The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) (31 page)

‘My God! It’s even worse than I thought!’ she gasps, her hands up over her white face. She looks like Oliver Twist in the oversized cap and baggy raincoat, her legs bare, her satin ballet pumps stained by the rain. ‘You’re all at it! All whipping the living daylights out of each other, and it’s not just some kind of artistic illusion, either. You’re all masochistic freaks!’

‘Calm down, Polly,’ says Gustav. ‘You can’t come in here shouting the odds. Pierre said you weren’t with us at the Library Bar the other night because you were in Boston.’ He comes up beside her and takes her arm. She stiffens, but she doesn’t shake him off.

‘Serena knows I never went to Boston, but you’d all love that, me out of town so you can all have a good laugh at me.’ Her eyes slide from the screen to me, her face hectic with fury. ‘Look at you, all ravished and undone. That the way Pierre left you after your night at the Gramercy Hotel?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’ve ruined everything, Rena! He was the one. You saw us together at Halloween, all loved up. How could you come on to him?’ She takes a step towards me, but her skinny legs give way so that she slumps down in the middle of the rug. ‘I asked you to talk to him, not sleep with him! You should have seen them, Gustav, your long-lost brother plying your girlfriend with cocktails. Playing with her hair. Kissing her!’

‘He didn’t kiss me! And I was only doing what you asked me to do.’ I slide across to crouch next to her on the floor, horribly aware of my brazenly skimpy kimono and the sticky scent wafting off my legs. ‘You won’t like what he had to say, though.’

I glance up at Gustav. That stony look on his face has crystallised. He closes the front door very slowly and comes to stand beside the fire. I notice him quickly unclipping the silver chain from the sofa, but it’s still attached to me.

‘Serena has told me they met for a drink to go through the day’s shots. She’s told me what they talked about.’ His voice is deep, calming. ‘Your cousin and I have learned through bitter experience not to have any secrets.’

I smile at him anxiously from my lowly position on the floor, keep my eyes on him, but he doesn’t smile back. I rely on that voice to keep me grounded.

I turn back to Polly, stretch out my hand, but she flinches away from me. Her eyes are almost transparent with rage. Cold fingers crawl up my spine.

‘What has Pierre been saying?’ I ask her quietly, kneeling up, pushing myself at her, trying to flash a silent warning at her. ‘Whatever it is, it’s lies.’

‘Nothing directly. We don’t speak, thanks to you!’ Polly snatches the hat off her head and throws it to the floor. With her hair shaved so close to her perfectly shaped head she looks like a chick just hatched. ‘Because you kept putting off talking to him for me, I was reduced to skulking outside the theatre.’ Polly shifts away from me, scrabbles in her big bag to bring out her phone. ‘I saw the two of you sitting on the steps the other morning. I got inside, saw you both flirting up on the stage, you dressed up like a harlot, him prancing about like he owns the place–’

‘But he does own the place,’ Gustav remarks quietly. I so wish he was over here, next to me.

‘No, he doesn’t! He hasn’t got any money! He doesn’t even have his own chauffeur, like he pretended in London. He lives rent-free in a SoHo flat owned by Mrs Margot Levi. I’ve been doing some digging, you see – why didn’t I do it before? – and that theatre was bought by some film people to use as a sound stage. He’s a bit-part actor who buys dresses!’

‘I’ve got this information down on my iPad from our briefing, Polly. There’s a little more to it. He never said he owned it, though I admit he implied it to begin with. He may not have much money of his own but he’s refurbishing the theatre for a production company. Designing it. Directing the show. Everything.’

Gustav clears his throat. He’s stroking his chin, but his hand, the silver chain still wrapped around it, is trembling, making the metal glint in the fading light.

‘Polly, you’ve misinterpreted some perfectly innocent situation. From what I can gather it’s not Serena you should be yelling at, it’s my brother. God knows he’s got some answering to do when I get to him. He’s misled us, even if he hasn’t exactly lied. He’s obviously not as successful and influential as he made out. That’s why he keeps insinuating that he needs money. And what’s he doing living in Margot’s flat?’

‘He told me that, too.’ I close my eyes, horribly aware how cosy that sounds. ‘That’s where they lived when they first arrived in New York, and that’s where Margot left him. As far as I know she’s never reappeared, but he said staying there was all part of the hold she had over him. Maybe she still has?’

