The diagonal journey across Manhattan is like a parody of a car chase. We are in a rush to find Pierre, yet the evening traffic is against us and we are crawling rather than careering. The set of Dickson’s broad shoulders as he steers skilfully through the one-way grid system would normally make me feel safe and secure. But the atmosphere in the car is too tense.
Gustav keeps trying his brother’s number. I pray with all my might that Pierre is nowhere to be found, because he’s the one Gustav will listen to next. I’ve told him we sneaked off together, and then I realised my mistake and ran away, but how can I tell my fiancé how perilously close Pierre and I were to shattering everything?
Pierre won’t hold back. Oh no. He’ll rehearse every gory detail. The ripped muslin drawers, the velvet buttons flipping open his velvet breeches, my legs pulling him towards me as I urged him to hurry, the rope he tied round my wrist to keep me there. He won’t tell Gustav how I stopped him. He’ll put his own spin on it and say we went the whole way. He’ll convince Gustav that we’ve committed the worst possible deception.
We pass Katz’s Deli where Sally faked her orgasm in front of Harry – God, if only life was so simple – and cross over Rivington Street.
I can’t work out where we are. According to Polly, when she did some digging to find out more about him, Pierre lives in an apartment still owned by Gustav’s ex-wife Margot. But Polly said it was in Soho, not the Lower East Side, which is where we are now. It’s an area I’ve never been into, and after the almost eerie quiet of the Meatpacking District late at night, this place is still humming with neon-lit stores and cafés. Dickson drives behind the main drag and pulls round into a narrower street. The engine of the car sounds intrusive and loud bouncing off the tall, looming tenement buildings, where iron fire-escapes zig-zag across the red brick walls above the back entrances of bars and restaurants.
Polly was wrong. After all, she has never been here. Pierre never invited her to stay, even when, for those intense few months over the winter, they were lovers. Dickson, however, knows exactly where he’s heading. This might be Pierre’s apartment now, but Dickson must have driven here plenty of times in the past when someone else was in residence. When he had that other passenger in his car.
‘I hoped I’d never come to this godforsaken place again. Despite what Polly thinks she deduced, Margot has no hold over Pierre any more. She walked out of that apartment and out of his life six years ago, so the fact that he’s been living there all this time means he’s even more boneheaded than I thought,’ mutters Gustav half to himself as the car stops. He steps out into the cold night air and shudders as if someone has just thrown a bucket of iced water over him. ‘I guess staying there rent-free swung it for him. But I should have sold it when I had the chance rather than let Margot keep it.’
There’s the clatter of cutlery and barked orders from the surrounding restaurant kitchens. The primaeval heartbeat of club music thumps up from somewhere underground. But this street has a dark silence all of its own. It reminds me of the ghetto area of Venice where I wandered with my camera last month, thinking of Gustav. Thinking of Manhattan. Thinking it was all over between us.
The city noises clang and echo in my ears. The tall buildings in this narrow dark street are bending over, intent on crushing us. My fiancé turns his back on me, still clutching his mobile phone, and glares up at the mostly unlit windows in the building above.
I can no longer escape the series of disasters that has brought us to this narrow dark street. Maybe to the metaphorical end of the road.
The reason Polly had the incriminating photographs of me and Pierre which so infuriated Gustav was that she had been stalking us. The reunion of her boyfriend with his brother Gustav meant that when Pierre dumped her for no apparent reason after the New Year, Polly thought I could help her. So when Pierre commissioned me to shoot a storyboard at the theatre where he was working, that seemed like the perfect opportunity. Polly asked me to find out what was going on in Pierre’s head and ask him if he would take her back.
But instead of trusting me to carry out my mission, she decided to spy on Pierre and me in the Gramercy Hotel bar. And if she’d heard how graphic the conversation became she would have pounced on us sooner.
When I interrogated him about my poor cousin, Pierre decided not only to share but to shock. He laid out his entire sexual history in intimate detail. I was given chapter and verse about the volcanic sex he and Gustav’s ex-wife Margot indulged in after they had run away together, and how ultimately it destroyed him, because when she chewed him up and spat him out six months later, he realised no other woman would ever match up.
He had spent five years searching for the perfect specimen. Polly looked promising when they met at a magazine shoot. She was sexier than most, prettier, funnier, and English like him. They even shared a flair for fashion and style. But in the end, despite her connection with me and Gustav, she was the latest in a long line of casualties. Women who would never satisfy him.
Except that then, fired up by my slightly drunken attention, Pierre hinted that someone new might have come close. Me. He helped me into my coat as I prepared to leave, and knowing I was flummoxed by his insinuations he ran his lips across my mouth, and that’s what my cousin saw.
So Polly took this as hard evidence that I was the reason Pierre had dumped her. His own damaged psyche was too complex to grasp. And when she stormed into our apartment, Gustav chose to believe a couple of grainy photographs over my emphatic professions of innocence.
