Primula Bond - The Diamond Ring

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.