I arrive at Honeybee Lane in Miltree, Cornwall, and already I don’t want to leave. Victoria Berry’s house is towards the end, and it would be nondescript on the outside if it wasn’t for the beautifully manicured garden. Kelly-green grass is cut into neat strips, a patch of soil in the middle boasting a bush dripping with yellow roses, and a strip at the front is packed with pink and white geraniums. It fits, given that her partner Anastasia is a florist. I knock on the door, and Anastasia herself opens it.
She invites me in, where Victoria is sitting at the dining table. Her rigid poise and elegance sends a wave of intimidation through me. But she smiles, gets up to shake my hand, and seems polite enough. I introduce myself, start recording, and take a deep breath.
I suppose we should start with that age-old setting-the-scene prompt: tell me about yourselves.
Victoria: Very original.
Anastasia: Well, it’s as good a place to start as any. I suppose an introduction from us is in order. I am Anastasia Savchenko, and I moved to the UK from Ukraine just over twenty years ago. I worked as a nurse for most of this time, but a couple of years ago burnt myself out and moved down to Cornwall to run a florist. As you do. Victoria was my next-door-neighbour, but our paths only really crossed when she got into a car accident.
Victoria: Yes. She ran to my rescue. I asked her to bring me a toothbrush and a phone charger, and she brought me rather more than that.
Anastasia: <laughs> Yes, that’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is: I brought toothbrush, ended up in love.
Tell me more about that. How did a toothbrush lead to you falling in love?
Anastasia: Well, that’s not quite accurate. The toothbrush was the thing that led me to her hospital bed. Victoria was what got me to stay. Despite her sharp edges, and the way she pushed me away at every given opportunity, I clung on to a limpet until she realised she needed to accept my care. Perhaps not the most ethical way of doing it, but I think it’s safe to say I was never just a nurse to her. Would you agree, Victoria?
Victoria: I didn’t know what to call her for the longest time. I’d never had a friend, and didn’t know how to be one. But yes, she was certainly always more than a nurse. And then love came along and she became my girlfriend. Problem solved.
Anastasia: Oh, so we’re skipping over the agonies of indecision we both went through? Both of us realising we had feelings for the other, but neither of us communicating them?
Victoria: Well, I didn’t exactly realise until quite late. By which point I’d nearly lost you. But the world doesn’t need to know about that.
Anastasia: I beg to differ. Given that there’s, you know, a whole book written about us.
Victoria: Oh, yes. A Different Kind Of Pride. The title taken, if I remember rightly, by something our friend Cass said when we came out to our friends about the relationship.
Exactly. And what’s happened since then? Are you at liberty to tell me?
Anastasia: Well, we had an exciting first Christmas together. But if I told you, and thus the world, it would be a spoiler for that little festive spin-off story of ours.
Victoria: Having said that, it’s called On One Knee In The Snow. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what happened.
Well, congratulations. Could you tell me about your future plans? Or is that a closely guarded secret too?
Anastasia: Everything’s a closely guarded secret when it comes to Victoria. She’s not a very public person.
Victoria: And yet here I am, sitting in an interview. The things you talk me into.
Anastasia: I’ve talked her into quite a lot, now I think about it. I talked her into leaving the country for the first time. We took the ferry to my mother’s guest house in France, just after Christmas. So Victoria met her for the first time. We also have regular dinner dates with our friend Cass and Felicia, and Petra and Jean – not quite as exciting as the trip to France, but-
Victoria: -But still anathema to me, at least if you’d asked me a couple of years ago. <clears throat> Are we… are we going to talk about this forever? Is this entire interview about me and Anastasia? Our pasts? And the way we fell in love?
Well… no, it doesn’t have to be. Not if we want to get people to read your love story, I guess. We can talk about something else.
Victoria: Excellent. Such as…?
Well… let’s go more surface-level then. Your… favourite cake?
Victoria: Favourite cake? That’s the best you could come up with?
Anastasia: <cracking up> Your face, Vic! Go easy on her. I don’t think you realise quite how terrifying you actually are, when you’re angry.
Victoria: <mutters> I don’t want to be terrifying.
Anastasia: Well, answer the question, then. Soften yourself up. What is your favourite cake?
Victoria: I… I normally don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but Anastasia makes a very nice honey cake. What’s it called? I still can’t pronounce it. Medi…
Anastasia: Medivnyk. [off my look of confusion] M-E-D-I-V-Y-N-K. It’s a Ukrainian honey cake. Normally made with layers of cream in the middle, but I don’t normally bother with that, because when my mother made it when I was little, we could never afford cream. So I just make it a solid thing. Honey, sour cream, eggs, flour, butter, sugar… and any number of sweet spices. Great on a cold winter’s day.
Victoria: I also like your flapjacks. You certainly make better flapjacks than I do.
Anastasia: That’s because you can’t bake for shit. You’re a very good headmistress and an even better girlfriend, but you can’t bake. Let’s be real.
Victoria: <shrugs>
Anastasia: If anyone else said that to you, they’d lose an arm or quite possibly their head, am I right?
Victoria: Well you deserve some credit for putting up with me, so… <shrugs again>
Anastasia: Oh, Vic. As if it’s a burden. ‘Putting up with you’, my foot.
Much as I hate to interrupt this very sweet moment, I’ve thought of something else to ask you. Both of you, individually or together. What is your best memory? Your favourite memory? Across your whole lives?
Victoria: Aaand we’re back to talking about the past.
Anastasia: Victoria! <swats her> That’s a lovely question.
Victoria: Well, I have two. Is that allowed? I’m torn between the evening we got together and finally confessed our feelings, and – well, last Christmas. The ‘On One Knee In The Snow’ situation. Both of which were pretty spontaneous, but both of which have made me happier than I ever thought possible.
Anastasia: Aww. I have two as well. The first is that time I made her laugh in the hospital. Like, properly laugh. All it took was me talking about Proctalgia fugax to do it.
Pro-what?
Victoria: Don’t ask. Google it, if you must. It’s a type of muscle cramp that people get when it’s their time of the month. Seriously, Anastasia, you had to lower the tone?
Anastasia: <faux-sarcastically> Sorry! Well, I’ll raise the tone again with my other favourite memory. Seeing Victoria meet my mother. That bit isn’t in our book, or our spin-off, but it’s one of those memories that just glows in my heart. You know what I mean?
Can you tell me about that?
Anastasia: We were exhausted, and it was Victoria’s first time properly travelling, so we were exhausted and on edge. Not to mention in pain – Victoria had to have metal put in her spine due to the car accident, and she still gets quite a lot of pain. And she was out of her depth, and I was snippy because we’d gotten lost in our hire car trying to find the bloody guest house…
Victoria: Oh, God, do we have to say this?
Anastasia: And we did argue. A bit. Like all couples. So we were emotional on top of everything else by the time we got there. But my mother went full mother-hen mode, practically steamrollering us with love and affection. And Victoria just… let her. Dropped her guard straight away, and allowed my mother to love on us. She’s only ever done that with me before. And I knew how hard it must have been, for someone who values her independence and her pride. But she did it. She did it for me.
Victoria: I’d do anything for you, Anastasia.
I don’t think I could find a better way to leave this interview, other than to say thank you. I know that you didn’t want to do this, Victoria, but thank you for allowing Anastasia to talk you into it.
Victoria: It’s been… not as bad as I thought.
Anastasia: That’s a compliment, coming from her.
Victoria: Anastasia’s the only one who gets my true compliments.
Anastasia: And now you know the truth. She’s soft as marshmallow underneath all the layers of tough exterior.
Victoria: …Tell the world, why don’t you?
A Different Kind Of Pride is available now, on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.