That was the night my world caved in. Polly thought I’d gone behind her back with the boyfriend she still wanted. Gustav thought I’d been unfaithful with his own newly returned brother. I was incandescent that the pair of them could have so little faith.
So I went alone to Venice. Vulnerable. Broken-hearted. The perfect target for Pierre Levi. He came after me, impersonated his brother and got within an inch of penetrating me.
But I need to focus on what’s happening now.
I follow Gustav towards the apartment block, but before I reach him I see that parked outside the entrance is a sleek grey Porsche.
‘Let’s go home, Gustav. Better still, let’s get that table you booked at La Lanterna before it goes to someone else. We’ve got plans to make! We can just walk away, and you and Pierre can carry on as you were. He got it wrong, that’s all. He’ll be like a cornered animal if we go storming in there. He’ll lash out.’ I tug on Gustav’s sleeve, aware that I’m mewling like a kicked kitten. ‘You won, and he lost! Think how embarrassed he’ll be!’
Gustav stares at the apartment building, his arm hanging by his side. ‘Embarrassment won’t cut it! He could try shame. Remorse, if it’s true that he tried to take advantage of you. Sorrow, for upsetting and confusing you like this. And as for winning and losing? Serena, this isn’t a competition!’
‘It is to him, Gustav! That’s just it! He’s desperate to be your little brother again, but he also wants whatever you’ve got! That’s how it’s always been. He wanted, and took, Margot—’
‘She stole him, you mean. She knew exactly how to hurt me the most. He may have been a willing participant, but he was still a kid.’ Gustav’s face is set in a series of hard lines as he takes another step across the pavement. ‘Going after my girlfriend six years later is totally different.’
Yet again I regret saying anything. I slide my hand up to his face, lay it on his cheek. I can feel the muscles flickering with tension around his clenched jaw.
‘We can drop this now. What’s important is that you and he have made up. You’re brothers. So he’s jealous. He looks up to you. He wants what you have. Gustav, you’ve both worked so hard to get back to where you were. Don’t spoil it.’
‘He’s the one who’s spoiling it. Just when my life was settled again. Just when I wanted to sit down and start thinking of where and when we might get married. Why does he never learn? Why did he have to mess with you, of all people? Why does he have to trample all over other people’s happiness like that? He had his own chance of romantic bliss with your poor cousin, and he blew it. He can’t have you. No one else will ever have you!’
We stare at each other out there in the street. The possessive words thrill me, but the new rage in his voice terrifies me, too.
‘I thought you were angry with me, Gustav. But if you’re not, let’s just – let’s just get away from here.’
‘I’m angry with everyone and everything at the moment. You think your life is finally on track – lovely girl, successful businesses, brotherly love restored, rosy future – and then a feather, of all things, wafts in out of nowhere and turns it all upside down. What you’ve said, or tried to say, has really shaken me up.’ He takes my hand and pulls me after him. ‘But it’s Pierre who has crossed a line.’
As we pass the Porsche, I touch the bonnet. The metal is still hot.
Gustav pushes open the big glass-panelled front door of the apartment building. We step out of the dark street into an even darker hallway. But there’s a certain faded grandeur to it, with high ceilings and period cornices. The wall-mounted lights flicker and crackle, making it even gloomier.
I try once more to stop this.
‘Pierre can’t help himself. Margot fatally corrupted him. I was a juicy challenge, just because I’m female. He was arrogant, and I was stupid. Darling, I’m so sorry. Your relationship with Pierre will survive this. No harm’s done. He’ll be hunting some other woman by now.’
Pierre’s boast comes back to me. Anything with a pulse and a pussy will do.
‘You’re not “some other woman”. You’re my woman.’ Gustav pulls me roughly towards him and kisses me. ‘Thank God he didn’t get what he wanted. But if I let it go, all that communication closes off again. Don’t you see? He needs to know he can’t shit on me.’
Our footsteps ring on the hard floor as we walk to the bottom of the stairs. I peer down. I can just make out the Victorian-style geometric pattern of terracotta blue and white mosaic tiles. Gustav takes the first stair then changes his mind, doubles back and calls the lift instead.
Panic rises like boiling milk inside me. ‘That feather, Gustav. Maybe it’s not a taunt, or a threat. Maybe it’s an admission of defeat.’ I hop from foot to foot as he punches the buttons on the old-fashioned lift. We hear the thick metallic clunk far above our heads. ‘His way of apologising?’
‘You’re not going to deflect me from this conversation, Serena. Pierre and I spent five years not speaking to each other, letting the misunderstandings fester. If we get this out in the open, especially with you here as well, we can clear the air. It’s the only way.’
Gustav puts his arm round me to usher me into the lift and closes the squeaking scissor gates. The lift creaks upwards, passing landing after deserted landing until we reach the top.
‘At least ring the doorbell to warn him,’ I whisper, though the building is silent as the grave. ‘We can’t just turn up unannounced!’
‘Watch me.’ Gustav shakes out a key and shoves it into the door with a decisive rasp. ‘You know perfectly well that I deal best in situations where I have the advantage.’
