The Diamond Ring

As he kisses, or rather takes chunks out of me, he mutters under his breath, so rapid and angry it sounds like a foreign language.

He’s saying bitch, bitch. Bitch.

I reach down and flip undone the last remaining buttons of his fly and wrap my fingers around him. This man belongs to me. This hard-on belongs to me. This precious part of him is mine, and it’s going into me now.

I grunt like an animal and he lifts his head, lips wet with saliva. We stare deep into each other in the darkness. I’m holding on to him, but I’m quivering violently with the effort of gripping him and with the ferocious desire to have him.

‘She was lying about me and Pierre, G. You must believe me. We never went that far. You know she was lying.’

I’m aware that I’ve just said G, his brother’s pet name for him, but just then it seemed to fit perfectly. I can’t take it back. So I kiss him to shut myself up, not biting this time but pressing my lips on to his gorgeous mouth, pushing my tongue in to open him to me. He pauses, as if he is about to break this long silence, but then his tongue snakes hungrily around mine.

Kissing is better than talking, however violent and angry it is. I am still gripping him but he needs no guidance. He pulls his hips back and then slams himself up inside me, so rough and hard against the wall, jolting me violently so that my teeth bite through my lip.

He pulls out, allowing a breath of cold air to wash over my bare skin in the brief pause, then with a muffled groan he thrusts inside even harder. I wrap myself like a limpet around him and I make it easy because I’m so wet and ready. He moves inside me, so smooth compared with the painful rasp of brickwork on my spine, and my body closes tight around him. Then our bodies are stuck together, just as they should be, and we’re ramming it, swearing into each other’s ears like a whore and her brutish punter in the alleyway.

One of those enormous, noisy fire trucks that looks like a toy roars down the street, choosing the moment when it reaches the entrance to our alleyway to sound its horn and wind up its siren. We both jump in alarm as the sound invades our space, but the renewed commotion of the city around us doesn’t stop us rutting like a pair of dogs.

In an apartment a few metres above us, my lover’s ex-wife is pacing up and down in her hot, stuffy sitting room, dragging her fingernails across the fabric of the thick curtains and showering curses on our heads as we start to come.

I grind against my Gustav and feel his teeth biting into my neck again as he shudders to his climax, and I suck him in, keeping him inside me until I’ve no more strength. We slither down the grimy wall in a tangle of limbs until we’re sitting amongst the cans and pizza boxes and spilt beer and Coke and cat piss and who knows what else, needles and condoms probably.

We collapse, panting and exhausted, on to the dirty paving stones of this backstreet alley.

The fire truck has gone and the street is quiet again.

‘No is the answer,’ Gustav says into the night quiet. He rakes my hair roughly off my face so that he can see me clearly. ‘I don’t want her back.’

I keep my eyes on the gold crinkle round one iris that gives him that wolfish look.

‘But she wants you, Gustav. She has your things in the flat. Shirts. Wedding gifts. She won’t rest till she—’

‘I don’t want anything of hers. She leaves me cold. I feel stone dead inside when I look at her, compared with the passion that burns me when I look at you.’ He shudders. ‘She was sexy as hell, Serena. Pure lust blinded me to the reality of how rotten she was. Hard to believe it now. She physically repels me. But back then it was a need, greed, hunger, an itch, I don’t know, a virus. It wasn’t love. Never love. You couldn’t love someone so empty and cruel. I’ve told you I was besotted with her for a few short years. She could have me on my knees just by raising her eyebrows, and on my knees is where I ended up. That’s not love, is it? How could it be? It’s not even as meaningful as hate. It’s just – emptiness. I was broken. I lost Pierre. But at least I was free. There’s a vital piece of her missing, cara. There always was.’ He bashes his fist at his chest. ‘Was it the ice queen who had a chip of ice where her heart should be? Margot doesn’t get how normal mortals live. How far you can go before you stop being forgiven. She doesn’t get any of that.’

I nod. I feel safe with my face cradled in his fingers like this, but now that the cold is creeping into the space left by the heat of passion, I don’t feel sexy any more. I feel dishevelled and anxious. And the lies about me and Pierre are still circulating like vultures in the air.

‘Margot was up here for a long time.’ He taps his forehead. ‘But she’ll never be in here.’ He taps his heart. ‘That’s where you live.’

