One Day in the Life of Ivanka the Bitch, A Novel, Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Egg Stains

7.19 am — Breakfast Networking Interruptus

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

Shit, it’s Tit! What’s happened now? For fuck’s sake, I haven’t even got into work yet and my stomach’s already clenched like a vice. I’ll have to call her back.

Where the fuck are my antacids? I mean what kind of breakfast was that for £25? Bacon rolls, no butter? I’m going to be retching all day at this rate. Urrgh, I don’t care who sees me, I’m swiping another bucks fizz.

Right, come on, calm down, self-care, get the lansoprazole down you, that’s it, get out onto the terrace, let’s see what it’s all about and face whatever it is head-on, away from prying eyes. Most of all, be calm.

“Hello darling, you OK? Yeah, yeah, sure yeah, of course, my darling, no worries, you go, it’ll be good for you. Tonight, 7pm? Of course I don’t mind. No, no, you DO need to prepare and yes you DO need the day off to sort your house out, of course you do.”

That utter fucker! That utter piece of Satan’s most hard-baked, worm-ridden and ill surrendered defaecation! He’s managed to nick another week out of my business AND manoeuvre me into taking her to the airport to boot. Don’t tell me that slimy turd doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing!

But what am I supposed to do? It’s always me who ends up sounding like the crazy paranoid one when I try to explain the games. Pfff… Just remember, the kids don’t want to know or have to deal with it. So no, deep breath, won’t be going there again.

Stop ripping at your fingers! You’ll be through to the bone soon and bleeding on your suit again. Hold on… to something, hold the chair, that’s it, that’s right. And breathe…

It’s times like these when I remember how lovely it was to smoke, before it was awful, before Artur got me all healthy. Sanctimonious git.

Come on, you’re better than this. Focus on the good things and breathe. Remember last night? Yes, he does have certain compensations… That’s right… secret smile, there’s power in those good vibes, shoulders back, headlamps! Stop hunching, the world’s not out to get you, just that idiot. Lead with those powerful hips, get back in there. You can do this. Tits ’n’ teeth! C’mon!

There, you’re practically sauntering… Think jaguar, slink jaguar… That’s right… Fuck the HRT shortage, fuck psychotic ex-husbands, fuck business destroying Brexit. Focus on the good stuff, all the good stuff. There’s so much of it. Somewhere! It stands to reason, somewhere in the world, something wonderful, something miraculous is happening to somebody. Just a matter of time before it’s me.

Yes. You are intelligent, you are sexy, you are loved, you are enough. You’ve got a plan to change the world. You’ll get through this.

Maybe just the one cigarette. No! Breathe, look at that sea view, it’s incredible! Look, seagulls! Just soar above it all. That’s… right.

Oh my darling fairy-gift daughter Titania… Your father plays you like a bloody fiddle! He couldn’t let you work for me without offering you more to work for him. No interest in you before the divorce, but now he’s got you tearing yourself in two, just to get his worthless approval. Like a geriatric custody battle, it never ends! He’ll end up like that shrivelled old Dalek fella, a tinpot dictator preserved in a battered old dust bin, alcohol pumping round his veins to keep him alive just to spite me. To think, I stayed till she was eighteen to avoid all this shit. Twatting, twatting fuckdom! That’s the next week lost then!

It’s not her fault. How could any twenty-four year old resist a conference in Dubai? Plus the added drama-cum-bonus of an unscheduled day off today to deal with all the ensuing OCD issues, or whatever the diagnosis is this week… that he’s the root of in the first place! Yes she should have warned me, but he probably only just told her so that I would look like the bitch from hell pointing out that the business needs her here right now. It is her job after all.

That’s the Watkins-Jones tender buggered then till she’s back. But she won’t be back in time will she! Holy fucking fuck flaps! How did he know? How does he always know? She must have let it slip. But yeah, muggins here, I’ll take you to the airport. Bastard.

Ah well, at least I get to see her off properly, a girl needs to know her Mum’s there for her however brave and adventurous she thinks she’s being today.

Good thing I’ll be in early then. Lots to do.

Bugger, bugger, bugger, it’s not going to happen is it? It’s not going to happen and you’re going to lose everything you ever fought for, stupid, stupid, stupid cow! What were you thinking? You’ll have to tell the guys. It’s over. It’s only fair to be straight with them, you can’t get out of this one, they’re going to see the bailiffs, you can’t hide it, they’ll have to go home empty-handed and explain to their families they’re all going to starve to death in a Brexit bloodbath. And how are you going to tell your own kids? Swanning off in the sunset, oblivious. Coming back to nothing…

Chill, for fucks sake, you’ve got this. Breathe… We’ve had all the meetings, they’ve completed all their due diligence, what else is there to go on about? You’re in a market of one, you’ve been tipped the wink, it’s in the bag. Just got to finalise the paperwork. You can get that done. You’re just not a details person, you lazy cow, and Titania does get everything done on the computer much quicker than you. That’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK to be big picture, the visioneer, my strength is people, getting out there and being useful. That’s what I do.