‘We know you’re here, Pierre!’ I call out as the door swings stickily open. I’m still clinging on to the last vestiges of hope that a couple of seconds’ warning will keep him on my side.
There is no answer. Gustav pushes away from me into the warm, musky darkness.
So this is the love nest.
I hover by the door, waiting for Pierre to show himself. I fear that instead of admitting to Gustav that he tried to seduce me, and that in any case I rebuffed him, he’ll stand there, gloating over the feather and all the havoc it’s caused. How he danced with me in Venice. How eager I was. How far he got. How far he wanted to go.
I feel the sour draught from the stairwell licking across my face as I wait in the dark entrance of the flat. I’m a trespasser. If I go inside, the rip tide will suck me back to that night. How can I ever explain my dirty excitement, how I relished the roughness of this strange, silent faux Gustav, how I lifted my skirts for him, opened my legs, his breeches open to display the extent of his excitement, that peacock feather dancing above my head, how I was begging for it, oh, how close we came to destroying everything?
Gustav is crashing about somewhere in the flat. I venture inside and feel my way down a hallway. An internal door gives as I fall against it, and a light switches on.
I’m standing in a black-painted bedroom strewn with clothes and shoes and belts, as if someone has just upended a suitcase. There are no pictures on the walls. Only a series of red-lacquer-framed mirrors. The ceiling is also totally mirrored. A black-painted carved bed dominates the space. It’s unmade, with scarlet pillows dented and punched and scarlet satin covers slipping off the mattress as if someone has just woken up and thrown them back. Hanging off the posts are handcuffs, whips, long chiffon scarves, executioner-style leather masks and muzzles as well as bejewelled and feathered Venetian masks.
There’s a scent in the air, but it’s not Pierre’s heavy, headachy scent, which I would know anywhere. It’s floral, with an exotic eastern tang of lemongrass and something else. The nostril-pricking aroma of female excitement. Gustav will be able to smell it, too. Maybe even recognise it.
I stare at the bed and remember what Pierre told me about this very room. As we sipped those strong fig cocktails in the Gramercy Hotel, he described the scene nearly six years ago when Gustav found his wife sitting on his brother’s face – just as she had threatened to do if Gustav ever crossed her – and threw them both out. After a few days in a London hotel, Pierre and Margot had come to New York and lived in this flat. She had kept him here for six months, tied most of the time to this very bed.
A draught of cold air rushes over my face. The thick curtains billow and I cross the carpet strewn with discarded underwear and stockings. But as I lean out to shut the window, the night air clutches at me. The hot, cluttered room behind me is shoving at my back, urging me to plunge into the dirty alleyway below.
Don’t be ridiculous. Polly’s in my head again. It’s not haunted. It’s just a bachelor bedroom done out with a tasteless penchant for Chinese brothel motifs. Which is odd, given Pierre’s a designer—
Well, it feels haunted to me. I close the window and lean my forehead on the glass. I miss Polly. I wish she was right here, like when we were kids, telling me what to do next.
There’s a tiny creaking sound. The door to the double wardrobe, painted in shiny red lacquer, is half open. I go to push it shut, but an internal light flicks on.
I expect to see a jumble of Pierre’s trademark leather jackets and jeans hanging there, but instead there’s a rail of immaculate men’s shirts, arranged through the colour spectrum from jaunty pink through deep blue to snowy white. Each sleeve has a sharply ironed crease and is buttoned to the neck.
The clean laundry smell of starch contrasts with the sluttish mess and manky scent of the rest of the room. The shirts sway under my fingers on their smooth wooden hangers. The last one is a white dress shirt, such as you would wear for a wedding, and as I separate it from the others I see that a silver grey cravat is tied round the wing collar, fastened with a simple silver pin.
It glistens in the light dancing from the tasselled lampshade above my head. I can’t resist pulling the shirt closer to look at the tiepin.
This doesn’t belong to Pierre. Because engraved on it are the entwined initials GL.
‘My brother has obviously moved some of his dancers in here. Two or three, judging by all this paraphernalia. So it’s group sex he’s into now!’ Gustav calls from up the hall. ‘None of his stuff is in evidence, but there’s knickers, make-up, theatrical costumes everywhere. The place is a tip.’
Where have I seen those initials before? I know they stand for Gustav Levi, but where have I seen that style of engraving? I turn the pin over, and a cold hand claws at my heart.
Across the back is the tiny inscription M and G. Forever.
Gustav is in the corridor, muttering something about a wasted journey, but I can’t move. This is the loving inscription from a bride to a groom, promising permanence. Encapsulated in those curly silver words is their relationship, their marriage, their life. When he was her groom. Not mine.
Everything Gustav has told me about her, the things Pierre told me about Margot and what she did to him with her whips and handcuffs; it all comes back to me. Those deep voices merging with story after story, trapping me in this overheated, over-furnished, stinking reminder of Margot Levi and the sexual power she had over both the Levi brothers.
