The Diamond Ring

Gustav shakes his head. ‘I’m wondering what I ever saw in you. It’s gone. That sexiness. That exotic beauty. Even the fact that you were older than me added lustre to it all. There was something transgressive about that, too. The naughty nanny. I’m sorry, Serena. This isn’t supposed to hurt you. It’s supposed to prove how deluded this woman is, because look at her now! And in Pierre’s case you were old enough to be the wicked stepmother. No wonder he doesn’t want you any more. Where’s all that lustre? You look – shrunken.’ He lifts one of the candlesticks and rubs it thoughtfully under his mouth as he holds her gaze. ‘As if someone’s let all the blood out of you.’

‘Blood flows thick and fast in these veins, I assure you, Gusty. Like the waters of the Nile. Once tasted, you’ll always come back. And you were always coming back for more. Right up until that last night when you told me it was over, but still you couldn’t help yourself. I could reduce you to a whimpering heap with a huge erection just by arching an eyebrow.’ She sniggers. ‘I’m doing it now.’

With a stage conjuror’s flick of the wrist, she reaches down beside the fireplace where there’s a stack of pokers, and whisks out a long white plaited whip like something the Snow Queen of Narnia might use to speed on her reindeer. She runs the handle of the whip across her mouth in an echo of what he’s doing with the candlestick. Then she licks it.

‘You’re my whimpering heap.’ She runs the flicking end of the whip down Gustav’s stomach, down his fly, tickles it between his legs. Then she fans her hand out and grabs him there. ‘And here in your trousers, this is my huge erection.’

They stand stock-still. She has possession of him. He is staring at her as if someone has carved them both out of ice.

But I’m not made of ice. I’m burning hot with rage. ‘Gustav! Stop it! Why are you looking at her like that? Get away from her!’

‘I’m just searching for whatever captivated me all those years ago. You really were the archetypal temptress, Margot.’ Gustav’s eyes rake over his ex-wife’s face almost tenderly as he gropes for the words. ‘You came straight out of all the best and worst of fairy tales.’

Margot’s mouth lifts expectantly. Her fingers curl round the now visible bulge in his trousers and start to squeeze. ‘And now?’

‘Ephemera. Ether. Emptiness.’ He spits into the fire and makes it flare angrily. ‘Time has been very cruel to you, Margot. You’re not even the wicked witch.’

And as she opens her mouth to reply, he hurls the candlestick into the grate. It seems to tumble in slow motion before smashing against the marble hearth, lethal black fragments flying into the fireplace and out into the room.

‘This is a waste of time,’ he growls. He encircles her wrist with his long fingers, his knuckles bone-white as he squeezes. Then he drops her hand and steps away to the other end of the fireplace. ‘We’ll get more sense out of Pierre.’

Margot tucks the whip under her arm as if he’s no more harm to her than a fly. She flips open a carved wooden box on the mantelpiece and pulls out a long black cigarette, places it between her lips, lights it. When she blows smoke in his face, he doesn’t flinch.

‘You’re right about one thing, Gusty. All that crap about blood being thicker than water. He was so happy to be seeing you again. Genuinely able to forget all the angst between you. Where he went wrong is when he fell in love. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Love spoils everything. He was only supposed to get her out of the picture.’

At last Gustav tears his eyes away from her and they both look at me. There’s a distance in his eyes that’s opening up a gulf between us again. I have to say something to bring him back to me. I seem to take in a lungful of the pungent, aromatic smoke from Margot’s cigarette as I speak. ‘Pierre’s not capable of loving anyone.’

‘So you say. But you’re a bit of a sprite yourself, aren’t you?’ Margot blows a couple of smoke rings at me. ‘You sense things before they’re real. You saw me dancing at the theatre in Gramercy Park. And then you saw me at the Weinmeyers’ ball.’

‘Serena?’ Gustav’s eyes glitter. ‘You never breathed a word!’

Spots start dancing in front of my eyes. Every time Venice is mentioned we come a step closer to the exact details of what happened, or nearly happened, with Pierre.

I slide over the arm of the sofa to land in the deep seat. I feel dizzy. Actually, I feel stoned.

‘I couldn’t be sure it was her. Everyone was whirling around in strange costumes and masks. At the theatre, and at the ball. I just told myself I was obsessing.’

