Maestra: The most shocking thriller you'll read this year

by L. S. Hilton

  ‘Steve says will you take me snorkelling?’ I put just enough spoiled petulance into my voice to get on his nerves even more.

  ‘Sorry, Lauren, I don’t feel that good.’ What he meant to say was ‘fuck off’. It was a poignant little power negotiation.

  ‘But I really want to go,’ I pouted.

  ‘Get one of the guys to take you in the tender.’

  ‘Great idea! Thanks,’ I chirped brightly. ‘Hope you feel better.’

  ‘Sure. See you later.’

  I found Jan actually swabbing the deck. He was very Scandi like that, always joining in with the dirty work. Still, he looked glad of an excuse to put down his mop.

  ‘Tris says will you take me snorkelling, please, Jan?’

  He stood up slowly, all six foot heaven of him.

  ‘Snorkelling?’

  ‘Yes, please. He says to take the tender.’

  ‘OK. The other guys can manage. I’ll speak to them and get my stuff. Be ready in ten minutes?’

  ‘Perfect. Thank you.’

  *

  The spray stung my face as we bounced away from the Mandarin, heading round the point of one of the tiny bare islets. Jan steered, I lay back on the cushions and let a hand trail in the frothing water. I was wearing denim cut-offs, a white Fernandez bikini top and a floppy straw hat, bound heavily round the brim with a retro Pucci silk shawl. Jan had swapped his crew kit for knackered khaki Bermudas and a faded navy linen shirt that matched his eyes. I’d fetched a bottle of Vermentino, a corkscrew and a heap of pulsing figs from the galley.

  ‘Do you like sea urchin?’ Jan called over the noise of the engine.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He slowed the boat to a putter and began to peer over the side. We glided over cups of white sand, the clarity of the water belying its depth, until we came to a clump of rocks, just protruding from the surface, iridescent with sea lichen in the wash of the waves, gleaming like petrol.

  ‘Here will do.’ I liked his voice, clipped, precise, the twist of the Norwegian accent. I liked that he spared his words.

  ‘Open the anchor hatch.’

  I crawled, rather ungainly, over the flat sunbathing bed and unsnapped the trap which concealed the anchor. Jan reversed the boat.

  ‘Throw it when I say. Wait, wait, now.’

  I watched the anchor plunge, playing out its chain, as Jan moved the boat away until it held taut.

  ‘Good. Now you can try a sea urchin.’

  He had a battered canvas backpack at his feet, from which he took a mask, a clasp knife and a steel mesh glove like a medieval gauntlet.

  ‘Put your snorkel on. You can watch. Do you know the difference between the males and the females?’

  Oddly, I didn’t.

  ‘You can only eat the females. They collect little shells, stones, to decorate themselves. They make themselves beautiful, like women.’ He held my gaze for a second too long, then slipped off his shirt and dropped over the side.

  I wriggled out of my shorts and joined him. For a moment, the water felt cold after the concentrated heat of the boat. I floated off, bobbing like a starfish, watching as Jan dived, pulling himself down with long strokes. He gripped the base of the rock and, using the knife in the gloved hand, worked away at something fat and black. Then he popped up, placed the thing on the gunnel, inhaled and dived again. I lifted my head to look. The sea urchin was a sinister underwater hedgehog, its spines twitching in the air. Jan retrieved two more, then we climbed out of the water by the short ladder beside the engine.

  I opened the wine while Jan used the knife to scrape the spines from the shells overboard.

  ‘I forgot glasses.’

  ‘No problem.’ He took the bottle and raised it to his mouth. I watched his throat move as he swallowed.

  ‘Now, here.’

  The cleaned shell was beautiful, hatched in delicate pink and green. Jan worked the knife into the underside, splitting it in two like a mango, showing dark orange flesh edged with black.

  ‘It’s loose. Take it with your fingers.’

  ‘Show me.’

  He scooped a piece and held it out to me. I opened my mouth and closed my eyes.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  It was strong, viscous, salty and almost gamey. I took a slug of wine and felt the minerals meld on my tongue. I lay back with the sun on my face and the slick of raw flesh on my lips.