He winds my hair round his fingers and pulls my face tight against his.

I cling to him, shivering with fear and cold and exhaustion.

And then his phone buzzes.

‘Leave it! Leave it!’ I cry, trying to stop him getting to it. ‘Don’t answer it!’

Gustav keeps his eyes on me as he untangles his fingers and takes the phone out of his pocket. I can see the fire ebbing from him, replaced by a steady distance.

Margot’s eyes, slicing into me just now. Not looking at Gustav. Looking at me.

The eye in the peacock feather.

‘Is it Margot?’

He shakes his head, still studying the screen. ‘Not even she can hack into my phone. It’s Pierre. He’s seen my missed calls.’

I open my mouth. Shut it again. I step back from my lover, feel the cold, dirty air rushing between us as he frowns and texts something back.

‘What did he say?’

He presses send, still not looking at me. Waits for the reply, which comes rapidly with another double buzz. He reads it, starts to text a reply, then changes his mind and drops the phone back into his pocket.

At last he looks at me again.

‘Pierre is catching tomorrow night’s flight out of LAX.’

I nod, then take his face in my hands and rub my cheek against the hard plane of his jaw, feeling the rasp of his harsh bristles. ‘This is me. In your heart. In your head. I’m yours for as long as you want me.’

He doesn’t smile, but squeezes me, hard. ‘So prove it by swearing something, Serena. On that diamond ring.’

I hold myself very still. ‘What do you want me to say? And why do you need me to swear it?’

‘Before I ask Pierre this question I want to hear it in your voice, your words.’ He lifts me to my feet, tugs my lace dress around my cold, shaking knees, straightens my jacket. ‘Swear to me that my brother has never been inside you.’

Instead of soothing me, the massaging jets are irritating me. The Jacuzzi’s too big to wallow in alone. You could easily drown beneath the frothing surface, and no one would know for hours.

Gustav is already up and dressed. He was out nearly all day yesterday. We barely spoke, and this morning he’s been out to buy food and is now doing his chef thing, preparing mussels in a creamy white wine and tarragon sauce. I woke up late in our empty bed after a second restless night peppered with dreams of a hot, cluttered flat. Margot Levi was standing behind a judge’s bench wearing a black gown, like a bat, handing down death sentences. Then she was dancing out of an enormous mahogany wardrobe wearing a very short bridal gown, pulling the petals off armfuls of white roses.

Waking up wasn’t the relief I needed. I was aching and stiff and I needed Gustav.

I wander into the kitchen to find him buttoning up his whites. He knows it turns me on to see him pretending to be Gordon Ramsay. He looks so gorgeous. He hasn’t shaved since we got back from Margot’s apartment two nights ago, so his face is shadowed with what I call his bandit beard. His glossy black hair keeps falling over his eyes as he bends over the steaming pot.

‘Moules marinière? A little extravagant for lunchtime isn’t it, honey?’ I murmur, coming up to him and winding my fingers through his hair. ‘Doesn’t that smack of the prodigal son?’

Gustav lets me secure his black hair, which has grown just past his collar, into a silly ponytail so that it won’t fall into his eyes, but he keeps watching for the pops to pierce the rolling water. So preoccupied.

‘It’s Pierre’s favourite.’

I step over to the coffee machine and pour myself a cup. But it’s not caffeine I need. My heart is clattering along too fast as it is. Valium. Dope. I need some kind of sedative.

I close my eyes and try to count down my heart rate. ‘How long is the flight from LA?’

‘Less than six hours. He’s been on that plane while you’ve been asleep. He’ll be landing at JFK any time now.’

I gaze up through the skylight to the bright blue sky. There are no clouds. No white streams carved in the ether by departing or arriving planes. What are the chances of Pierre just, well, not showing up?

Gustav is testing each mussel. He runs his fingertips over each ridged black shell and without looking he rejects any bad ones that are open too early, casting them with perfect aim into the bin.

I look away, back up to that blue sky. Spring has arrived overnight. That late-March brightness, the hint of sunshine, the promise of warmth, should be filling me with birdsong and thoughts of weddings and honeymoons, but instead I only have the sensation of sliding too fast along a walkway.

I can’t get off. Although I don’t want to get off. Not if Pierre is waiting at the other end.