‘Not quite the whole picture, though, is it, sweetie? Lots of things you haven’t confessed. You obviously didn’t pass on my loving video message, for instance, even though it was intended for my husband?’ Margot blows out another thin plume of smoke and winks at me. ‘I would love to be a fly on the wall when you eventually have that particular interrogation!’

‘How has this conversation started revolving around Serena?’ Gustav pushes Margot back down on to her armchair, as if by making her sit he can somehow reduce her power. He pushes his face into hers. ‘She’s already told me what happened in Venice. Pierre tricked her into thinking he was me. And that’s precisely why we’re looking for him!’

‘He’s good at hiding, especially when he’s licking his wounds. He’ll be frustrated, and furious, and you know how dangerous that can be! But what he did in Venice was all his own idea. Any damage that causes in the future is out of my hands. He rushed in where fools fear to tread. As for me, I was just monitoring his wild goose chase so I could choose my own moment to strike. Call it surveillance, since we’re talking campaigns. And you’ll be needing me more after this, Gustav. Much more. That feather was far too subtle a message, but I was only trying to help.’ Margot pouts her swollen lips. ‘You had to know. He’s in love with your girlfriend.’

The smoke, or maybe it’s just the haze of words, is making me increasingly faint. Margot’s gaze has barely left Gustav’s face since we all came into this room. Jealousy coils unpleasantly inside me. She’s hungry for him, as I would be. She’s been starved.

‘And who can blame him?’ Gustav murmurs, so quietly I’m not sure I’ve heard correctly. ‘I would go mad if I couldn’t have her.’

‘That’s just it. He has had her. Every inch.’

Margot runs her fingertips delicately over the red dents left on the white skin of her wrists and smiles. Is that some kind of coded message? Is that how it used to be between them? Or is she just relishing the pain he inflicted on her? This is a woman after all who relishes pain in all its sexual darkness. It’s her speciality. Her trade.

I try to sit up straighter. ‘Pierre may want me, but he will never have me.’

Margot laughs harshly. ‘There’s no gloss you can put on this, sweetheart. I’ll tell Gusty, since you’re plainly not going to. You went skipping off into the night with Pierre. You allowed him to rip off your silky drawers. Ooh. I wonder what happened next?’

The two sculpted white faces are staring at one another as if I don’t exist. They waver and blur, almost seem to merge, as my eyes fill with hot, hopeless tears.

‘I told you before, Gustav. I thought I was with you, but then I felt the scars on his back!’

There is a long silence, peppered only by some exploratory drops of rain ringing off the metal ladder outside the window. A police car makes a whoop in the street below then shuts off as if it’s changed its mind. There is a burst of angry voices, also silenced abruptly. Maybe they’ve all sought shelter.

At last Gustav turns towards me. But his hands are still on the arms of Margot’s chair and her wrists are still striped with his red fingermarks. His voice hits me from across the room. ‘You got close enough to touch his skin, Serena. Which means—’

‘That they were naked. History repeating itself wouldn’t you say, Gusty darling? Pierre did what he does best. Pilfers your women.’

Margot lifts an arm and swipes Gustav aside. She stands gracefully and walks over to the window. She stalks like a heron, or a flamingo, picking her high-heeled claws across the carpet. She has a dancer’s gait, the balletic twitch of the buttocks as she walks, but I notice she presses at her face as she pulls the curtain back. Sheets of rain are whipping across the glass.

I get up and dart across to Gustav, take hold of his hands and pull him round to face me. His eyes are too deep to read. I cup his chin in my fingers, our gesture to calm each other down. I need him to look at me.

‘Yes, my hands were under his shirt. I felt his scars and kicked him where it would hurt the most, and I ran away, up on to the bridge, and that’s when you found me!’

Margot’s sharp laugh cuts through my words like a knife. Although I’m trying to get Gustav to focus on me, we both swivel towards her.

‘Oh, look at that innocent face, all flushed and indignant! But she’s no angel. She’s had two Levi brothers in her knickers, after all! Just like I have! So just you wait, Gusty. We belong together. And you’ll be grateful I made you see the light about this little bitch.’ She points the feather at us again as if it’s a wand. ‘You should know that they were fucking in that gondola, Gustav. I saw them.’