When she had reduced Gustav to a debauched, diminished figure after five abusive years of marriage, Margot took Pierre. Her willing, besotted prisoner. She was the cougar. He was nineteen, easy meat. He’d lusted after her all the time she was married to his brother, fantasised about her when he heard them moaning in the night, and when at last he had her to himself, he probably thought it was for ever too.
PL and GL.
I let the shirt nestle back softly against its fellows and close the cupboard. I step backwards and fall back on to the bed. Margot was insatiable, Pierre told me. She couldn’t get enough of him. She would straddle him, or get him to take her from behind, several times a day, tying him, whipping him, drugging him either with dope to make him hornier or Viagra to make him harder, teaching him everything she knew about her world of punishment and pain, the world she once shared with Gustav.
GL.
Pierre couldn’t resist tormenting me with the notion that Margot’s particular brand of poison still flowed in Gustav’s veins, too. That after living with, and being married to, a mesmerising, demanding dominatrix like her, no woman would ever be enough for him.
The woman they both loved once writhed on this bed. I can see her black hair twisting like wire, the nodules of her spine flexing as she knelt up, impaling herself on the hard length of her sex slave. GL, or PL.
It’s the same image that tortured me in the chalet in Lugano where Gustav took me last winter. I blundered into Margot’s boudoir, thinking it had been cleared, but her stuff was everywhere. Her leather basque and boots invited me to try them on. Her collection of whips hung on their hooks, ready to deliver punishment. In my confusion that day I thought I might become stronger by dressing myself up in Margot’s clothes and in a way I did because, although Gustav went mad with anger when he found me, the anger turned, very quickly, into lust, and that’s the night when he first fucked me.
I know where I’ve seen those initials before. I yank open the wardrobe again. The same style of engraving was on the silver cufflink I found in the master bathroom in Lugano. Gustav declared that a cufflink without its pair was worse than useless. He told me that he had disposed of it, along with every other gift from Margot.
I snatch at the sleeve of the white dress shirt. One cuff is unfolded and bare. Fastened in the other is the missing link.
This place feels like a shrine to the unholy trinity of GL, PL and M. And I don’t belong.
I used to feel excluded like this as a child. Every day I came home from school to be ignored by unloving parents, knowing that in other families my friends were being welcomed into warm homes full of light and food. All I could do was stand in the darkness outside.
But I’m an adult now. I’m going to marry Gustav. I’m supposed to be in control.
‘Why is Pierre storing your shirts here?’ I slam the cupboard shut. ‘Your wedding shirt, for God’s sake?’
There’s no sound. Not even from the street outside. Nothing, then the creak of floorboards. I peer down the dark red painted corridor.
‘Pierre’s not at home, Gustav. This feels all wrong. Let’s just get out of here.’
Still he doesn’t answer. But the peacock feather that was in his pocket floats through the air from the room opposite the front door and drops to the floor.
‘I’ve been counting the days till you were in my boudoir again instead of that freeloading brother of yours. Or should I say our boudoir? Cat got your tongue, Gusty? I always did have that effect on you!’
A woman’s throaty voice, perforating the silence. The accent has a Germanic rasp and she pronounces his name ‘Goostie’.
A pair of spike-heeled red sandals steps through the open front door. The brief hope that they are attached to a harmless young dancer flickers and dies. A dancer wouldn’t be able to afford Jimmy Choo.
I’m about to meet the third member of the triumvirate. My legs give way beneath me and I crumple in the doorway.
The pointed toes stop right in front of me. She is wearing red stockings with a silky sheen. They crease very slightly as she lifts her foot.
‘You like the shoes? Sexy as hell, aren’t they? A little fetish, no? Gustav gave me these, when we got engaged.’
One pointed toe hooks itself under my chin.
‘Stand up straight.’ The voice segues from a croon to a snarl. ‘Slouching there like a slut.’
My face is levered upwards, leading my eyes up the long, skinny legs, past the red stocking tops and under a black trench coat where I catch a glimpse of a bare, waxed snatch glowing white in the shadows.
Margot Levi stamps her foot back on the floor. She puts her hands on her hips in an aggressive, questioning gesture as she swivels to face Gustav who is now standing in the corridor behind her.
He takes an unsteady step nearer. ‘Don’t you dare speak to Serena like that!’
She throws her head back and laughs. It’s a deep, rattling sound which seems to suck the breath out of her.
‘Still so angry and masterful, Levi. You used to leap to my defence in just that way!’ Margot points at me. ‘She too pathetic to stand up for herself? No, don’t answer that. I can see she’s just out of nappies! God, you two have goaded me for long enough.’
She is wearing a black beret just like mine. She pulls it off and tosses it with perfect aim on to a coat hook. Her black hair is plaited into cornrows, which she quickly coils into a bundle at the back of her head. A collection of dreadlocks falls over and conceals one side of her face, but the slanted black eyes glitter through the screen of hair. The cheekbones are still razor sharp and painted with the same theatrical matt white foundation she wore the first time I set eyes on her.
