PRIMULA BOND
The Diamond Ring

Dedication

For my family

‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety: other women cloy

The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry

Where most she satisfies; for vilest things

Become themselves in her.’

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra 1606

‘Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I pick the one I’ve never tried.’

Mae West

‘J’ai bien besoin d’avoir cette femme, pour me sauver du ridicule d’en être amoureux.’

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Le feu plus couvert est le plus ardent.

French proverb

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

The silky blue and green strands of the feather ripple as if they’re still attached to something breathing. The sharp quill end pecks a dot of blood from Gustav’s finger. It’s been bent awkwardly to fit inside the envelope that has just been delivered, but as he shakes out the plume it unfurls to its full majestic length.

‘Peacock feathers symbolise bad luck. Everyone knows that. They’re beautiful, but deadly. A curse. So why is this package addressed to me?’ Gustav frowns at the feather, turning it this way and that. ‘A week ago this building was still being refurbished. Barely anyone knows the gallery’s open and in any case the business is in your name, not mine. So who just posted it through this door? Who knows I’m here?’

The feather shimmers playfully, catching flashes of light from the dimness outside. Gustav’s questions hum and buzz as he examines it. The oval eye set in the middle is distinctly outlined, as if it belongs to an ancient Egyptian goddess immortalised on the wall of her tomb.

The mellow atmosphere we have just been enjoying with our band of friends and clients to celebrate the unveiling of the Serenissima gallery has disappeared. The excitement of our engagement shelved. The pleasure of making up with my cousin Polly when she turned up unexpectedly is forgotten. The exquisite, planned, pleasure of making out with my handsome new fiancé in the window, watched by a clutch of voyeurs, has dissipated.

I may still wear Gustav’s scent between my legs but the joy has evaporated like so many torn cobwebs. And it’s all down to Gustav’s brother. Pierre Levi.

The last time I saw this feather it was pinned to a tricorn hat, and that tricorn hat was on Pierre’s head. It was part of the elaborate disguise he had carefully picked to attend the Valentine’s Day ball in Venice a month ago.

I’m going to have to tell Gustav everything before Pierre does. Right down to the fact that in the mêlée of masked strangers Pierre convinced me that I was dancing with Gustav. And that’s why I walked so willingly into his arms.

The peacock eye is the only fixed point on the wavering fronds. And it’s fixed on me.

It’s late March. The Carnivale was only a few weeks ago. But like a fool I thought that was long enough to put such a potentially disastrous encounter behind me. I thought that with Pierre now ensconced and occupied far away in LA I could hide the sordid encounter still haunting me, the truth that Pierre and I share still whispering in my ear. The truth which could still drive me and Gustav apart.

But now Pierre has sent this feather, this visual prompt, and yet again he’s timed it perfectly. Only an hour ago he was part of the jolly proceedings when he phoned the gallery, pretending to congratulate us on our engagement. But all he really wanted to do was remind me that far from being separated by time and space, the diamond ring glittering on my finger means that he and I are more inextricably linked than ever.

It will be your turn to choose, Serena, Pierre said on the phone. If you don’t want to have any more to do with me, you know where the door is.

In other words, the only way to avoid Pierre is to walk away from them both.

And just to make sure I understand, just to keep me in line, it turns out that Pierre is physically close by. He’s been watching, waiting for the moment to deliver this coded symbol. Knowing that I will instantly recognise what secret the feather represents.

That Gustav’s own brother tried to fuck me.

I rouse myself with an awkward shrug, aware that Gustav is waiting for me to speak.

‘New York must be full of freaks who get off on scaring people. Maybe it’s from someone who saw my voyeur exhibition in London and thinks I’d find this funny. Or someone who disapproves of my erotic themes. Someone with a grudge, maybe a member of the Club Crème who was at that stag-night shoot in January and doesn’t want my shots to be circulated?’

The feather’s breeze kisses my face. Every dip and sway of it reminds me of Pierre in that gondola, the way he was moving, what he was doing to me.

I back up against the glass door. ‘All I know is, you need to get rid of it!’

‘Relax, darling! I was only teasing about the curse.’ Gustav continues waving the feather like a conductor’s baton. ‘Look at it another way. Maybe some people would see this as a good-luck charm intended for you. Not for me. Maybe Ernst and Ingrid Weinmeyer sent it, even though they were here just now. They are your most loyal patrons, after all. Maybe they feel honoured that we invited them to the opening of our cool new gallery. Or Polly meant it as a keepsake while she’s off wandering the globe in search of herself?’