  ‘More.’

  He fed me the rest, then I fed him. Then there was that delicious moment when his face was so close to mine that I could see the salt crystals gleaming on those ridiculous eyelashes. I was wet before he even kissed me. He didn’t hurry, let his tongue find mine, twine, push, twine. Then he sat back, on the seat behind the tiller, and looked at me.

  ‘Do you want to fuck, now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I want to fuck now, Jan.’

  So many twists had brought me to this particular moment. I knew that I might never get free, that James’s arms might still twine about me, deadly as a siren’s, and drag me to the depths. But for a few moments, I could be liberated, I could stop time.

  I kept my eyes on his as I lay back again on the cushions. Holding his gaze, I unfastened my bikini top and dropped it next to me. He tilted his chin in a minute gesture of acquiescence. I undid the ribbon ties on either side of the bikini bottoms, lifted them off me and placed them with the top.

  ‘Show me.’

  Slowly, perfectly slowly, I let my thighs open. From where he sat, my cunt was on a level with his eyes. I dipped the middle finger of my right hand into my mouth, then trailed it down between my breasts, across my stomach and between my legs. When I held it towards his mouth it was slick with my juice. He rose to his feet, easy on the swaying boards of the boat. He had a beautiful cock, thick around the base, the straining tip tight as watered silk.

  ‘Turn over. I want to see your arse.’

  I had a brief flash of Jada Stevens before I flipped over on all fours. He put a hand between my shoulder blades and pushed me down so that my spine curved back to meet him, and slid his fingers inside me.

  ‘Move. I want to see your hips.’

  I pushed against the hardness of his hand, swaying a slow figure eight. It felt so good I thought I might cum just from that. I turned and took the head in my mouth, slid it deep into my throat, let it rest there. It was thumping. I sucked him again and again, letting my nails play across his tight balls, then withdrew, looking up into his eyes, letting him look at the swollen tip against my lips.

  ‘Fuck me. I want you to fuck me.’

  He got on his knees behind me, buried his hand inside my cunt once more, spreading his fingers at the top.

  ‘Move. Move your ass. That’s right. Show me. That’s how you get me hard. Move it like that.’

  ‘Give me your cock now.’

  I caught the tip between the lips of my pussy, manoeuvred the head into me, then paused, clenching my muscles.

  ‘Be still,’ I told him. I pulled myself forward a little, releasing him, then took the head back into me, corkscrewing, taking him deeper each time until I could feel his balls against the soaked lips of my cunt.

  ‘Go faster now.’

  He grabbed my hips, pulled me tight, gasping against him, started to work me.

  ‘Fuck. This is perfect. Don’t stop.’

  ‘You like that. You like it hard?’

  ‘Yeah. I like it hard. Just – don’t – stop.’

  The boat was rocking crazily; a wash of water splashed us both. I could feel my wet hair heavy down my back. He grabbed it, pulling my head back so that my back curved deeper and his cock hit the sweet spot and I was going to cum, begging him to go harder.

  ‘Now, with me. Cum. I want you to flood me.’

  He slapped my ass as he came, and that got me there, that and the short stabs of his fat cock as it pulsed three great gouts of cum up me. I screamed and ground my cunt against him, then we both fell forward, all his weight on my back, as
the boat swayed slowly back to stillness. Then we ate the figs ravenously and drank some more wine, and he asked me if I wanted to go again, and I did, me on top this time, his hands gripping the muscles at the side of my waist, bringing me down on him over and over while I stroked my clit until I came and lay over him, his cock hammering up at me until he was ready, then he pushed me back, knelt between my lolling thighs and gave it to me across my mouth. I licked his cum from my lips. Salty, viscous, mineral. Then we slept a while under the sun, hand in hand, and then it was time to go back to the boat.

  It had been a fantastic matinee, but we both knew, wordlessly, that there wasn’t going to be an evening performance. I knew Jan wouldn’t kiss and tell. We barely spoke for the rest of my time on the Mandarin, and that was just fine.