Not sure I’ll get anything out of this breakfast networking meeting though, waste of time. Don’t know what I was thinking. A right detour from my norm. I don’t do this shit anymore. But, needs must.

To be fair though, got to hand it to her, Lisa’s gone up in the world since… Christ that’s like twenty-odd years ago! Me all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed bursting into that grotty Travel Inn. Them all drivel and drool. We were something back then! Now that she has soooo many meetings she can afford to have some that are gender-specific, it’s hard to believe that back then we were usually the only women in the room. And our business ‘heroines’ were instructing us to wear bright red lipstick if we even hoped to get a man to notice our lips were moving! Pah!

We thought we were goddesses among our peers. But far from being lauded in any way, up there, cycling that tight rope of product development, hiring, firing, getting to grips with marketing and securing funding by risking the very roof over our heads, suckling kids and ailing parents juggled above us, we had to put up with clowns below. Clowns all around and clowns for seemingly neglected husbands, sniggering below to each other about the handlebars they’d had the time to mess with and unscrew.

If you had any ambition you had to consciously and competently magic all that out of sight, all the while sorcering up solutions for spectators unwilling to raise their sights, hot lips or not, luxuriating in the safe seats, cheerily cheering on the clowns shooting at our tyres.

Creepy little insects in outlook, all instinct and pack mentality. They couldn’t help it. You just had to be patient, understanding, and hard enough to return the glare of your audacity back through their minimising lenses, singe their wandering antennae, or else be devoured, just another green shoot below the swarm.

Wonder if Lisa remembers lining them up for me? She must do. Week after week me weighing in to tear up yet another wad of fading human photocopies: worn-out will-writers, frumpled insurance guys, ‘newly independent’ financial planners, frantic franchisees, and redundant marketeers railing against the gelled up, white socked, pimple-neck web pioneers, all writhing obsequiously in tight, shiny grey Burton suits, to the splash and thrash of fresh shark fry on an egg stained tie.

Fuck it was exhausting! Best thing I did was realise that, while I’ll admit it was a good grounding in dealing with people, my time could be used more efficiently letting my designs do the talking. And they did, eventually. For all the good that did me now that the bastard has them all. But that was a different business and a different time. Have to deal with the here and now. Push has come to shove and I’m back. But I’m not going to grovel. Way past all that.

But, well… it’s not for me anymore is it? So just suck it up. Maybe I can be a Lisa for the day and give myself a break… Lisa thrived, loved it, lapped it all up, kept expanding and started living in that glorified gin palace with that square-headed taxi driver who kept scratching his balls. And they thought they had it made! Jesus! Kept inviting us out for a sail around the bay, lol. And we didn’t go because, “if there are no sails, then it’s not real sailing” said the piss faced fucker that’s now living on a motor yacht somewhere in the Med or beyond because, as he always said when selling me the “this time next year” dream, he can run our business from anywhere. And he bloody well is. And not just because it’s his, as in, not ours anymore. Or the fact he’s free to run off and enjoy the proceeds of lying in court with whoever his latest victim is. But because it makes him difficult to track down.

Yes. All his now. The business I started, properties I slaved to acquire and went bankrupt trying to defend. My mother’s pension pot, God, will she ever forgive me? Oh, and the freedom to torture me about it from afar on various beaches… yes, sipping pina colada, not getting caught in Spain, the slippery snake. His barrister made it very clear to me in an off-site meeting, “you can’t put a value on shares in a business not publicly traded and it’s a ‘boys’ club’ after all, shell companies and all that, you won’t see a penny by the time they’ve tucked you up. Settle for the house dear.”

Of course, he could afford a barrister at the final hearing, because he never spent a penny on solicitors. Just ran up my bills sending the same foul, pointless, ranting emails every hour, on the hour, at £100+ a time for my solicitors to open because I was trying to do everything ‘the correct way’. More fool me! Don’t ever believe a solicitor when they…, well just don’t believe them at all, ever. They’re in the business of picking the flesh off the vulnerable and emotional and good luck to them! You have to come to terms with that sooner or later after a divorce or you’ll end up spending the same amount or more on therapies to deal with your murderous fantasies.

No, he saved his money for a cut-throat barrister at the hearings which I had to attend alone and broke, with no legal support whatsoever. I went through five legal firms who all promised they could take him on, “dealt with his type before” and would definitely be able to handle or ignore his ill behaviour. I thought, pay a good lawyer to go all Boston Legal on his arse, job done! But in this country and I don’t know who’s responsible, not one of them will admit to ever having seen an episode and the term ‘game plan’ is simply not in their vocabulary.

“Thank you for your initial consultation fee of £1500 now, what would you like me to do Ms Tupolevka? Is that how you pronounce it?”