‘It’s not like you to stand around proffering useless theories, Gustav!’ It comes out sharper than I intended, and heat floods through my face. ‘It’s just some creepy hoax, OK? Designed to sabotage our happiness.’

‘Nothing and no one will ever do that.’ He flicks the feather against my face and holds it there, still pondering. ‘Then again, peacocks spread their tails as part of the mating call, don’t they? So maybe it’s highlighting my machismo? My success in ensnaring the cutest photographer in the western hemisphere, first with a silver chain, then with a golden locket, and now with this diamond ring?’

The fronds feel as if they’re stuck to my cheek. Flimsy, yet weighted with menace.

I flick it away from me and scrabble for the door handle. ‘Let’s just get out of here. Go get dinner and start making some wedding plans!’

‘Nothing I’d like better, Serena, but first things first. What on earth is wrong?’ Gustav swings me round to face him. ‘One minute my sexy seductress is doing incredible things to me right here on this couch. The next minute a harmless feather is making her tremble as if it’s a loaded gun!’

‘Oh, Gustav, that’s exactly what it is. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but—’ I finally manage to open the door. ‘I know the bastard who sent it!’

I realise I was wrong about those furtive footsteps I heard on the pavement a few minutes ago. I knew that more than one person was watching as I straddled Gustav, lowered myself slowly on to his hardness, dangling my bare breasts to brush against his lips. There were several people watching as I took charge, and that turned me on all the more.

So when a sleek grey Porsche parked up, I didn’t halt my sexy display. I guessed the person getting out of the car to join the fun was simply the attractive girl I’d spotted earlier when I took a chilly evening stroll along the High Line. I’d been surveying the surrounding apartments through my zoom lens, in my customary sniper’s style, and her dark-skinned, curvaceous figure had caught my eye as she rose naked from a rumpled bed.

So when I glimpsed a black belted trench coat and beret getting out of the car and joining the crowd, I reckoned she was simply returning the compliment and had diverted her journey to watch me in action, watch me playing with my lover. I was even tickled that we shared a taste in outfits. I wanted her to stay, to breathe a little quicker as I started to rock and ride my lover just as I had watched her riding hers.

Because, you see, I like to watch, but since I arrived with Gustav in New York and started taking on more outrageous commissions, sometimes joining in, I’ve discovered I like to be watched, too. Sometimes I like to be the voyeur, viewed.

The clatter of the letter box didn’t distract me as Gustav and I shared our climax with our audience. I wasn’t fazed by the gunning of the engine as the woman pattered back to the sports car and it pulled away from the kerb.

Now I know that she wasn’t acting alone.

‘What bastard? Who are you talking about?’ Gustav tries to stop me dashing outside. ‘There were several people watching us out there. You didn’t care then. Why are you so worked up now?’

‘He couldn’t man up and do it himself. He didn’t want us to spot him so he got someone else to do his dirty work. He was waiting in the car.’ I slip out of his grasp. ‘He must have shifted into the driver’s seat after she got out.’

‘Who?’

I spin round like a dog trying to find a comfortable sleeping place.

‘That’s just it. I thought I knew who the woman was, but she’s just some sidekick he persuaded to dress up like me and then deliver his bloody feather.’

‘Serena, you sound like a demented Miss Marple! The woman in the coat was just a passer-by who got an eyeful.’ Gustav steps into the cold to try to get hold of me. ‘I meant, who is this bastard you keep harping on about?’

Normally I would love the idea of Gustav being so wrapped up in his pleasure that he was oblivious to the world around him. But this is no joke.

‘He’s probably still parked around here somewhere, watching us. Maybe he’s laughing his head off. We have to find him, Gustav!’

I jam my beret more firmly on to my head and start to run in my lacy dress and my biker boots up the sidewalk towards the corner, where a set of overhanging traffic lights swings in the cold night breeze, permanently stuck on red.

Gustav is chasing after me. As I reach the corner I half turn. I don’t want him to be with me when we locate the car. My foot catches and I stumble off the kerb. A truck blares its horn and swerves round me as I stagger into the road.