  12

  The summer migration across the Mediterranean moves to a rhythm as mysterious as a skein of geese in flight. A rumoured sighting of celebrity, a Kate or a Kanye, will have the unwieldy tubs of the wealthy suddenly nosing their way to a particular bar or beach, indistinguishable from its fellows: the owner will triple the prices on the chalkboard and for a few days or a week the customers will glow with the elusive fairy dust of imagined fame, the knowledge that this place, and this place only, is the right place to be. Then the rumour will skip once more across the waves, and the boats will tack clumsily off in another futile pursuit, leaving the locals to a hyenas’ feast of scraps.

  This year, it was Giacomo’s near Gaeta, a baroque town on the coast south of Rome. In the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX had promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception after meditating in the Golden Grotto of the Church of Santissima Annunziata there, and Tris announced our dinner reservation with similar awe. As we trailed up the uneven cobblestoned alleyway from the harbour to the restaurant, there was definitely a sense of mystery in the air. Before the night was out, someone was surely going to dance on a table. Giacomo’s did have an enchanting view across the bay: a terrace was built out dramatically on a promontory above the town, above a cliff draped in creamy yellow jasmine, creating a flying carpet of scent.

  After we had played with the tuna tartare and grilled sea bass with fennel (if I saw another sea bass soon, I’d have to stick a fork in my eye), Steve drew me aside to look out at the harbour and the massive fortress of the one-time kings of Aragon.

  ‘Having fun?’ he asked dutifully.

  ‘Of course, darling. It’s beautiful. You?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied unconvincingly.

  Steve may have been fundamentally uninterested in people, but I couldn’t afford to be. I had to sweat what few assets I had, which meant being alert to the tiniest calibrations of this strange new world, to work out where I could find a foothold in its nexus. I scanned the view, looking for something to liven Steve up.

  ‘That’s Balensky’s boat.’

  I couldn’t have done better if I’d announced that there was a run on the rouble.

  ‘He’s here?’

  ‘Guess so. The boat anyway. I saw it back in Cannes.’

  I’d never seen Steve look nervous, but he was suddenly shifty, fiddling aimlessly with the permanent pacifier of his phone.

  ‘I want to meet him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Not here. Later, when we get back to the boat.’

  I was intrigued, something of a novelty in Steve’s company, but I kept quiet until we were safely in his bedroom. As I stooped to unfasten my Lanvin wedges in just my knickers, I realised I’d stopped noticing or caring whether Steve looked at me or not. We could have been married. I slipped on an embroidered Antik Batik kurta and patted the bed next to me.

  ‘So. What’s this all about?’

  ‘I need some information.’

  ‘And you want me to get it?’

  Of course he did, and of course it was majorly out of order. And then, with the same sudden rush of clarity I’d experienced back on the dock at Portofino, I saw that I had been adrift, just allowing the days to unroll. Maybe a shrink would have said it was delayed shock, but I preferred to see it as getting into character. Steve had never asked anything of me. But this could make him vulnerable, put him in my debt. This was a tipping point, a chance to change the game. So far, I’d been a passenger on this trip, but now I wondered if I could start to feel like a player.

  ‘Steve, you’re asking me to do something totally fucking illegal.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  I sat up from my nest of pillows. ‘No, you tell me. I might need to tell it to the judge, after all. Why do you need this?’

  Steve looked weary. ‘It’s just . . . he’s here, in Italy. I wanted to check up on something, something I’d heard, that’s all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I know.’

  ‘Well,’ I said carefully. ‘For a start he needs to know you’re here, too. Put it on Twitter if you have to.’

  ‘But I don’t do Twitter.’

  ‘Fine. Get Tris to call his PA then.’

  ‘But what should he say?’

  Oh God. I reached for my phone and googled Balensky. ‘He collects art,’ I said as I held out the screen to Steve. ‘Just like you,’ I added encouragingly. ‘Get Tris to say you want to pick his brains, that’ll flatter him.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  No shit, Sherlock. I took a deep breath, and suggested a few refinements to Steve’s plan. To leverage the trade between us, I was going to need knowledge, not to mention a decoy. Steve seemed pretty impressed with my solution.

  *

  It was a simple ruse, but it worked as I had hoped. The following afternoon, Steve joined me in the plunge pool.

