A Nice Coat

“Do not trust anyone. Including me,” Konstantin’s words keep lingering in Villanelle’s mind.

The young woman is sitting on her brand-new sofa in her new apartment in an old building in a Parisian old street. She breathes in the smell of new furniture as well as the new comfortable life Konstantin introduced her.

She closes her eyes, smiling to all of the things she can buy all over the world—not to mention the paper bags of branded clothes scattered around her bed. But that smile quickly disappears in a few minutes when she decides that all of them don’t excite her anymore.

“Do not trust anyone. Including me.”

Villanelle now grunts in frustration. All she wants is to get rid of Konstantin’s face out of her mind, so she thinks she might have to do something to make herself feel a little safer. A part of her always wants to trust Konstantin. How can you not love—if she is capable of loving at the first place—the man who gave you an escape from death?

Then her mind flies to a time when life was simpler, when it was filled with English practice and literature reading instead of walking unnoticed and loading guns. Her mind flies to a time when her days filled with language classes instead of killing people—when her days filled with Anna.

“Come on, I need those extra lessons,” the student said in English.

“Miss Astankova, your English is better than any senior student in this whole school,” her teacher replied, also in English, which has been their main language to use in the past month.

“Some French practice, then?” Oksana ignored the use of her last name, because she didn’t want to feel that they were in the class.

“Oksana, you might be able to write a book in French!”

A smile replaced the pout on the student’s face. Oksana loved compliments and it was not difficult to get them from the language teacher. She just knew how to use the right words just to hear some nice words.

She knew that she was smart. She knew that she was Anna’s brightest student. She knew how to get what she wanted. She knew her goal was to manipulate Anna’s golden heart and she also knew that Anna would always fall for her choice of words.

But nothing was wrong when no one got hurt, wasn’t it?

“Do you really think I could do that?” Oksana gave her teacher the most innocent face she could make.

“Of course you can!” Anna said, standing up. She started to close her opened books and put her pens inside her bag. “Maybe you can try writing something longer than a couple of paragraphs,” she lightly said, glancing at the reports she had written.

Oksana didn’t like it when Anna didn’t give her full attention to her.

“Anna,” she started again.

The teacher gave her a soft but alarming look. “It’s Miss Leonova for you, young lady.”

Oksana rolled her eyes. She preferred Anna’s maiden name, Aanmokoba. “Alright, Miss Leonova,” she emphasized the name. She then took the chance to step forward as Anna rechecked her belongings in her bag. “But can you make an exception for today?”

Oksana knew she was winning. Oksana knew that the language teacher was too kind to reject her request—especially that she knew her father was a drunk. Oksana knew her expression—the combination of sadness, rejection, and worry (or were they all the same?), all shown in a tiny smile—had already waver Anna’s decision to go home alone.

“Please?” Oksana had prepared her best pleading face as she put her hand on the teacher’s hand.

Anna quickly withdrew her hand with a smile, but not too fast, because she didn’t want to hurt the student’s feeling. But Oksana knew all of that and she thought she could give more pressure on the topic.

“You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met,” the student said with a worry in her smile. She deliberately put the reference to what she had been wrong in class, which had successfully brought another smile on Anna’s face.

“Alright,” Anna sighed. “Max wouldn’t be home until late anyway. I hope you like cake.”

Oksana grinned. Surely, she could win this battle every day. She didn’t just like word play, she also likes to play with people’s emotions—something that she had realized as soon as she had gotten Anna’s attention.

“Absolutely.”

Villanelle smiles.

Anna is her last resort, she has decided. But she can’t ask her former teacher to protect her anymore—not that she will need one now.

She throws away the thoughts of Anna never wanting to see her again and replaces it with their better time. Anna loved her—just not the way she expected her to. But who knows? The teacher could lie and those moans couldn’t.

No, Anna won’t wear it, her mind tells her. The smile quickly goes away.

But she knows that Anna cherishes her enough that she will keep anything Oksana gives her—especially if it’s expensive. The disappointment disappears when another possibility comes. Oh, but so it will be safe somewhere in her room. Probably under the bed, she thinks naughtily.

Oh, she will find the most expensive present if she must—not to mention the amount of money she plans to stuff inside, along with a fake passport she has to order. She thinks that this is a perfect plan. Konstantin won’t find out.

With a smile on her lips, Villanelle jumps out of her brand-new sofa, spends fifteen minutes in front of her vintage mirror, and grabs her fancy purse to find a very nice coat to send to her favorite teacher.

“Tu vas ou?” Madame Tattevin asks her when she’s locking her door.

Thinking about Anna makes her think in English, because that is the language she will use if she ever meets the teacher again, to show her how much better she can speak English now. (She might show off the different accents she has nailed, too.) But Villanelle only needs two seconds to form simple words in French—not to mention all of the words she had composed in French in the letters she wrote to Anna.

Villanelle smiles again. “Je vais acheter un cadeau, pour mon professeur préférée.”