‘Stop this nonsense, Serena! You got a death wish or something, charging at the traffic like that?’ Gustav hauls me back to safety as the truck driver swears and gives us the finger. ‘What do you mean, “He’s probably nearby”?’

‘I’m talking about your brother Pierre. That feather is from him! And it’s more than a message. It’s a warning!’ I twist away to peer up each street radiating from the intersection, but all I can see are a couple of yellow cabs cruising for fares in the distance. ‘He wants to tell you something terrible about me.’

I start to shiver violently. Gustav wraps his arms around me and guides me back towards the gallery. The open door is swinging and banging against the wall in the sudden sharp wind.

‘My brother’s in LA, you silly thing.’ Gustav pulls me into the porch. ‘He’s creative director of that pilot they’re shooting. It’s the breakthrough he’s been waiting for!’

‘How do you know he’s there?’

‘Wild horses wouldn’t drag him back to the East Coast. He promised to prove himself to me within six months, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s progressed from sourcing costumes and props for fashion shoots to designing stage sets and directing theatre productions. He was already pretty cocky, sure, that’s why he had all the cast and crew calling him “boss” during that burlesque production you recorded at the Gramercy Theatre. But now he’s hitting the big time, and the best bit is that you were part of its inception. It’s your material that was used for the pilot’s original pitch.’

I stand limply against Gustav and close my eyes. Only a heartless bitch would want to quash his joy at sharing in his brother’s life again after a five-year estrangement. So how do I tell him that I’m here not to praise Pierre, but to bury him?

‘I know it sounds crazy, Gustav, but you have to listen to me. Pierre’s not the paragon you think he is.’

‘None of us are.’ Gustav ruffles my hair. ‘I know he’s a rogue and he treats women like dirt. He’s young and still has a lot to learn. But he’s determined to better himself, and I’m proud of him.’

‘Maybe that’s why you can’t spot all the shit-stirring.’ I sigh and turn away to hide the redness in my cheeks. ‘He thought you and I had broken up after that showdown in February, when Polly went berserk and showed you those awful photos of us apparently kissing. Pierre tried, and failed, to take me for himself. Then when I warned him on the phone earlier to back off, he declared that if I don’t want him in my life then it’s up to me to leave. I hung up on him. But the feather was already on its way as evidence to ruin me.’

‘Evidence of what? Why would he risk everything, just when it’s going so brilliantly for all of us? He’s got the job of his dreams. I’ve got you. We’re getting married. There’s such a rosy future ahead of us.’ Gustav combs my hair away from my sweaty brow. His quiet voice almost calms me down. ‘It’s thanks to you that Pierre and I are close again. You kept us talking when it looked as if we would never get over the past. He and I are done with hurling insults, Serena. Pierre’s not playing any more games.’

‘Isn’t he?’

‘No. If there’s something bothering him he’d come out with it. I can’t believe he would bugger about with enigmatic feathers!’

‘There’s nothing enigmatic about it. He’s always one step ahead, don’t you see? I don’t want to keep anything from you. I’m trying to be honest, but I’m scared. Oh, God, Gustav. I’m so scared!’ I try to pull away again, my voice splintering into sobs. ‘I know that horrible feather is from him, because Pierre was wearing it in Venice!’

‘I’m not talking about this out here. It’s bloody freezing.’ Gustav stops. The street lamp casts shadows over his face as he looks down at me. His black eyes glitter like moonlight on a deep pool. ‘What did you just say?’

This is how he looked on Halloween night last year, when he stepped out of the darkness of that London square and into my life. There was something vampirical about him, the black bristles trying to push through his white skin, the sharp bite of his teeth into his lower lip when he was concentrating. He already seemed to know me inside out. But instead of scaring me that night, he thrilled me. And he has been thrilling me ever since.

I try to flatten myself against the wall.

‘Pierre was in Venice last month. He was at the Weinmeyers’ ball. He was wearing a tricorn hat, and in that hat—’

‘Was a peacock feather that is working some serious voodoo on you!’ Gustav shakes his head. ‘He wasn’t there, Serena. You were the one adorned with peacock feathers, not him. I found you all bedraggled and lost on that bridge, remember, trying to find your way home?’

I nod wearily. ‘In every sense of the word.’