The rain outside turns into a torrent, bouncing off the railings, smacking on the awnings on the shops below us. Drumming on the window behind Margot.

I keep my hand in Gustav’s and move very close to him. The fire is too hot behind me, sweat is prickling up under my hair as I shake my head, over and over. I’ve handed her this on a plate because I was too cowardly to go the distance and tell him every detail.

Very slowly, Gustav curls his fingers into a cage around my hand and lifts it towards his mouth. He rubs his lips almost thoughtfully across the tender skin before he speaks.

‘Good try, Margot. Your best ever. But, bizarrely, you’ve just advanced Pierre’s case. If Serena has unlocked something in him, something tender, something not even you could winkle out of him, well, that has to be a good thing, right?’ His voice is quiet, but humming with the determination and strength that drew me to him in the first place. ‘I know and love this girl better than I’ve ever known or loved anyone. And I would know if she’d had another man. I would sense it. God knows, I would smell it on her.’

Margot is silent for a moment. Her white face is a bland, hard mask of disdain. She takes a long drag from her cigarette, then jabs it at us. ‘That’s very touching, Gusty, but you’ve been totally hoodwinked.’

‘Thanks to you, I know that Pierre likes his sex rough. He’s bragged about it. But see?’ Gustav lifts my wrist and the silver bracelet he gave me in the very early days, to which he used to attach the silver chain, glints in the firelight. ‘I was in bed with Serena that night. We made love in the shower the following morning. I went over every inch of her. He never left a mark.’

Margot blows out the smoke she’s been holding inside. I notice a slight redness in the whites of her eyes, despite the heavy black kohl make-up. That cigarette aroma is herbal, all right. She’s smoking some kind of weed. And it seems to have taken the sting out of her tail because, instead of the nasty cackle I expect, she simply holds up her pinky finger with its long black nail and makes a winding motion around it.

‘She’s got you wrapped round here, Levi. She could have been personally trained by me!’ She takes another drag of the joint. ‘Christ, if I didn’t want her wiped off the face of the earth I’d hire your little girlfriend myself.’

It’s Gustav’s turn to laugh mirthlessly. He holds my hand up, fans my fingers out to show her the beautiful diamond ring.

‘Hasn’t anyone told you? That proves that you and Pierre haven’t spoken in the last six weeks. So either those listening devices you planted are faulty or they’re non-existent. She’s not my girlfriend. Serena is my fiancée now.’

Margot’s thin neck snaps backwards as if he has slapped her. The hand that isn’t holding the cigarette clutches at the curtain and the rings rattle along the pole as the drape takes her weight.

Her black hair seems to writhe on her head like Medusa’s as her slanted eyes half close with fury, and that’s when it hits me. What’s happened to her face. She was painted to look like a swan the first time I glimpsed her in the flesh, when she was dancing with Pierre at the theatre. Her eyes and eyelids and brows were all painted black, with black lines swooping down her nose to make her look like a bird. But now I see it’s not just warpaint. Her nose looks as if a carpenter has gone at the sides with a plane, shaving off the natural sweep of the bridge until it’s almost flat, then tapering straight down between her eyes in what an ‘aesthetic practitioner’ would describe as a ski slope, but what anyone with a pair of eyes would call a beak, complete with unnaturally flared nostrils.

‘Your funeral. And believe me, that’s how it will end. It’s plain as that hideous carrot hair that she and Pierre are perfectly suited. Same age. Physically, they’re extremely compatible. She’s not worthy of you. You’ll see. There will be no wedding.’

Now it’s my turn to let an evil smile creep across my face. I turn my hand deliberately slowly in front of me, letting the facets from the diamond ring shoot out their multicoloured lights.

Gustav threads his fingers through mine and starts to lead me towards the door. I look up at his dark, troubled face, searching for the calm triumph that has been there ever since we got engaged.

And after his lovely words, it’s returning, like sunshine after rain. But still, still he’s staring at Margot. And she is staring back at him, her red mouth stitched shut at last. Without the power of words, it looks puffed, bruised, and petulant. Her eyes have sunk back in their sockets as if she’s looking up from the bottom of a pond, but there’s still a sick flame flickering there.

I’ve seen that look before, in a wild animal that is about to die.

