The Diamond Ring

by Primula Bond

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—’