Gustav’s smile is fading. ‘I’d flown all the way from New York to surprise you. I was cursing myself for being so quick to believe your cousin. Of course you’d never go kissing my brother behind my back. But you’d flown off to Venice all on your own and I was desperate to find you.’

The weight of what’s to come might break me. ‘You were too late. You should have been there the whole time. Then none of it would have happened. You were too late.’

Gustav pushes his hair out of his eyes.

‘No, no, no. Nothing awful did happen, darling. My flight was delayed, and to make matters worse Pierre called me when I landed at Marco Polo airport and kept me talking, and that’s why I never made it to the ball. But I wasn’t too late. I was just in time to persuade you to forgive me. And best of all, Venice will forever be the most special city in the world. We’ve even named this gallery after it. Because that’s where you agreed to become my wife!’

Gustav’s smile flits across his mouth again. He’s remembering how he extracted the diamond ring that had been nestling inside the golden locket around my throat, got down on one knee and asked me to change my name to Levi.

‘Hear me out, darling. Just listen. Before you found me on that bridge’ – I clasp my hands together in a kind of prayer under my chin – ‘Pierre made me do something terrible!’

He opens his arms and I walk into them.

‘You’re rambling now. Pierre has nothing to do with this. The peacock headdress was part of your costume, darling. We tossed all the feathers into the lagoon outside the Danieli Hotel.’

Oh, I love him so much. But his soft voice is already losing its hypnotic power.

‘You’re going to hate me, Gustav, but – Pierre was already in Venice when he called and kept you talking. You can be anywhere in the world when you’re on a mobile phone, can’t you? He knew we’d had that row about Polly’s photographs. He’d caused it, for God’s sake. He even came to you at the apartment after I’d fled, and fessed up.’ The wall behind me feels as if it’s shifting and breaking apart. ‘It was no secret that I was booked to go to Venice for the Carnivale. He orchestrated everything. Stopped you getting to the ball, instructed the costume lady to hire me the correct green velvet dress so that we would be a matching pair. He even planned the peacock feathers to identify me amongst all those masks. I had five feathers in my hair. He had one, in his hat. This one.’

‘Honey, this is gibberish.’ Gustav lets the feather drop on to the doorstep of the gallery and cages my face in the grip of his fingers. ‘Pierre was nowhere near you. He was in LA. He’s there now!’

‘He’s not in LA, Gustav. He’s right here in Manhattan. I’m certain of it.’

Hot tears of shame and fear blind me, but instead of asking any more questions Gustav nods to himself, as if that’s settled. He reckons I’m definitely unhinged. He pushes me back inside the gallery. My newly hung collection of Venetian photographs, the elegant bridges arching over khaki water, the deathlike masks processing in the distance, are obscured by the darkness. He doesn’t turn on the lights. Nor does he sit down on the couch where we were lying together just now.

He walks over to the desk and picks up our coats. He has his back to me. He pauses, staring up at the only image that is illuminated, of the arched green shuttered window. A bright red row of geraniums are planted in a box below it, and a thin white hand is reaching into the flowers to pinch off a dead petal.

‘I can’t stand seeing you so worked up, darling.’ Gustav turns over his phone. ‘Let’s ask the man himself.’

I galvanise myself. One more effort to make him understand.

‘No! Gustav, listen to me, not him! Then you can never accuse me of concealing anything, and he won’t be able to hold it over me.’

‘Concealing what? Holding what over you? How has our wonderful evening, our gallery opening, our engagement, our dinner reservation, how has it all just imploded?’ Gustav punches in the area code for Los Angeles. ‘I want to know what Pierre has done to scare you like this.’

I grab the phone from him, prising his fingers off the casing. I pathetically hold it behind my back, as if I’m stronger than him.

‘We’re getting married, so there can’t be any secrets or lies. The reason I was so bedraggled and my dress was torn when you found me on that bridge in Venice was because I was running away from him.’ It’s a hoarse whisper, but we can both hear it perfectly. ‘He followed me. He tricked me into thinking he was you, Gustav. We danced together at the ball, and then we went outside—’

‘Let me get this straight. Everyone at the ball was masked, weren’t they? You must be mistaken. You think it was Pierre, I get that, but in fact someone else had their eye on you. Now you’re frightening me, cara.’ His black eyes are shadowed with a fresh anguish that I haven’t seen for months. ‘The man you went outside with was some chancer. My God, Serena. You were molested by a random stranger, and you’ve kept that from me ever since? That’s why you were in such a state when I found you. And that’s why the peacock feather has sent you into hysterics!’

