Primula Bond - The Diamond Ring

‘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.