LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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