Gustav easily removes the phone from my fist, puts it down and eases my arms into the sleeves of my green leather jacket as calmly as he can before putting on his own coat. Then to my horror he picks up the discarded feather from the doorstep and bends it to fit inside his pocket.

‘You may be listening, but you’re not hearing me, Gustav! I wish it was a stranger who molested me!’ I try to grab the feather out of his coat. ‘Pierre Levi couldn’t have been further from my mind. I assumed you’d come to get me, knowing Polly’s stupid suspicions were a load of rubbish. I assumed you were the man in green velvet! I would never have gone off with him otherwise!’

Gustav pushes me back outside into the cold dark street and locks the gallery door. We stare at each other.

‘Gone off with him?’

Different images are flickering through our minds, leaving scorch marks across the happy optimism of an hour ago.

Gustav is starting to see me with my arms around another man. A faceless, masked stranger. That’s as far as his imagination stretches, for now, but in my mind, all too clearly, it is the reality. Exactly who I was with. Who was carrying me, a willing victim, through the shadows. Who was bundling me into a covered gondola so that we were alone and far from prying eyes.

Above all, I can see myself with Gustav’s brother, falling with him into the cushions, ripping at each other’s clothes. Turned on. Wet. And ready.

‘Answer me, Serena. What did you mean when you said you’d “gone off with him”?’

Gustav presses redial and lifts the phone to his ear.

‘We were dancing and I was calling your name, but then he – the man I thought was you – disappeared so I was running round outside the Palazzo Weinmeyer frantically searching, all the way to Piazza San Marco, thinking I’d lost you again!’ I batter feebly at Gustav’s arm, but he holds the phone away from me. ‘Then you appeared again, the man with the feather, so I let him lead me away from all the chaos and noise. I peppered him with questions. He didn’t speak, but I thought the silence was all part of your game. Then we were on the cushions – we were alone together in this gondola. That’s when I realised it wasn’t you and I ran away.’

Fear bubbles up, silencing me. Gustav is staring at me, but there’s a familiar stony stillness in his face as he waits for Pierre to pick up.

Just then Dickson the Driver glides up to the kerb in the new navy blue Range Rover. I have never been so glad to see him.

‘There must be some sort of explanation. Some mistake.’ Gustav opens the passenger door for me, but his eyes are fixed on the middle distance, waiting for his brother to answer.

‘Mistaken identity on my part, sure—’

‘But if he was there, maybe on Pierre’s part, too. Have you thought of that? He may have thought you were someone else! Christ, the way he goes through women he must have one in every port.’

‘You’re clutching at straws, Gustav. You can’t trust him. He won’t give you a straight answer.’

But what’s the point? The battle lines are drawn once again. And what if he chooses to believe Pierre over me?

Then Pierre will have won, silly. The familiar internal commentary of my cousin Polly, silent for so long when we were estranged, murmurs once again in my ear. You have to fight this tooth and nail.

Gustav frowns when voicemail kicks in at the other end of the phone.

‘I can’t let this happen. The rug is being tugged out from under us again, Serena, just when everything was looking so perfect.’

I reach out for him and run my hand down his anxious face. ‘Gustav! Honey. Everything is perfect. I only told you all this because Pierre reckons he has something to impart, when really it’s something and nothing. Nobody tugged any rugs.’

Rocked the boat, though, didn’t they? Polly’s commentary is in full swing now. Ruffled some feathers!

Gustav holds my hand against his chest and looks down at me. He’s so serious. So pale.

‘It’s not long since your cousin was waving those photos of you and Pierre under my nose, Serena. I know I was too quick to anger that time, and I’ve said I’m sorry, but surely you can see how badly this affects me? I need to see Pierre. He set me straight about Polly’s photographs and I need him to do it again. I won’t rest until I hear his version of this Venice business. It’s only fair.’

Gustav cuts off the phone without leaving a message and places me firmly into the car as if he’s a cop and I might make a run for it. Dickson starts the car and we move smoothly away from the gallery. Why do I feel like the condemned woman?