  ‘Have you got an evening dress, Lauren – you know, something long?’ I’d been on the boat a month, and an evening gown was about the only thing I hadn’t yet bought.

  ‘Not with me, no. Why, darling?’

  ‘We’re invited to a dinner.’ As ever, Steve had half an eye on Bloomberg on the flat screen installed just above the water line. ‘Black tie,’ he added, morosely.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On Balensky’s boat.’ He raised what he obviously thought was a dashing eyebrow.

  Result.

  ‘We’re meeting him tomorrow, near Ponza.’

  ‘Sounds grand.’

  Above us on the sundeck, I could sense Carlotta pricking up her ears, or maybe her tits. Her nipples probably had built-in oligarch radar. I flipped over and swam a couple of side strokes to bring me next to him.

  ‘I could pick something up.’

  ‘Yeah, you need something smart. Get Tris to sort it.’

  Carlotta’s face popped over the rail. ‘I hate you,’ she mouthed sulkily, condemned to a romantic supper for two with her beloved.

  ‘Get over it, Cinderella,’ I called. ‘It’s your lucky day. We’re going shopping.’

  *

  Like all the charming fishing villages we’d passed on our way down the coast, the port at Ponza, the tiny strip of an island where the Romans go to play, no longer took the fishing part that literally. Most of the ramshackle ochre and yellow houses tumbling down to the sea contained million-euro pieds à terre, though a few still displayed washing at the windows and old ladies gazing placidly from their doorways. Maybe they were actresses sponsored by the government to give the place some colour. And even the sleepiest village square would contain a boutique or two where the women of the floating tribe of Eurowealth could pop in to make an offering. I pulled Carlotta into the nearest shop, which featured a window display of thousand-euro La Perla bikinis.

  ‘You need a dress. You’re going to be Steve’s girlfriend tonight.’

  ‘You mean, like, a threesome?’ I didn’t have the impression that this was a particularly novel request.

  It was a struggle not to roll my eyes. ‘Duh. No. Just for this party. You don’t have to do anything except look devoted. Now, how about this?’

  ‘What about Hermann? He won’t like it.’

>   ‘Tris’ll square it. He’ll have a fine time, don’t worry.’

  Carlotta picked out a full-length white Marc Jacobs shift with the tiniest of spaghetti straps that made her breasts look more improbably gravity-defying than ever. With her hair down and simple jewellery she would look like a Fellini goddess. I chose a vintage-style long-sleeved lurex dress in gold, much more covered up at the front, but scooped out and draped down to the coccyx behind. We found nude python Giambattista Valli sandals for us both – I assumed that a black-tie evening would dispense with the no-shoe nonsense – and two Fendi python clutches, emerald and silver for Carlotta, pink and gold for me. Carlotta watched appraisingly as I peeled off just over 7,000 euro in 500-euro notes.

  ‘He really likes you, Steve.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Still, whatever. You want to get good stuff you can keep.’

  Before we went back to the Mandarin we stopped at the café and snarfed down two pizzettes and a gelato affogato, swimming in Baileys and espresso. Carlotta speculatively pinched a fold of skin above her elbow.

  ‘I’m always starving. Hermann hates me to eat, but two prawns and a piece of watermelon is not lunch, you know? When I’m old, I’m going to get like totally fucking fat.’

  *

  As we boarded the tender that evening. Carlotta was really getting into character, holding Steve’s arm and playing with his collar. He actually looked quite handsome in a dinner jacket, though at the last minute he’d defiantly left off the tie. I hissed at Carlotta to take off her engagement ring and she whipped it into the Fendi. She’d happily have chucked it into the sea, I thought, if there was a chance of her method acting becoming reality. Hermann had been diplomatically removed by Tristan for a scuba excursion, a night dive to some famously inaccessible caverns, from which Carlotta reluctantly had to be excluded as she didn’t have her PADI scuba certificate. Maybe I’d better see about doing that.

  ‘So did you hear about that father and son last year in the caves at Capri? They got, like, stuck, and the father had to decide whether to save himself and leave the son or die with him, so like –’