Primula Bond - The Diamond Ring

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!’

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.