‘No, it’s not fair. I’m your fiancée and I’ve told you what happened. He’s your lying brother. You can’t believe a single word that comes out of his mouth!’ I snap the seatbelt so fast that the metal takes a bite out of my finger. ‘Let me count the ways. He ran away with your wife and didn’t speak to you for five years. He came back into your life with all these accusations. He strung Polly along and then dumped her. He told you he wanted to forgive and forget, then he kissed me and tried to steal me from you. Now he’s suggested I leave you. You should be listening to me, Gustav. You need to believe me!’

Gustav turns to me, takes me by the shoulders and gives me a little shake. His black eyes bore into mine until they blur and go out of focus.

‘I am listening to you, Serena. I will always listen to you, so long as you’re telling me the truth.’ His lips are pressed hard in my hair, but he’s not entirely with me. ‘Pierre deserves the chance to explain himself, too. So if he sent this feather as you say, and he’s not in LA – as you also say – then we can do this face to face. And I know exactly where to find him.’

CHAPTER TWO

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!’

CHAPTER THREE

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.’

CHAPTER FOUR

The gallery looks bright and optimistic in the daylight, but like every other morning for the last month I wonder when I unlock the door if I’ll find it ransacked. Will the photographs from my ‘Windows and Doors’ themed exhibition be ripped off the freshly painted white walls? Will the simple elegant frames be snapped, the glass smashed? All my images shredded and obscene graffiti sprayed on the walls?

I’ve done my best to hide my worries from Gustav. I feel safe when I’m with him, in those strong arms, looking into those steady black eyes. But when I’m on my own I’m terrified. And to make matters worse I’ve been hiding something from him.

He says she’s barred from the condo. Banned from the gallery. The apartment has been swept again for bugs and – surprise surprise: there were none. Although they did find one in the gallery office phone. She can’t come anywhere near us or he’ll call the police. So when does it become acceptable to turn fretting into snooping?

I wasn’t really snooping. I left Gustav and Pierre to go for a walk together after our tense conversation and a few nervy bites of lunch, but thoughts of cufflinks and shirts went on nagging at me after they’d gone out. I knew Gustav would be furious and Pierre would think me neurotic. But the madness of Margot was infecting me. I couldn’t get her whispered threats out of my ears, the smell of her clogging perfume out of my hair, even the air in that apartment out of my skin. The fact that she had taken precious items engraved with Gustav’s initials from Lugano made me feel sick. She’d kept them somewhere for the last six years, brought them back to New York, lovingly unpacked them, washed and pressed them, hung them in their old wardrobe as if, as he said, she was waiting for him to come back.

So here I was, facing the fear, or so I thought, opening one, then another of the battered antique cigarette boxes that Gustav keeps in his dressing room, and, after I’d sneezed away the old tobacco dust, there it was, glinting amongst some old coins, as if waiting for me to find it.

The cufflink he said he’d thrown away, whose mate is now snugly fastened in the shirt he wore to marry Margot. He’d kept it.

So he forgot about it. Big deal. Polly’s opinion was brisk. I dropped the cufflink as if it was red hot, and banged the box shut.

Say what you like, Polly, but that cufflink makes her, their life together, a tangible presence. She’s a face, a voice, I have seen and heard and will never forget. A jealous, deranged woman collecting treasures from her marriage to my fiancé. And don’t tell me, Polly, that they’re just shirts and trinkets, because to me they feel like armour. Weapons of war. However mad that makes me sound, I want her gone.

Leave it for now. Just leave it. Don’t let her get to you. Don’t stir things up between you over a piece of junk. And yes. You do sound mad.

So today, like every day since I got my act together, everything in the gallery is in place. The main picture of the pale hand extending from between green shutters to dead-head some scarlet geraniums still holds centre stage on the main wall, now adorned with a red spot to indicate that it’s been sold. Actually to the local art college. The other pictures still hang in groups according to the city – London, Paris, Manhattan – where they were taken.

Dickson has nailed the title of my new venture, Serenissima, above the door.

That name isn’t just an emphatic version of my own. It’s a gift from my patrons the Weinmeyers and the moniker applied to the city of Venice at the height of its unique, feminine splendour.

One of the larger images shows a row of blank palazzi windows, Gothic arches set into crumbling red walls, with a tattered gold curtain flapping through a broken pane like a lolling tongue.