When he makes his way through the airport he’ll step on to one of those conveyor belts and move steadily towards us. He’ll have minimal luggage. No luggage, preferably. He’s not stopping long.

I blow across the surface of my hot coffee.

‘Gustav. Stop a minute. We’ve barely spoken in the last two days. Be honest. Are you angry with me for stirring all this up with the feather and Margot and Pierre?’

Gustav holds a shell above the boiling water, ready to drop it in. He glances up at last. The reflection from the cooking pot makes his black eyes look as if they are bubbling, too.

‘All of the above. Also none of it. My darling girl, so sweet and so sleepy. I wish you’d never gone to Venice on your own and yes, I know that was my fault, too. But since you ask, I’ll admit it. I’m still rattled by what you’ve told me. What Margot said.’ He drops the unfortunate shell into the water and picks up another. ‘Seeing her is like ripping at an old wound when you thought the scar had healed and finding it’s as raw as ever. But also I’m nervous about Pierre’s reaction when I confront him. He’s capable of fighting to the death just for the sake of it. Bizarrely I want him to corroborate every vitriolic thing she said. Then at least it will all be clear, and we can start again.’

The shells start raining down into the water.

‘Except the bit about me.’ I take a sip of coffee and it burns my mouth. ‘If he just admits the truth about what he was playing at in all this, no one need be angry or nervous. Ever again.’

We smile at each other for a long, simmering moment across the steam. Then Gustav lifts the lid, ready to clamp it on top of the pot.

‘And if you don’t get out of my favourite shirt and into some decent clothes I will have to work off this tension by ravishing you right here. Right now.’

I duck away before he can come round the counter, and run back into the bathroom.

Now I’m standing in front of the full-length mirror, sweaty yet shivering. My breath puffs rapidly on to the glass as I study my naked reflection. I’m no fatter, no thinner. My breasts are still high and full, the red nipples hardening as soon as I think about them. My waist is tiny, my hips feminine, my legs long. The curves that were hidden for the first twenty years of my life. It wasn’t so much Gustav who changed me. It was Crystal, our assistant, who I suddenly wish was here.

It’s thanks to her that I dress this body up like a proper grown-up woman these days, not like someone who has just crawled out of a horsebox.

I’m no different from two days ago. My eyebrows have been groomed professionally so that they somehow follow and refine the line of my cheekbones. My eyes are hazy and big with anxiety and fatigue, and the bright light in the bathroom gives them a darker hue, a kind of laurel-leaf green. They are staring back at me as if peering out of a dark well. There’s a shadow behind them, as if someone else is in there with me, looking out.

What is different is my mouth. It’s always full, but it’s come up bruised and crushed. The lower lip is swollen from where I bit it hard as Gustav pinned me against the wall. Kisses that felt like punches.

I pick up a comb and start to drag it listlessly through my hair. I relish the snag when it catches at the roots. One by one, I start to curl tendrils of my hair round my fingers. I have a new long fringe, and trim only the ends of my hair now, so it still flows to my waist.

I’m up high, like Rapunzel in her tower. I glance out of the window as I comb. From here I can see the Hudson River. The sun is nearly overhead. It’s the first time since we arrived in New York at Christmas that I’ve seen the sparkle of it on the water and the deep sharp shadows cast from the high buildings by the stronger light.

I’m about to squeeze styling gel on to my hair, just as Crystal has nagged me to do to banish the frizz, and then I stop. No. No hairstyling. I turn back to the mirror. No make-up, even. I don’t want to look as if I’ve made any effort for Pierre. I don’t even want to be here, except that Gustav has insisted. It’s about the only thing he’s said to me, with the new gruff edge that’s been in his voice and his manner, since we left Margot’s lair.

My stomach tightens. If I can push that woman to the perimeter, just for a few minutes, I can dwell on what happened when we got down from her apartment to terra firma. Gustav shoving me through the rain and into that filthy alleyway, pushing me up against the wall beside the dumpsters.

I turn and look at the vivid red scratches scoring my back as if he’s been whipping me, right down my butt and my legs. They are stinging from the soap. I flinch as I run my fingers over each one. My eyes are drawn back to my neck, which has a ring of angry red bite marks around it.

I look as if I’ve been raped.