‘Watch your back, Gusty. I’ll be everywhere, in your dreams, in your nightmares, until I’m the only thing you can see. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll haunt this little bitch instead,’ she hisses through those lips, bunching the curtain up in her fingers. ‘Don’t say I haven’t warned you. I wanted this to be friendly, but you’ve made that impossible. If you go with her now, there’ll be no happy ever after. For you. For her. For any of us.’

The floorboards creak as we reach the door. Suddenly Gustav lets go of my hand and walks back to her. He snatches the feather from her and runs it slowly over her sharp nose and swollen lips. There is deadly affection in the gesture, and I want him to stop it. Margot goes very still as the feather strokes her, her eyes red hot with longing.

He steps away and holds the feather low over the gas flames.

‘You’re sad. Insane. And nothing to me.’

The fronds start to crisp and curl, and then a blue flame runs up the quill, burning off every remnant of life or colour.

‘I can wait. When she brings you down, I’ll be here to pick up the pieces.’

But Margot is not watching him as he guides me out of the door, or the feather as it burns. Her black eyes are fixed on me. The coolness has gone. In its place is poison.

And as we leave there’s a sucking sound behind us. Margot starts screaming.

‘They were fucking in that goddamn boat, Gustav! Your brother fucked her!’

CHAPTER THREE

Her voice screeches down the stairwell. Somehow we’ve crashed out of the apartment and Gustav is pulling me past the lift. The gates are gaping open, and we’re flying down. Cracked, peeling doors open to investigate the disturbance as we pass each hallway. I don’t see the faces of Margot’s furious neighbours. I only catch their anxious murmurs, a child’s piping question, mostly male splutters of indignation.

But we’re not stopping. Not until we’re at ground level, spinning through the door and out on to the street.

Gustav lets go of my arm and falls against the wall, resting his hands on his knees as he bends to catch his breath. I step away from him, terrified that his ex-wife’s poison has worked.

Dickson is nowhere to be seen. I run a few steps, first one way, then the other. The rainstorm has cleared this end of the street. Even though the rain has eased off now, and there’s plenty of life passing along the main drag, down here it’s so deserted you’d think a crime-scene cordon had been put up to block the traffic. And it’s not only the lack of cars that makes it so quiet. There are no people.

I come to stand in front of Gustav. I daren’t touch him. I try to zip up my jacket, but my hands are shaking too much. My legs are bare beneath the little lace dress, and I realise I am absolutely freezing.

Still he’s bent over. His glossy black hair is a curtain separating us. His shoulders are hunched up round his ears, and I can see that his fingers are digging hard into his thighs.

I stretch out my hand, not sure where to place it. The hopeful glance of the diamond on my finger nudges at my dulled senses.

‘Gustav? Honey? Talk to me.’

He shakes his head, lifts one hand to silence me.

When we first met and started working together that authoritarian gesture was not to be argued with. He was the master. I was – if not the servant, definitely the underling. He had pulled me out of nowhere and made me into a star. So I liked the dominance. It defined our roles and our rules. Conversely, it also showed me how to break those rules when I wanted him to notice me – and it was when he really noticed me that the gas under us was lit.

As we grew closer and I got the measure of him, recognised that he needed me in his life as much as I needed him, I could occasionally mock his authority, or turn it to my advantage. He’d be using the silver chain to anchor me, but I would be the one wanting it and wriggling with impatience, waiting for him to come into me as hard and fast as possible. I’d be squealing with pretend resistance, but really I’d be wet for him as he pushed me on to my hands and knees.

Icy fingers trail down the back of my neck. That’s what he did to Margot. Took her up the arse, right in front of the fire, the night they bought that squalid little apartment.

As if he can read my mind, Gustav’s head swings up and his black eyes fix on me. They are the only part of his white face showing any signs of life, and I can read the questions, accusations and the pleading that move across his features like clouds before a strong wind.

His ears will be ringing with Margot’s parting words. So before I have to start grovelling, again, deny everything, again, I try to obliterate what she’s said with the first thing that comes to me.

‘I won’t be quiet, Gustav. I have to know. Do you still want her?’

Gustav straightens, keeping his eyes on the ground. But just as he opens his mouth to say something, just as relief sweeps through me that he will at least hear me out, believe what I say over Margot’s lies, we hear the lift gates inside the apartment building clatter closed.

