Читать книгу The Diamond Ring - Primula Bond - Страница 8

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.

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.’

‘I can’t think what she’s told you. I haven’t spoken to her since that night at the theatre. I thought she’d long since left New York when I told her I wasn’t playing ball.’ Pierre’s knuckles whiten as he clutches his drink. ‘She was grossly insulted, of course, rained down curses on my head. On all our heads—’

‘Which is why I’d abseil into a volcano rather than be in her presence again.’ Gustav keeps it very quiet. ‘But into her presence we were enticed. It transpires she did leave New York, but only to track your movements in Venice. She sent us your peacock feather as evidence of your gatecrashing the Carnivale ball and pretending to be me. It spooked us, as intended, but we – Serena – thought it was from you. From your Venetian costume.’ Gustav gestures towards the caramel suede sofa facing the window. ‘Sit down.’

‘You’ve told him everything?’ Pierre doesn’t move, but fixes his eyes on me.

‘Of course I have. That’s why you’re here,’ I reply, edging round the other sofas back to the windowsill. ‘Your brother wants to hear it from you.’

‘I know Margot instructed you to do whatever it took to remove Serena from the equation so that you, and she, could get close to me. She made out the twisted argument that Serena would somehow block any reconciliation between us, which would be funny if it wasn’t farcical.’ Gustav sighs and gazes at me, the flame in his eyes so hot Pierre can’t possibly miss it. ‘All this girl has ever done is support our efforts. But then at the first sign of trouble in our relationship you took the idea and ran with it. You fancied my girlfriend for yourself.’

I rest my fingers on the window for a moment. ‘That sound like a fair summary to you, Levi?’

Pierre plonks himself down and pushes his body into the corner of the big sofa as if trying to make himself smaller. One knee jerks up and down so much that he puts the glass down on the table.

‘Yes, I was in Venice. And yes, I was with Serena. But all I want is for us to be friends,’ Pierre pins his eyes on me as he touches the red mark. ‘I come in peace.’

My hand still stings as I study his face. He’s lost some of the chunkiness around the neck and shoulders. The aggressive spiky hair has relaxed into surprising wild curls and the Californian sun has already tanned him. He’s smart, and clean, surprisingly so, in a lightweight blue suit.

Goddammit, he’s looking good.

But the best thing is that now he looks a lot less like Gustav.

Now he’s here in front of me, I let myself feel it for the last time. Pierre’s weight. The give of the cushions beneath us. His hands on me—

‘When you say with Serena’ – Gustav takes a step towards Pierre, then veers round him and walks to the other end of the room – ‘did you want her for yourself?’

Pierre’s eyes slide over to his brother. There’s a strange calmness about him I don’t remember seeing before. And a tinge of sadness. But that could still be fake. As Margot said, the guy lives and works with actors. This humility is probably assumed, like everything else about him.

‘What has she told you?’

‘I’m asking you to tell us the truth, P. It’s not up to Serena to defend herself.’

Pierre puts his head in his hands and it’s a relief to have that glittering black stare extinguished for a moment. ‘I mean Margot. What has she told you?’

‘That you fucked my fiancée.’

The vicious words scatter around the space. Pierre and I flinch simultaneously. My head knocks against the thick glass window pane, setting up a new aching throb through my body. Pierre keeps his eyes on me, as if we are two naughty pupils being chastised by the headmaster.

Gustav’s eyes move from me to his brother and back again as he starts to pace back towards the sofa.

Pierre collects himself and sits up straighter. He pushes forward slowly. He fixes his eyes on me. On the bites on my neck. My bruised, unpainted lips. My hair, tied in two loose plaits. He folds his arms. He could say anything right now. Absolutely anything. And it would all be over. This triangle taken apart, brick by brick. The three of us would never see each other again.

‘Serena was so beautiful that night, G. You should have been there.’

Pierre has taken aim and shot us.

‘What the hell kind of answer is that?’ Gustav gasps, grabbing at his brother’s folded arms to wrench them out of the defensive position. ‘What did you do to her?’

Pierre catches Gustav’s hands and pushes them away from him.

‘I wanted her. OK? I admit it. Look at her. She’s gorgeous. I’d fancied her since – oh, God, I was going to say since that evening she and I spent talking in the Gramercy cocktail bar, but if I’m honest it was as early as New Year’s Eve, when I showed her the scars from the fire. Nearly every woman in my life has been repelled by my body, Gustav. You wouldn’t know what that’s like. But Serena? She just looked as if she wanted to help.’

‘One of the many reasons I adore this girl.’ Gustav folds his arms now. His legs are slightly akimbo, like a soldier. He glances across at me. ‘But she’s mine. Not yours.’