Tears rise up in my eyes. I can’t hold on to anything positive right now. I can’t hold on to the sexiness of being fucked by Gustav like that. It was just him and me, and it was earth-shattering, but something else was driving him.

And hovering around us still, like a cloud of mosquitoes, is the triumvirate, that exclusive threesome of Gustav, Pierre and Margot.

‘He’ll be here in about half an hour.’

Gustav’s hands are on me. I’m in front of the mirror with my eyes closed, resting on my forehead. He has a soft white towel and he dabs it gently over the scratches on my back, over my arms, down my legs. Between my legs.

‘Your hands smell of fish,’ I murmur, leaning against him.

‘And you feel tense as a wire brush,’ he replies, running his warm hands over my sore skin until it starts to prick up in goosebumps of pleasure. ‘You still brooding over that meeting with Margot?’

‘That, and everything else.’ I try to wriggle away, but he places his hands over my breasts to keep me still. ‘I don’t like any silence between us, G. But I don’t have anything sensible to say, either.’

Despite everything that’s whirling away in my brain, my body has other responses. My nipples shrink and poke against him, sending urgent messages of desire down my body.

‘Silence is fine, so long as it’s not secretive. You’re shaking, chérie. What is it?’

‘Where were you yesterday? You didn’t leave a note.’

‘This isn’t like you. Not far.’ He goes very still, his hands still clamped over my breasts. ‘Yesterday I had to attend to something that cropped up at work. You were dead to the world nearly all day. And this morning I was in the French delicatessen.’

‘I was afraid when I woke up and you weren’t here. You didn’t see the look your ex-wife gave me.’ I keep my eyes closed. ‘She says she had this place bugged, though you’ve not been able to find anything. But still, she knows where we live, Gustav. She knows everything about us. And she wants you back.’

‘She can’t hurt us. I won’t let her. But would it help you to know that I’ve taken the practical step of issuing photographs of her to all employees, at all our business premises, and told them she’s banned from coming anywhere near? Likewise, I’ve detailed the guys downstairs to question any visitor who claims to be a friend of ours.’

‘She’s the mistress of disguise though, isn’t she? A burly doorman with a photofit isn’t going to stop her if she really wants to get to us.’

Gustav runs his hands thoughtfully over my breasts, making them swell with longing, then moves one hand lower, down over my stomach.

‘She’s past it, Serena. All she has in her arsenal is angry words. She’s incandescent that we’re getting married, but she can’t touch us now. I want you to see this diamond ring as your talisman. It tells you I love you. It tells her she has no place in our lives. And it makes me more determined than ever to get a date in the diary.’

He breathes into my hair and I smile weakly. ‘So if nothing can touch us, why do we need to see Pierre?’

‘To make things absolutely crystal. I want to get back to the way we were. And then I want to focus on our engagement, and our future.’

I lean against him. ‘He has never been inside me, Gustav.’

His hand finds its way home, between my thighs. One finger starts to run over the damp crack.

His fingers part me. ‘You’re all tight and tense, like a jittery mare. How about I find another way to relax you?’

‘We haven’t got time!’ I start to push him off, but Gustav’s black eyes are gleaming behind me in the mirror. His glossy hair is still secured in the ponytail so that the scary beauty of his face is accentuated. Despite his soothing words, he’s looking at me as if he’s far away. As if he’s never seen me before.

If it wasn’t so terrifying it would be unbelievably sexy. Strangers in the steamed-up mirror.

He catches my hands and slaps them up against the glass, and then I hear the rip of his zipper.

‘There’s always time.’ He kicks my legs apart, bends me over, and then his hardness is there, nosing its way into the damp softness. I stretch my arms so that the mirror is at arm’s length. His hands leave my body and press down on mine again. Our reflected eyes lock as he pushes further into me, then pauses. There’s that question again, flickering far back in his head.

Is he asking where I’ve been? Or is he asking who I am? Or after the roughness and haste of the other night, and the scratches on my back from the brick wall in the alleyway, is he seeking permission?

‘Just be gentle with me, Gustav.’ My knees buckle. ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’

‘I don’t want you to talk,’ he mutters into my hair. ‘I just want you to come back to me.’