‘I know the flat. I gave it to her. That’s why I am living at the opposite end of Manhattan now.’

Gustav and I stare at each other across the vast empty space. He said ‘I’, not ‘we’.

‘Forget about fucking Margot! What about little Rena and your brother?’ snaps Polly, hectic flushes streaking her cheeks.

‘Stop it, Polly!’ I reach out and shake her. Her eyes are huge and blank and unseeing as if she’s drugged. ‘If you’ve been staking out the theatre, you’ll know he takes his pick from a bevy of girls, a different one every night.’

‘Or so he says!’ she screeches. ‘He never wanted to do it half the time! Even when things were going great I thought it was because of me, so to comfort myself I put it down to those awful scars he kept hidden away. But this is all far more messed up than I realised. I’m pretty certain now there were always other tarts on the side, but then you, Gustav, came into the picture and now, whoops, there’s Serena, who’s ruined everything!’

I fling my hands in the air helplessly. ‘Stop stalking him. Walk away with your head held high. Don’t let a bastard like that come between us, for God’s sake.’

She curls herself into a ball and bangs her forehead on her bony knees.

‘I may as well show you the evidence, then you can both decide what to do.’ Polly jumps to her feet and rushes at Gustav as if he is trying to escape, waving her phone in the air. ‘Look at these pictures. How about this for having no secrets, Gustav! Not only were they kissing at that hotel, for all I know they got a room, but did you know that Pierre and Serena are sloping off to Venice for a cosy jaunt? Did you know that your brother is planning to steal your girlfriend?’

I’m too late to stop her. She has pushed her phone under his nose, and Gustav is staring in horror at it, his face hollowed by the light cast from the screen.

‘Is this why you’ve been so cagey and strange ever since I got back, Serena?’

I shake my head with a strangled cry and try to get up, but I only get as far as my knees. I look like a nun, praying for forgiveness. Gustav slowly turns the phone towards me. It’s a blurred close-up of Pierre’s dark head bent over mine in the Gramercy Bar three nights ago. Gustav scrolls along the next one. A close-up of Pierre’s lips on mine.

I have to say something, quick. ‘It’s not how it looks. He was fixing my scarf round my neck, and he went to kiss me goodbye, and he misfired, that’s all.’

Gustav’s face goes deadly white. He hands the phone back to Polly and opens the door. She averts her head haughtily and marches out onto the landing as if throwing this little tantrum has given her some long-needed strength.

‘The camera never lies, Serena,’ she shoots back at me. ‘You of all people should know that, no matter how clever you are with an image or how many tricks you pull. I’m not a photographer. I just aimed my phone at you and took the pictures, right while it was going on. You weren’t trying to talk to Pierre about me, or get him to come back to me. You were kissing him! How tacky does it get?’

‘Polly, come back! Why are you doing this? I’m your family, for God’s sake! Your cousin!’

She pushes the button on the lift outside, her oversized coat wrapped like a great batwing around her frail body.

‘You were a foundling, remember? You’re not my real cousin!’ She shouts as the lift doors open. ‘You are nothing to me!’

The words punch all the air out of me. I crumple down onto the floor, where she was sitting just now, but she is gone. Those are the very words I heard over and over again when I was a child. I thought they could never hurt me again.

I manage to heave myself onto the sofa, pull the kimono round me. My nakedness feels shameful. But it might just melt him. I’m shivering, even though it’s warm in here. Gustav steps towards me, and I look up eagerly, but he’s looking at me, just like Polly did, as if he’s never seen me before, or worse, as if what he sees he detests.

I grab his hands, but they are dead in mine.
Think, Serena, think.

‘Margot is in Pierre’s head, making mischief. That’s all this is. But I don’t give a damn about his twisted motives. He did give me a rather close kiss, but I pushed him off! I was trying to help Polly and I thought it would help you, too.’

‘You said yourself, we can’t trace every bad thing that happens back to Margot.’

‘And we can’t let one grainy, misinterpreted photograph destroy everything either.’

Gustav lifts my wrist and I think he is going to sit beside me, and put his arm around me. But instead he unclips the silver chain, winds it quickly round his knuckles and goes to pick up his coat which is still lying across the sofa.