Margot has been creeping round the edges of our lives for weeks. Pierre made out I was going mad, but I’m certain now that she was dancing with him at the burlesque theatre the day I did the commission.
She tips her head sideways, the better to study me, and slowly starts to unbutton her coat.
Why on earth did I think I could avoid Margot for ever? I’ve seen her face repeated a hundred times over in the sketches that lined the walls in Lugano. I’ve seen her in a video she uploaded when I stupidly left my iPad at the theatre after that same shoot. She filmed herself holding a wedding bouquet of edelweiss, those almond-shaped eyes blinking flirtatiously.
This is for you, Gustav darling. Remember these pretty bridal flowers? Remember this wedding music? Remember me?
And it was her I saw at the Weinmeyers’ Venetian ball, dressed all in white with a gold mask, watching me. Watching Pierre as he pranced about in green velvet and peacock feathers and came to claim me.
‘No greeting for the love of your life, Gusty?’ she demands, pulling the black trench coat off her shoulders. She’s not topless underneath, thank God, but wearing a scarlet, sheer, see-through blouse and a red leather skirt.
‘You wouldn’t know true love if it took you up the arse!’ Gustav growls in a voice I don’t recognise, slamming her against the wall as he pushes past her. ‘I’d hoped I’d never breathe the same air as you again.’
He pulls me against his chest. I can hear his heart drumming crazily. Despite those ugly words, I realise he’s not just trying to protect me. I’m a shield protecting him.
‘Ah, my love, you have no idea. You see, we’ve been sharing the same air for months now. I know for instance that you have a silly flag hanging from that telescope on top of your apartment building. I know you kiss goodbye at the corner of the Dakota building every morning when you go your separate ways to work. Touching.’ Margot lets out a harsh sigh. ‘And when I’m not watching, I’m eavesdropping. Because my minion planted a bug in your apartment on New Year’s Eve, oh, and another in your gallery when the builders were in there. You’re going to be late for that reservation at La Lanterna, by the way!’
‘Go back to your desert island, Margot. Get out before I do something we both regret.’
His words hiss out, half-smothered in my hair.
‘Oh, Gustav. What’s happened to you? You never used to scare so easily.’ She laughs quietly behind us. ‘I’m not here to harm you. Why would I? I adore you! We were bound to come together again eventually. And you know how beautiful it is when we come together.’
The floorboards creak. The front door slams shut. Gustav groans and holds me so tight I can’t breathe.
And then Margot must have moved into another room, because music starts to play. Edith Piaf warbles in an old, scratchy recording from what must be the sitting room. Heavy curtains rattle shut across the window, the metal rings jostling and clattering. The French sparrow declares, quietly at first, then louder as the dial cranks up the volume, that she regrets nothing.
‘As for ordering me out? Impossible, I’m afraid, since this is my property, acquired from you in that very generous divorce settlement.’ There’s the pop of a cork being drawn from a bottle and the heavy chink of crystal glasses. ‘Oh, by the way, Gusty, did you like the peacock feather? My little visual joke? I went to all the trouble of posting it myself, even though your little tart was, ah, distracting you at the time.’
Gustav lets go of me and marches stiffly into the next room. ‘And?’
‘And it worked! You’re here, aren’t you? My pet, come to heel. And it’s not just any feather, my love. It’s the feather in your little brother’s cap.’
I hurry after him, dreading what she’s going to say next. ‘So if Pierre didn’t send it, how did you get hold of it?’
Margot has arranged herself like a queen on an oversized armchair upholstered in purple brocade. She is brushing the feather against her face. She turns briefly in my direction, glancing at my breasts, then turns back to Gustav.
‘I came here straight from Venice. There was no sign of Pierre or any of his things, but I found this feather. Lovingly arranged in that vase.’
We all look at a delicate flute on the mantelpiece, twisting and turning in waves like a whirlpool. It’s hideously ugly, veined with rainbow colours, but I recognise it as Murano glass.
‘So where is he?’ Gustav has reached her side of the room and stands over the big chair, the gas flames licking greedily at his legs.
‘My little puppet?’ Margot waggles her fingers like a clown. ‘I couldn’t care less.’
Everything about her, the white face, the red slash of lipstick, the cruel amusement, the ironic musical backing track, is reminiscent of The Joker. Neither Gustav nor I can speak.
‘He’s served his purpose. Six years ago he helped me humiliate you, Gustav, and now he’s helped me again.’ Margot’s eyes slither in my direction but fix on the golden locket, not my face. ‘All it took was a call from me supposedly out of the blue last autumn, when I heard this ginger-haired tramp was worming her way into your life and into your wallet. He was shocked and pretty hostile at first. We’d both abandoned him, after all. But once I applied the soft pedal and promised that I was a changed woman, that it wasn’t him I wanted, that I was simply heartbroken after six years without you, Gusty, he was ready to listen. He told me he was leading a normal life, chasing normal women, but that’s pure bravado. It was only a matter of time before he was crawling between my legs for an encore. Anyway, the breakthrough was when I told him I knew where to find you. He admitted he missed you desperately but hadn’t the bottle to start searching, and that was my cue. I convinced him that this little tart was in the way and he would never get close to you without my help.’
