, just enjoy designing top-selling lingerie and looking good in it.

Ah, seems like I missed the table change but here’s a lovely kind looking young lady joining me…

“So… you teach energy release therapy and you’re looking for…? Right… To release their negative emotions. From their muscles…”

I’m going to have to have serious words with Lisa. Maybe I just shouldn’t have sat at the back. You have to bound right up to the front of the pack if you want to run with the alpha females.

Oh no, don’t do it, don’t bite!

Next Chapter…

To start from the beginning…

Copyright Alexis Behrend June 2021.