Mine, mine. Mine.

They are both studying me as if I’m an exhibit in a trial. There’s unabashed admiration in Pierre’s face, and pure, possessive love in Gustav’s. I jam my hands between my knees and say nothing.

Pierre stands up, takes a couple of paces and kicks at the basket of logs beside the empty fire.

‘I have a vacuum in my life, Gustav, where a good woman should be. And don’t talk to me about Polly. I feel rotten about that, and one day I’ll tell her so. But Serena – the attraction grew worse after that day we spent at the theatre. Then we had those cocktails at the Gramercy Hotel. Serena wanted to know why I’d dumped her cousin, but even when I went off on a tangent, blaming Margot, blaming my scars, blaming everyone and everything for making me such a shit, she still listened. Anyway, when I arrived at your apartment a few days later to return the camera equipment she’d left behind at the theatre – and yes, I admit I’d deliberately locked it away as an excuse to visit her – you’d obviously had some kind of row, and she’d taken off to Venice. Alone. So I took a chance. I’m a chancer, G. You know that. Only this was the most dangerous gamble I’d ever taken.’

‘You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know, P.’ Gustav growls. ‘Did you fuck Serena in Venice?’

Margot’s words, screaming at us down that dark stairwell.

They were fucking, Gustav!

Pierre hesitates, then turns back towards us. I wish he wouldn’t stare at me like that. As if somehow I can save his life.

‘Serena was a vision. The gown matched her eyes, as I knew it would. I’m experienced enough with costume fitting to be able to estimate her vital statistics, and boy, she spilled out of it in all the right places. OK, sorry, you don’t want to hear that. But it wasn’t just me who was captivated when she floated into that ballroom, Gustav. Nobody could take their eyes off her. And she hadn’t a clue – at least, not until the other guests started groping her! There she was, with her mask and her camera, and the five peacock feathers in her headdress like a beckoning hand. I had organised every detail so that I could have her. I pretended to be you, I made sure we were in matching costumes, I didn’t deny it when she kept calling your name. I knew she’d never go with me otherwise, and oh, God, I was so close to having her—’

‘You’re making me feel sick. Just be a man and tell me exactly how she sussed out you were tricking her. And tell me whether you passed the point of no return.’

Pierre pauses and looks at me. He scratches his tanned cheek.

I can remember the glitter of his eyes that night in Venice. It was all I could see of his face. He bruised me when he slammed his gloved hands over my mouth to hush me, but that roughness excited me all the more. I can remember the noises outside the gondola, the carnival revellers, the wash of a passing boat, our gasps as we pulled at each other’s clothes—

‘Pierre, you know what to do. You know what to say. You’ve come all this way,’ I murmur, turning my hot cheek to lean against the cool glass. ‘But if you lie to Gustav now, just like Margot did, so help me, your life won’t be worth living.’

A message, a kind of shooting star, flares between me and Pierre. We’re in this together. We were the only ones there on that Valentine’s night.

‘Serena is as innocent as she ever was. She did nothing wrong. I tricked her, because I wanted her. Her only sin was thinking I was you and responding just as she would have responded to you. She was over the moon! She thought you’d come to carry her home. She was so thrilled, so eager, so passionate, so sexy – in those few precious moments, even though I knew it was false pretences, even though it would only ever be the once, I got a taste of how it would feel to be you—’

‘No, no, don’t listen to this, Gustav. Please!’

But Gustav steps forward, his fists up again. ‘I’m warning you, Pierre!’

‘It didn’t happen. OK? Nothing happened! I didn’t fuck her! We were disturbed, and Serena pushed me away the moment she felt these bloody scars on my back. They’re my brand. They always spoil everything. She kicked me right in the bollocks and then she was out of the boat like a bat out of hell.’

Gustav stares at his brother, then down at his fists. He uncurls his fingers, one by one, and flexes them as if they hurt. Then he opens them, as if letting something fly away.

‘Which is exactly what Serena told me.’

‘Voilà.’ Pierre joins his own hands together and taps his mouth with his forefinger before pointing it at me. ‘Mea culpa. She’s obviously been terrified of telling you how close we came, but none of it, not one moment, was her fault. And I’m so, so sorry. I’ve had time to think about this, time away from Margot, time away from you. I tried to do a terrible thing. I won’t blame you if you banish me from your life again. But it only happened because she thought I was you, Gustav, you lucky bastard. Serena loves you.’

Gustav slowly unfolds his arms and bends to straighten the log basket. He picks up his beer glass and stares into the amber froth.

‘Do you love her, though? Did you fall in love with my fiancée?’

Pierre rubs his hands over the new black curls, making them bounce and stand on end. He stands like that for a moment as if pressing thoughts into his head. Then he slaps his hands down.