Every word sounds as if she’s spitting pips.
‘How did this work?’ demands Gustav. ‘The mechanics of it, I mean?’
I stare at him. ‘Don’t give her the oxygen, Gustav!’
She cuts through me. ‘Night and day I’ve been texting Pierre. The bird on his shoulder. The voice in his ear. I had to keep reminding him whose idea it was to broker this reconciliation; I had to keep him on your tail. I was his prompt, suggesting what to do and say. Right through Christmas. Even on New Year’s Eve, when he was in your apartment. Those initial bitter exchanges between the two of you came mostly from him, I might add. His way of saving face, I suppose. He was desperate to get close to you again, but making amends doesn’t come easily to him. He had to air his own myriad grievances before you could be brothers again. I’d forgotten how petulant he could be. All I wanted was for him to get rid of her, but oh dear. Look. She’s still here. The bare-legged waif and stray.’
She stops. There’s a pause between music tracks, no sound except the hiss of the gas fire. I want Gustav to look at me, but his eyes are fixed on Margot.
She points the feather at me, but her eyes are on him.
‘Six years is long enough without you, Gusty. The idea was for Pierre to get back in touch with you, pave the way, deal with this thorn in the flesh, and then I would step in. He could be part of our future or not, whatever he chose.’
‘So you and Pierre are not together?’
‘We never really were. Not six years ago. Not now. You’re the only one for me, Gustav. Oh, I promised him some sexy fun when I contacted him again, so long as he played ball the way I wanted it, but that only worked the first couple of times. Enough to reel him in, but he was faltering almost from the start. He wasn’t even grateful that I’d helped him find you. It proved quite traumatic seeing you again and he went on the offensive. That aggression, those fights! He could have blown the reconciliation completely. Then it came together too quickly, and this redhead runt – she’s different from the others. He wanted her. I told him he had to keep his prick in his pants, at least until I’d got you safely back, Gusty, so Pierre came up with the rather brilliant idea, at least in theory, of wheeling his randy friend Tomas into the mix to deflect any mischief away from himself.’
She pauses, separating the strands of the feather with a long fingernail while the words sink in.
‘Tomas?’ repeats Gustav, making the connection just as I fear he will. ‘I know that name. Serena? Who is he?’
‘No one important.’ I feel myself blushing scarlet but there’s no way out of this one. ‘Tomas is the guy who – he’s the guy you saw at the Club Crème. Who participated in that stupid striptease I did after I’d photographed the stags’ night. Then he went and told Pierre all about it.’
Tomas, who had come on to me back at Pierre’s Halloween party. Whom I rejected. And now I know why Pierre and Polly kept going on about him at New Year, suggesting he join us in a foursome when Gustav’s flight home from Lugano was delayed.
I swallow and glance up. Gustav doesn’t seem to be listening. He is watching Margot as if she’s a praying mantis.
‘That’s the one. Cute. Blonde curls. He carried out his first task at the Club Crème willingly enough. It could have worked, except Pierre was too jealous and told Tomas he wasn’t needed any more.’ Margot sighs. ‘Your brother was no good. He kept stalling. He became agitated around this little tramp, so I had to keep him sweet in my own inimitable way. I’ve still got it, Gusty. I was thinking of you the whole time he was in my bed. You remember my bondage trick with the blindfold and the horsewhip? But even while I was pleasuring him, he was harping on and on about how he liked your little tart. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He felt bad about what he was doing. You and she were the real deal, he said!’
‘And so we are,’ says Gustav in a very low voice. ‘Pierre’s absolutely right.’
‘Touching. Nauseatingly so,’ Margot mocks. ‘But where the brotherly love thing gets so biblical and amusing is that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He liked your little redhead way too much. So you see, however close you boys become, a woman will always drive a wedge. Women are Pierre Levi’s drug. His downfall. The more verboten she is the better. A lesson learned at my knee, of course. That’s why on New Year’s Eve he came rushing over here from your happy little reunion at the apartment, telling me he wasn’t happy with the plan, or indeed with me for dreaming it up, but then within ten minutes he was tied to the bed next door with his bottom in the air. He just can’t say no.’
‘Even so. He knew where his loyalties lay. Your plan didn’t work, Margot. Nothing will work.’ Gustav snorts. ‘You can stir that cauldron all you like. But it’s a total waste of time.’
‘I was beginning to think I would have to bring down the house of cards myself, certainly. And then what do you know? Paranoid Polly comes up with those photographs!’ Margot claps her hands gleefully, making me jump. ‘Hilarious! You all started falling out. I couldn’t have planned it better myself! I was poised to strike, and then he—’
‘You’re boring me now. I don’t want to hear about your warped thinking. Pierre isn’t answering his phone.’ Gustav clenches his fists. ‘What have you done with him?’