‘I should have known he’d got to you when I saw that magnificent photograph of Pierre, standing on the stage like the king of the world. Something has been wrong with you ever since I got back this evening and it takes your poor troubled cousin, who you were supposed to be helping, to show me the light. How could you, Serena? With my brother, of all people!’

I curl up in a ball, my head in my hands. ‘It’s just a picture, Gustav. They’re all just pictures. It’s my job, remember?’

I hear him shake out the red scarf. I look up. His head is bent as he starts to wind it round his neck. His aquiline nose, his profile so fine. So hard and unreachable.

‘A job which you have started doing just a little too well. I wonder if it’s affecting your judgement. The all-seeing, all-knowing eye behind the lens.’ He draws the knot tight around his neck and moves towards the door, picking up his coat and dragging it behind him.

‘I’m just capturing people, and moments. But if it upsets you, I’ll stop!’ I kneel up again. ‘I’ll cancel the commissions, all those portraits and family groups and Club Crèmes and threesomes and voyeurs’ delights, and I’ll concentrate on my personal project. “Windows and Doors” I was going to call it, remember? I’ve had it planned ever since the London exhibition opened. I’ll do anything to stop one picture jeopardising what you and Pierre have.’

‘Stop avoiding the subject, Serena! Ironic that this all stems from the one picture you didn’t take yourself!’ He opens the door as if it weighs a ton. Everything is happening in slow motion, yet much much too quickly. ‘Pierre and I have all the time in the world to sort out our differences. We are brothers, so there’s always hope. What’s jeopardised here is you and me.’

Turn around, Gustav. Stop talking crap. Turn around and make this all go away.

All I can see of him is the back of his head. His strong shoulders. His shirt, one tail sticking out of his dark-blue jeans. He pulls on the coat slowly, as if it’s hurting him. Pushes his black hair out of the collar. His lovely hands, resting for a moment on his ears as if to blot everything out.

‘I don’t know what to think any more. I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘Nothing to say? How about coming out with it and saying sorry, Serena, for all my grand words I don’t really trust you? That I didn’t mean a word of it when I said I wanted to set you free? That’s what you should be saying. Not turning your back on me just because my demented cousin thought she saw me kissing your brother! Don’t you see how ridiculous that notion is? Haven’t I told you enough times how much I love you and want to make you proud of me?’

Gustav’s hands hang lifelessly in the air as if they’ve somehow betrayed him, too. ‘Can you hear yourself? You sound just like him. This is hurting me, it’s just like our own vile version of that stand-up row in the gallery in London. Accusation and counter-accusation, and all shrouded in uncertainty. I can’t take it, Serena. I won’t take it.’

I stand and start to walk away from him towards the bedroom. Then I stop and wheel round again, burning with fury.

‘This is nothing
like
that showdown with Pierre! That was you and him rehearsing years of resentment and misunderstanding fuelled by an evil bitch whose main aim in life is to harm everyone in it. I stood beside you in that gallery and told Pierre that every word spewing out of his mouth was wrong and twisted, and it wasn’t hard for me to do that, because I love you, and I’ll do anything to show the world what a fantastic man you are.’

‘A man who never learns who he can trust.’ His face remains expressionless as granite. His black eyes slide away from me as he shakes his head. I take a step towards him, across the echoing poured-concrete floor of our home.

‘But you can trust me! We’ve moved way beyond all that!’ I wave my hand at the door where Polly has just rushed out like a bat out of hell. ‘This is me, Gustav. You, me and a pathetic photograph of a bungled conversation and a clumsy goodbye in a bar, taken by a girl who’s been rejected and is beside herself with jealousy. You knew I was meeting your brother for a drink. You encouraged it! And yet you still believe I went behind your back and kissed him?’

When he still doesn’t reply something shuts down, goes numb and cold inside me. The same feeling I had as a child when nobody, ever, would listen. The world is suddenly bleached of colour. The maelstrom of the past few weeks has halted like a broken clock. If Gustav is telling me that one apparent error of judgement, one drink with one man, has cost me everything, that he can shut me out that easily, then whatever I say won’t sway him.

I leave the door open for Gustav to come into the bedroom and take it all back. I have nothing to apologise for. I spent the first half of my life wishing those closest to me would love me, and the second half knowing they never would. I’m not going to stand here and beg him to trust me when I’ve done everything I can to show I’m solid.