My fingers squeak against the mirror, clawing for purchase, but there’s nothing to support me, just a smooth slippery plane of unforgiving glass. My mind goes as blurry as my reflection as the desire loosens and envelopes me. My lover, my husband-to-be, draws back to enter me with the strange new force that possesses him. His fingers tangle with mine up against the mirror, my arms press us both back as if we are resisting our own open-mouthed reflections, as if someone at arm’s length is doing this to us.

He pumps harder, faster, and I push against him, away from the mirror. He is saying something through gritted teeth, like he did the other night. Only this time it’s not bitch, bitch, bitch. It sounds like mine, mine. Mine.

All too soon the warmth of his climax starts to gush inside me as my body squeezes tight around him. I hold him there, bucking against him, and just as I come there’s the melodic tone of our doorbell singing round the apartment, interrupting, clashing.

‘Oh, God, he’s here. Spoiling everything.’

I bow my head between my arms, panting for breath, my legs shaking like a newborn colt’s as Gustav sweeps my wet hair away and kisses my neck. He’s still inside me.

‘Whatever he did to you, just remember that you’re mine now.’

He pulls out of me, zips himself up and backs out of the bathroom, still looking at me in the mirror until he’s out the door and hurrying along the hall to let in his brother. I gaze at the space he’s left, my body still clutching for him, still throbbing, longing for him to stay inside me.

Slowly, reluctantly, I get myself dressed and check my reflection again. No make-up. No scent. I’m putting on no jewellery or pretty dresses or high heels to honour this state visit of Pierre Levi.

I pad down the apartment towards the sound of the brothers’ deep voices. I pause at the entrance to the huge, light-filled sitting room. All you can see from this angle is the sky. For a wild moment I long to be a bird flying up there, far away from this room, this apartment. Even this city.

‘Hi, Serena. Thanks for – it’s good to see you. You look – you look a bit feverish. Are you OK?’

I’m fine. My fiancé just took me from behind in the bathroom, that’s why I’m all flushed.

I ignore Polly’s off-stage prompt, afraid I might start to snuffle inappropriately.

The two men are standing on either side of the long mantelpiece, separated by the suspended, and unlit, fireplace. My eyes skate over them, unwilling to settle on either, and especially not on Pierre. Although they are already holding glasses of beer, there is too wide a space between the brothers, something awkward in their stance, the way they swivel quickly towards me when I come into the room as if I might offer some light relief.

‘Hello, Pierre. You got here quickly.’

I take the glass of Chablis that Gustav hands me and sip from it as I walk past him towards the window. The wine flows through me and I know it’s making my face even redder. On an empty stomach it hits the spot instantly. The tension doesn’t release its grip, but it loosens a little.

‘Just in time, by the look of it, sis. Have you been in a fight? My God, if anyone has hurt you—’

I round on him before I can stop myself. ‘I told you on the phone the other night. Don’t ever call me that!’

I avoid Gustav’s eyes. Thank God I decided against a skirt and high heels. I’ve pulled on a slouchy pair of harem pants – glorified pyjamas really – and a creamy cashmere sweater and kept my feet bare. Even so, I’m prickly and self-conscious as I settle down on the wide windowsill, my favourite spot in the apartment. You can see Central Park from here. There’s a new dusting of pale green on the treetops. My senses are vibrating like the antennae of those minuscule insects you see on wildlife programmes. Anticipating the predator.

‘You look comfortable there. That’s where we watched the fireworks on New Year’s Eve,’ says Pierre. ‘Kind of where this all began.’

I turn my back on the fledgling spring day that has arrived overnight and allow myself to look at him. No green coat. No velvet breeches. No peacock feather. Just a new hangdog expression.

Before I know what’s happening, I have flown across the room and smacked him, hard, across the face.

The sound ricochets around the room. Pierre takes the blow with barely a flinch. Just a momentary closing of his dark eyes. The silence ticks by as we watch my handprint come up in livid stripes.

So much for growing wiser. I shouldn’t have done that. I daren’t look at Gustav.

‘Nothing began,’ I reply coldly, backing away from him. ‘Not between you and me, anyway. Come on. You know why you’re here, so let’s just get on with it.’

‘Serena, please.’ Gustav clears his throat. He starts to walk towards me, eyeing his brother as if he might bite, or make a run for it. He changes his mind and stays where he is, halfway between us. ‘She has a right to be angry, though, P. That bitch Margot has told us everything.’