‘Look at me, Gusty. Look. At. Me.’ Margot licks her finger and runs it over her painted eyebrow. ‘He’s a grown man who regularly works out. You really think a petite creature like me could hurt him?’
‘Absolutely I do.’ Gustav takes a step nearer, then pulls back as if she might burn him. But now he’s too close to the fire. ‘You are capable of murder.’
Margot falls back in her chair theatrically, fanning herself with the feather. She even glances across at me, finally catching my eye with an exaggerated expression of conspiracy, as if to say, did he really just accuse me of something so dreadful?
‘Amazing that you boys both emerged from the same womb. Pierre Levi isn’t worth the effort. I’ve dispensed with him, but that doesn’t mean I’ve killed him!’ She rests her finger thoughtfully on her chin as her eyes fix on my golden locket. ‘The last time we were face to face he was alive and well and extremely rude. You were there, too. I surprised him at his scruffy little backstreet theatre, but under cover of the music and lights he told me yet again that he couldn’t do it. He told me the deal really was off this time. He wasn’t involving Tomas or anyone else. Finito. He said he’d fallen for his brother’s girlfriend. And then he went off on a date with her.’
‘Not a date. He and Serena had a business meeting, which ended with an over-affectionate farewell. His own admission.’ Gustav allows himself a grim smile as he folds his arms. ‘I must say I never thought Pierre would have the balls to tell you to take a hike!’
‘That boy doesn’t have balls, Gustav. Not like you. He’s weak, and he’s bitter. That delicious spunk of his has all dribbled away. You know how I like my lovers. Obsessed. Besotted. Enslaved. Not half-cocked or lusting after someone else. I mean, how insulting is that!’ She snaps her eyes back to Gustav. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. He’s gone. OK? My information is that he’s slunk off to LA.’
‘Now he can leave us in peace!’
It’s out before I can stop it. I clasp the back of the velvet sofa blocking my way into the over-furnished room. Gustav’s black eyebrows draw together as if he’s forgotten I’m there. He turns at last to stare at me.
‘Bravo! Spoken like a woman with a very guilty conscience!’ Margot’s catlike eyes and mouth tilt up in a triumphant smile which seems to stretch her skin until it looks too tight.
And there’s something different about her face. I’ve committed that face to memory, God knows, with and without such heavy make-up, but even allowing for the passage of time, something structural has changed.
‘He hasn’t slunk anywhere. He’s in LA for work.’ Gustav clears his throat, but he still sounds as if he’s chewing on pebbles. ‘He hasn’t sent the feather. He’s done nothing wrong. So he’s probably just delighted to have escaped from you.’
‘He’s done plenty wrong, Gusty.’ Still smiling, Margot starts to count off on her fingers. ‘Ask your precious jailbait.’
I stare at those bony older-woman’s fingers. The same fingers I saw at the burlesque theatre when I was filming the finale. Margot was reaching out of the wings to grab Pierre. I remember now that he didn’t looked pleased or even surprised to see her. Just hypnotised as they sketched a tango before the lights snapped out again.
But if he was terminating their arrangement as they danced, then something he said to me later that evening doesn’t ring true.
If Margot was here, I’d take her right now in front of you. I mean it. And she’d go with it. She doesn’t care where, when, who, what.
Margot’s voice punctures my thoughts. ‘The idea was to isolate your little plaything by drip-feeding terrible things about your past, dangle juicy young Tomas in front of her, whatever, all the while staying squeaky clean himself, but instead Pierre ripped up the agenda.’
‘Agenda? You make it sound like a committee planning world domination.’
‘There’s no other way of achieving your goal. You know that. But a plan is only as good as its execution and its fulfilment. Pierre lost his head. No amount of brotherly love was going to stop him from having a crack at this girl once the opportunity arose. And voilà! The two of you unexpectedly part, she storms off to Venice, he loses all loyalty except to his loins, and he goes in for the kill. All his own idea. And to be fair, even though I had no active part in it, his scheming in Venice nearly succeeded in toppling Saint Serena off her perch after all. Except the spineless little shit didn’t follow through.’ She stops, clamps her bright-red lips shut and closes her eyes as if in pain. ‘If you need a job doing well, just finish it off yourself. Which is why I am here.’
Gustav walks over to the fireplace and runs his finger along the mantelpiece, empty save for the horrible little vase and a trio of oversized black glass candlesticks. His hand is shaking. His black hair falls over his face as he stares into the fake flames for a moment.
‘Just so I don’t have to stay in this room a moment longer than necessary, let’s get this clear. You are saying this rapprochement with Pierre started off as a ruse? He came to find me in London, pretended to end our estrangement, purely on your instructions?’
Margot’s eyes snap open. Even her false eyelashes seem to radiate gleeful evil.
‘He’s changed a lot in the last six years, Gustav. A consummate performer! All that time he spends hanging round in theatres has paid off, fondling those petticoats, trying on those masks, watching how others make a profession out of lying.’
‘Not to me. He hasn’t been lying to me.’