Here’s a church in a quiet campo, a broad carpet of sunlight leading the way across a worn step into the dark recesses. And there is the little costume shop in Campo San Barnaba where Crystal, sent by Gustav to watch over me, accompanied me to hire the ill-fated green gown for the Weinmeyers’ ball. The display in the hire-shop window is crammed with cruel, mirthless masks suspended behind the smeared glass like decapitated heads on spikes.

I switch on all the spotlights, and with the glare comes a kind of epiphany. Time to embrace the day. Time to push aside the lingering fear that our life will always be a series of pitfalls, an identity parade of other enemies lining up to trip us up. Time to dismiss the discovery of a single tarnished cufflink and let Gustav’s calm belief in me make me feel ten feet tall. If he can forgive my recklessness in going off with a masked stranger after a ball in Venice, and my stupidity in believing that stranger to be my boyfriend, then I should be able to get past that hideous scene in Margot’s flat, too.

Every day we talk and we talk, and we are closer than ever. But still I’m not sleeping. Thank God Gustav is coming back this evening after another business trip. His second in four weeks. I sleep better with him next to me, warmed up and worn out from sex. Last night I sat cross-legged on the wide window ledge of our bedroom and stared for hours over the dark oblong of Central Park.

The world feels fragile somehow because Margot is on the planet. She may not be visible, but she’s everywhere. Gustav seems to think that by facing her he’s laid a ghost. Pierre disagrees. He reckons the diamond ring has made her all the more determined. And I just feel uneasy. All the time.

Manhattan Island feels way too small.

I nip out of the gallery to get a coffee. We’re well into April now. There’s real warmth in the air. Why not focus on all the good things? Green shoots and flowers are sprouting on the High Line above this street. I’m the owner of a great new gallery and my second exhibition is selling fast. I’ve got a rich, handsome, passionate man who makes me feel like a sexy, low-down princess every day and wants to marry me before the year is out.

By the time I’ve got my coffee and my pastry and wandered back to the gallery I am feeling much more like Carrie in Sex in the City. Before tackling my schedule of phone calls, I assess each photograph and its position on the wall. It’s time to view the few unsold images through a potential buyer’s eyes. I mustn’t lose my resolve. I’m even wearing a sassy new Chanel suit, smoky pink bouclé tweed with a silky white blouse, and cherry-red brogues, to make me feel more like a boss.

The steady flow of visitors results in the sale of the remainder of the images, so it’s late afternoon before I get to the penultimate of my list of phone calls. I’m speaking to the tutor of the large art college who bought my ‘Hand Plucking Petals’ photograph. I’m dictating another advertisement, trawling for raw new photographic, figurative or abstract talent amongst her students for my next show. Then I’m going to call Crystal in London and ask her to come out here to work for me.

‘The younger the better, so long as they need a real break,’ I tell the tutor at the other end of the phone, who is enthusing about the fledgling talent she has both in her current intake and amongst the freshers who will be arriving in the autumn. ‘I was given a chance by Gustav Levi, who launched a solo show for me not long after I graduated. I want to do the same for others. Yes, I hope to expand back to London, maybe next year, but Manhattan’s my base for the moment.’

The little bell above the door tinkles and I curse softly under my breath. I can’t get this woman off the line and I really want to close up and get home. I have all the ingredients of something really healthy and juicy to prepare for Gustav tonight. Chorizo casserole and butter beans cooked in lashings of marsala.

The gaggle of female voices bursting into my gallery is so noisy I can’t hear myself think. I make sure the art tutor has my details then hang up and turn round. Three stunning blondes are pushing through the door, unwinding pashminas and shaking lustrous hair out of barrow-boy caps as if they’re settling in for a session.

‘Wow. What a cool place! And you look a million dollars, Serena! Very stern and businesslike today! Glad to see you’re still doing the risqué shots, spying on people through their windows, but we were hoping you might have included some naughtier ones from your past commissions?’

The tallest of the girls comes towards me with her arms out. I’m still trying to work out who she is and what she’s talking about when she pulls me against her soft breasts, swelling through the tight pink sweater she’s wearing under her open jacket. She tilts my face up to hers and gives me a long, soft kiss, right on the lips. She twitches excitedly as the others giggle and start walking around the gallery, studying the pictures.

I extricate myself from the girl’s embrace as politely as I can and pull my jacket closed.

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