The Diamond Ring. Primula Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