‘Especially to you! If he was in this room with us now he’d be lying to save his sorry scorched skin.’ Margot lifts her chin in the air and presses her hand to her breast to imitate a pretentious actor. ‘He’s weak, like all of you. He couldn’t keep it up in the end. Either the act, or his cock.’
Gustav stares up at the ceiling, his mouth drawn tight. I follow his gaze. The ceiling has the same ornate cornicing as the lobby downstairs, but there is a large, urine-coloured stain running across it.
‘I don’t buy it. My trust in him has been right. You may have cooked up this situation, and I suppose I should thank you for that, but you’ve lost your touch. In fact, all of this has backfired. I knew it was genuine, however shaky it felt initially. Pierre and I have been building bridges. We’ve talked about things nobody else knows about. It’s meant the world to both of us. You can’t fake that.’ Gustav coughs and tries again. ‘Thanks to you, we’re closer than ever.’
‘And so will you and I be. See? What goes around comes around. It was only ever a matter of time. No one else matches up to me, and you know it!’ Margot puckers her lips ready to take a sip of red wine but pauses, waving the glass in front of her mouth. ‘Remember when we bought this dear little place? How we celebrated the purchase in front of this fire? You were my true love, taking me up the arse, as you put it in your charming English-gent way just now. Ooh, so rough and hard, just the way you always did. Just the way we liked it. I was on all fours for you, I was your dirty little bitch. Right where you’re standing!’
‘Don’t change the subject!’
Gustav clenches his jaw as I let out a stifled cry, but he can’t look at me. It’s as if by pinning her down with his glare he will find a way of shutting her up.
But she’s said enough already. It can’t be unsaid. We are all her puppets.
It’s all here, in a fragile nutshell. Their marriage. The damage Margot did when she made enemies of the two brothers. The chaos she’s caused and is still causing, whether or not Pierre has followed her lead. The ugly exchanges between the brothers, the stammered confessions, Gustav’s weary acceptance of his own guilt, his desperation to have his brother by his side again, Pierre taking matters into his own hands in Venice, his clumsy apology to me on the phone at the gallery, everyone trying to hold the fragile peace together. Even though it hasn’t gone according to her plan, it’s still blindingly clear.
Margot has stage-managed it all.
‘And see how cosy I made my little den since I took it over again?’ she goes on, sure of her captive audience now. ‘My special Manhattan collection of whips is still here. Your cute ass has been striped red by each and every one of them!’
My beautiful, clever, strong lover is locked in a staring match with this woman as if she’s one of those mythical creatures, a basilisk was it, that can kill you with one look.
I follow his gaze towards her glossy red mouth, the seam of red wine wet between the plump lips that don’t quite meet. They have that swollen look of collagen injections. That must be what’s different about her. As her throat jumps to swallow the wine, I can imagine those lips wrapped round Gustav’s hardness, sucking on him, swallowing his juices. Has he noticed the papery skin on her neck? The artful pussycat bow of the see-through blouse, tied to hide the slight droop under her chin? It’s probably wishful thinking on my part, but up close she looks like she might just disintegrate at any moment.
‘What about Polly?’ I whimper, trying to carry my voice across the room to get Gustav’s eyes off his ex-wife. ‘She and Pierre met by pure chance through work. Not even you could have organised that. Not even you could know we were cousins.’
‘Adoptive cousins, wasn’t it? Weren’t you the baby they found chucked in the mud?’ Margot keeps her eyes on Gustav. ‘Your connection with Polly was a delightful coincidence, it’s true. So marvellous when everything ticks like clockwork. Tick-tock, she led Pierre right to Gustav. Tick-tock, another woman rocked Pierre’s world and she was history. And tick-tock, she got all paranoid, did an even better job of breaking the two of you up than I did!’
Gustav doesn’t silence her horrible words. He doesn’t stop her gaze running slowly down his body, over his stomach in its aubergine cashmere sweater, over the belt of his jeans. He doesn’t stop his ex-wife licking her lips as she ogles the crotch of the man who once walked her up the aisle.
I dig my nails into the fabric of the brocade sofa, scratching for a thread to unravel. ‘Polly and I are like sisters!’
‘You weren’t thinking of your sister when you were cavorting with her boyfriend in Venice, though, were you?’ Margot runs her long pink tongue across her lips and stands up, but she moves towards Gustav, not me. ‘The heavens were smiling on my scheme, as they always do!’
Gustav shakes his head slowly. It’s as if she’s injected him with tranquilliser so that he can barely move, even when she steps closer.
‘Listen to yourself. My scheme. You’re the one who’s lying. Every word that comes out of your mouth—’
‘Turns you on. Don’t deny it. You’re getting hard now, seeing me again. I’m willing to bet your entire fortune, Gusty, that I could make you come, right here, right now, within seconds. I practised endlessly on your little brother. All I had to do was crook my finger. He was in my panties as soon as you could say “boner”. But it was only ever about you. Getting you to notice me again. Admit it. You’re horny as hell just hearing my voice, Gusty. You’re remembering how good we were together.’
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!’