“No, but don’t worry, I mean it is spelt exactly how it’s pronounced Too-pol-ev-ka, but, yes, it is a constant drain on my time explaining that to everyone and his nutter uncle and I am now free for the first time in my life to pick my own name. Whoopdeedoo! So, I’m resorting to taking my mother’s maiden name now instead, O’Rourke, which isn’t pronounced how it’s spelt, but there we go. That’s just how it is. Some things are just understood. That’s life! She’s not to be messed with and neither am I. Anymore. I mean yes, technically it’s just my other grandfather’s name, but I’m choosing it and that’s what matters, I think. I guess. Anyway, I’m electing to activate the Irish genes, dig in and get through all this with a sense of humour. My Russian grandfather, my darling Dedushka, God rest his soul, had no sense of humour and that got him nowhere, shortened his life. Well, that and all that hard labour in the gulag, bless him. And, while I can’t seriously argue that all this actually compares, it certainly feels like it to me! No. No more! I’ve spent the last twenty-six years silently suffering, stoically putting one foot in front of the other, just working harder and harder trying to keep it together, make it all work and for what? No more. You get me my money back and it’s party time, laughs all round!”

“So you’d like to add a deed of name change…”

“No, no, no, no, no thank you! I did that online. For all the good that did! Not accepted by anyone! Look, anyway, it’s just that the banks take years of constant nagging and weekly visits to get round to changing the cards and stuff, they’re still losing or distrusting all the paperwork I ever send or sign which HE always used to his advantage and they’ve still never taken responsibility for all that. Then they issue you the same again or worse, back to their assumed old married name that you never used in the first place. It’s like, they’re all in a massive conspiracy to wind me up! I mean how did he find out all the stuff I said about him to the regional manager that time? Mates, I bet! Probably all in the same lodge. I mean when your lawyers go on about a ‘boy’s club’ it’s not just one, is it? They’re everywhere!”

“I can see that you’re still quite emotional and I have only booked in the one hour. I could get Abigail to schedule an additional slot, at a reduced rate as you’re here?”

Bastard! What? Jesus, stop rambling, get a grip.

“Oh, er, tissue? There you go. Let me organise you a coffee. Abigail, could you pop in a minute? Biscuit? Ah Abigail, coffee and biscuits please, I can see that er, Ms er… O’Rourke is now anxious to cut to the chase. Yes, what is your instruction?”

“My instruction?”

“Yeeeesss… That’s what we do, we take instruction.”

“Well, what do you normally do? I mean how do we win? I told your colleague all the disgusting things he did in the free hour, you must have notes? What would you advise? What’s got to happen?”

“Ah yes that’s right, apologies again, my colleague does find herself rather… er, inundated at the moment. The next step entirely depends on how you instruct us.”

“She’s er, …. rather… ? You do know he’s still trying to kill me don’t you?”

Deep breath, I can’t go through repeating all that again! I’m even boring myself rigid with it all now that I’ve told the story so many times.

“Well…, I was under the impression that you would know the best way to proceed, that I just paid you a small fortune to benefit from your expertise, you know the years of study you undertook to become a solicitor…”

“Yes that’s right and you will. Just as soon as you instruct me.”

Not only will a solicitor never advise, but they will also suddenly develop a duty of care to the torturer you’re paying them to help you escape from, your nemesis and his interminable email filth, even when clearly ‘instructed’ by the fee-paying schmuck to ignore him. Like frenzied hyenas, there’s no way of controlling their appetites. They simply must open every email! And then for an additional £100+ fee send it to you asking how you would like to respond, with another fee stripped off your bleeding carcass to read your reply!

All the accounts are still frozen, because of my “big mouth” apparently, and over £55,000 run up in legal fees on credit cards in the first year, before even the first of the hearings! What an idiot I was having to attend court all alone in the end against his barrister, with nothing to show for the money but 28 boxes of printed out emails duplicating previously printed out emails, several times over. Fuck Gmail threads! Not only did we all have to endure reading endless repetitions of filthy lies and accusations, but I also had to pay for them to be couriered around the country to every new solicitor, five in total tried and gave up, and now I have to pay to store them securely in case he sets fire to mum’s shed in preparation for the inevitable next onslaught of torture by the legal system.

So, no legal support over the next three years of eleven ludicrous court cases he brought against me trying to overturn every judgement against him, pretending to live an hour’s drive away while hiding from his murderous rampages in my mum’s spare room, having to Airbnb every inch of my house to pay its running costs and all the debts he left me.

The kids say he hasn’t put the sails up once.

Come on Ivanka you’re supposed to be practising living in the present. Get in the flow. You have your health and the kids love you. Shoulders back as Irish Nan would say, oh stop it, come on, deep breath, no tears today! You won! But when is it going to start feeling like it?

Next Chapter…

Copyright Alexis Behrend June 2021.