‘Look at her. I think she’s incredible. Beautiful, talented and wise beyond her years to have entranced you the way she has. I was blinded. Knocked off my feet. Exactly the same way you were. But ultimately I think I’m incapable of loving anyone, G.’ He shrugs, unaware that he’s echoing the words I used before. ‘Except you.’

Gustav nods, a mixture of sadness and weary amusement playing round his mouth.

‘In which case I feel sorry for you, Pierre. And angry. But I’m angry with myself more than anything. I took my eye off the ball. But this isn’t about me. It’s down to Serena to forgive you.’

Pierre hesitates, then walks across to the window. His musky scent reaches me before he does: attractive, strong, yet my temples are throbbing painfully before he reaches me and holds out his hand. I remain motionless, the window hard and cold behind me.

‘I’m sorry, Serena. I behaved atrociously to a lovely girl who didn’t deserve it. I took a chance, like I always do, and put you in a terrible position. But maybe I did you a favour—’

‘Pierre!’ Gustav growls, putting his beer glass down with a smack and taking a step towards us. ‘That’s not the way it’s done!’

‘—because I only demonstrated, if it needed demonstrating, that the two of you are still unbreakable.’

Pierre’s hand is firm, unwavering, in the air in front of me. There is a long silence, so deep I can hear the fridge humming in the kitchen and two birds arguing on the roof above us. I feel light and insubstantial as I take Pierre’s hand, feeling his fingers close around mine, and shake it.

‘You did something very dangerous, Levi,’ I say quietly, and glance over to Gustav. His eyes are shining with delighted relief. ‘But for Gustav’s sake, and for the sake of our future together, I want to achieve some kind of harmony between us. You’re a boneheaded bloody idiot, but fine – I forgive you.’

Pierre bows like a pageboy. ‘And I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you.’

I let him kiss my hand but as he lowers it again the pale-blue cuff of his shirt sleeve peeping from his blazer triggers fresh questions in my overactive mind. I snatch my hands away and shove them under my legs.

‘Pierre. This may sound like a silly question when we’re all being so serious, but why did you keep Gustav’s shirts, all pressed and starched, in your cupboard when you were living at Margot Levi’s apartment?’

‘It’s no secret that I was squatting there. I never pretended it was my place! But as for keeping G’s clothes, I left in a hurry for LA, and although some of my winter gear is still there, that’s all. Believe it or not, that apartment has always been more like a monk’s cell for me. I barely spent any time there. Preferred to sleep in other people’s beds. Sorry. Maybe that was a bit inappropriate.’ Pierre straightens and shakes his head. ‘Why would I hoard Gustav’s shirts after years of not seeing him? We’re not even the same collar size!’

There is not one iota of comprehension as the brothers shrug at me. I tap the side of my head.

‘Don’t look at me as if I’m mad. I wish I’d never mentioned it now, but – Gustav’s wedding shirt is there. Wing collar. Silver tiepin. And the missing cufflink that matches the one I found in Lugano. The one with the initials GL engraved on it.’

Any animation in Gustav’s eyes dies. He touches the cuffs of the maroon shirt he’s put on today. ‘So Margot took the shirts. And the mementos. I told Dickson to burn them, or take them for charity, but—’

‘You threw away that other cufflink, though, didn’t you? There was no point keeping just one, you said.’ I stand up now. ‘And when I got so upset about it, you assured me you had disposed of every gift from Margot.’

‘Calm down, chérie. There’s not so much as a long black hair of hers left in any of the houses.’ Gustav nods, but his eyes have that closed-off look again. ‘She’s got nothing and no one in her life. She’s like Miss Havisham, hoarding old shirts and mismatched jewellery as if it will bring me back. Come on, girl. Rise above Margot’s morose obsessions.’

I let my head fall back against the strong, cold glass. ‘I’m sorry, Gustav. Seeing those things, those wedding things, just creeped me out, that’s all. That whole place made my skin crawl.’

Pierre hesitates, as if he wants to sit down next to me, then to my relief he goes to stand next to the suede sofa on the other side of the room.

‘Guys, I don’t want to sound the alarm bell, but this obsessive insanity is what I’ve been living with for months. I’ll be too far away now in LA to help, but I’m warning you. The ball you need to keep your eye on is Margot.’

‘I won’t have her name contaminating my day.’ Gustav steps abruptly towards the kitchen. ‘I have lunch to get sorted.’

‘Margot is on a mission, G. If she can’t have you, she’ll make sure no one will. She won’t rest until Serena’s out of the picture.’ Pierre follows Gustav and grabs his arm. ‘I’m not your nemesis. Margot is. She’s the danger you need to watch out for.’