‘She’s coming after us!’ I squeal, backing away and staring wildly up towards the lights on the main street, down to the darkened end of this one. ‘Where the hell is Dickson? Oh, God, she knows everything. She knows where we live!’

Gustav grabs me, but instead of breaking into a run he yanks me down the dark alleyway edging the building. He slams me against the cold, damp wall beside a huge dumpster and I yelp as I land in a cold puddle.

‘She’ll find us, Gustav! We’ll never be free of her!’

Gustav clamps his hand over my mouth. Voices spill out of the main door where we’ve just been standing. Margot’s smoky drawl, the voice I’ve quickly learned is the one she uses when she’s certain she’s in control, has risen to a hysterical, childish pitch and is spewing a stream of what sound like German curses. Someone, a man, is trying to interrupt her.

‘She’s got someone with her!’ I mouth into his hand. Hot tears prick at my eyes and start to fall. ‘Do you think that’s Pierre? After all that crap she’s told us, maybe he’s been with her all along?’

Gustav cocks his head for a moment. The voices mingle in a hubbub of yelling, then go silent. Gustav’s hand is covering my nose as well as my mouth, and I can’t breathe.

He shakes his head.

After several minutes we hear the scrape and tap of Margot’s shoes, but instead of coming this way her footsteps are muffled by the front door of the building once more clanking shut.

We’re safe here. For now. She would never sully herself or her expensive shoes by searching for us in a filthy, dank alleyway full of trash. But this isn’t the end of the story. Not by a long chalk.

Margot is out to finish us.

I struggle under Gustav’s hand, but he presses it harder over my mouth, banging my head back against the wall, and now his black eyes are glaring as if he wants to bore a hole right through me. With his free hand he pulls mine away from where I’m bashing at his chest. He thrusts my hand down his stomach, down over the front of his jeans until my fingers clamp over him.

He’s hard as rock. He’s so hard that I can feel the heat throbbing right through the denim.

The shock is like a punch in the guts.

Margot has done this to him. Not me. The dangerous allure that once attracted him to that woman was oozing out of her just now. Everything about her, those red stockings, the wet red lips, the laser eyes, the knowledge that she was naked beneath that leather skirt, those gloating, filthy reminiscences she was so desperate to share, has brought it all back. Christ, if I can’t look at her without seeing the two of them going at it, what memories must be boiling inside Gustav?

I nip viciously into his palm to get him off me, but he doesn’t budge. His eyes glitter with the grim determination he employed to overpower me in the early days. He continues to press my hand over the big thick bulge inside his pants. I can feel a sob choking me, but also the sharp twist of desire deep inside me as I touch him.

All at once he moves his hands away from my mouth, leaves my fingers on his crotch and shoves one knee between my legs so that they are forced apart. My legs are shaking as I stagger slightly, but he’s not going to help me. He’s going to have me. He pushes his hands under my little lace dress and sinks his fingers into the soft flesh of my buttocks, lifting me quickly so I don’t have time to feel the cold. I scrabble to keep hold of him by wrapping my legs round his hips and now I’m slicking open for him, moistening against the denim jeans despite the dizzying mix of fear and fury as my dress floats up round my waist.

Gustav pins me against the cold, flinty wall as he starts to unbutton his fly. His breath is hot on my face, his lips parted to show the glint of his gritted teeth. Our eyes lock as footsteps pass beyond the entrance to the alleyway. I lean in and bite his bottom lip, suck up the droplet of blood.

Once tasted, you’ll always come back.

He shoves me harder against the wall so that the cold bricks scrape into the tender skin on my lower back. My lovely leather jacket is going to have scratches on it, too. I kick my boots against his butt as he starts to bite my neck, but he just shoves me more brutally to keep me still.

His fingers dig deeper into my butt cheeks, prising them apart, and then his fingers are in the damp crack between, searching and sliding towards my centre. I grip his shoulders as we both feel the wetness beneath his fingers, a mixture of the seething sweat of fear and the curling cream of excitement.

I open myself wider to swallow his fingers, grinding against his jeans, winding my fingers in his silky hair to pull his head to me so that I can kiss him. He groans unevenly, licking and biting his way up to my mouth as his fingers grapple with my weight and then they slide inside me, releasing my urgent, musky scent, driving me wild with wanting.