The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) (17 page)

The permanent collections here make my current crop of portraits look like holiday snaps, but that’s not going to defeat me. It’s galvanising me all the more. My first exhibition in London has been a sell-out, after all. The Park Avenue princesses and the Robinsons have already referred me to new clients here in Manhattan and others as far away as Paris. The assignment at Club Crème is coming up in a few days.

And the Weinmeyers have been in touch just this morning to arrange a meeting to go through the proofs of our session. And to offer me a new commission.

Little do they know that Weinmeyer has swiftly become a code word for me and Gustav to instigate particularly rough, argumentative sex spiced up by a running commentary. He figures that if we talk enough about the Weinmeyer predilection for one-man-two-women threesomes, I won’t be tempted to try it. But he’s the one who sowed the seed. And the idea is sticking. Something to save up for.

I dance a little jig on the spot. This evening he wants me to dress in a crinkled silk chiffon dress from Ralph Lauren that’s hanging in my wardrobe. Then he’s taking me across the park to the jazz bar in the Carlyle Hotel to listen to Woody Allen playing the clarinet with his band.

I push out into the cold white midday light and hurry up Sixth Avenue to the Rockefeller Center. Today I’m wearing the Dr Zhivago white hat and white jacket that Crystal kitted me out in when I went to Lugano last November, because Polly and I have decided to behave like tourists and go up to the top of the Rock before hitting the ice rink.

She’s standing by the ticket kiosk and I see her before she sees me. It’s only been a couple of weeks since New Year’s Eve, but I’m taken aback. She’s wearing a neon-pink bobble hat with matching jacket, her legs skinny as sticks in a pair of white jeans exactly like mine. But contrasting with, or maybe because of, those jolly bright colours she looks haggard and pale. She is flipping the tickets in her hand as she waits for me, and as she stares into space there is a fractured look of dejection.

‘Hey, babes, sorry I’m late!’

I rush to hug her. I can feel her shoulder blades poking through the padded pink jacket. She clings onto me, her cold cheek pressed against mine. I recall the Halloween party back in London when she was in her element, dressed up to the nines and pirouetting through the racks of lacy dresses and feather boas in Pierre’s new London outlet. She was the hostess with the mostest that night. Now she won’t let me go. We stand there, buffeted by the crowds, her thin arms twined round my neck.

‘Hey, move along there, sisters!’ someone yells at us, and finally we break apart.

We join the queue to get up to the top of the Rockefeller Center, and I feel her staring at me.

‘You OK, Pol?’ I ask, surprised at the nervous quiver in my voice. ‘I’m worried about you. I wondered if everything was all right with you on New Year’s Eve, actually. You don’t seem yourself.’

She shakes her head but we are then marshalled into the crowded lift before she can reply. We shoot upwards as if we’re in a rocket going to the stars.

‘Don’t bother about me. We were all a bit on edge that night. A lot to get our heads round. But forget all that. You’re on top of the world up here. Come and see!’ she cries, grabbing my arm.

For the next half hour we are buffeted by the high winds circling the viewing platform. You can see it all from here. The impressive, solid Empire State Building may be fifteen or so blocks away but it looks close enough to touch. Below us the New York cabs scuttle up and down the straight lines of the city streets like yellow bugs, while planted at the mouth of the harbour the Statue of Liberty waving on her plinth looks like a tiny jade Thumbelina.

‘If I screw my eyes up I reckon I can see our apartment from here.’ I point to the west side of Central Park, and glance at Polly to see if she’s following my finger. ‘Maybe even Gustav’s telescope!’

‘Oh, change the record! All that domestic bliss gives me vertigo.’ Polly turns her back on the stunning vista laid out at our feet and stares at me. ‘But Gustav is doing something right. The change in you is phenomenal. I love your hair grown so long. It’s like golden syrup. All those years when my aunt and uncle used to sit you in the kitchen with a pudding bowl and hack it all off as soon as it reached your collar. They hated it, didn’t they? Called you an ugly ginger.’

I clutch onto one of the eyeglasses set along the parapet. I attempt to peer through it, to see if I can spy our flag. But all I can see is a circle of blackness. I swallow to try and keep calm. ‘Why bring that up?’

‘Just the contrast between then and now.’ She reaches out and touches a strand of my hair. ‘You look as if you’re lit up from within, you know. Your eyes are sparkling. Your skin is peachy.’

I flinch away. Not so much from her hand, but the jarring note in her voice. ‘You make me sound like a prize springer spaniel!’

‘I’m a stylist. I advise on beauty for a living, remember? My job is about people’s looks. Styling them, improving them so they look good for their public. I’m paid to transform them into the person they want to be. But that involves lashings of make-up, expensive hairdressers, and combing Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf Goodman for suitable clothes. It creates an illusion so far removed from the original that they end up looking like someone else. But you? You still look like the Serena Folkes I know and love, but with knobs on, and all with minimum effort.’

‘That’s because I’m happy to be here, I’m happy to be with Gustav. Hey, and most importantly of all, I’m happy to be with you! We’re in the same city at long last! All those shops and bars and clubs you frequent, all the people you’ve met! First you were in London then over here becoming worldly and sophisticated when I was doing my best to get away from Devon. Did you know I nearly got on a plane and came over here to surprise you last year instead of travelling round Europe? But then I’d never have gone to Venice and those nuns would never – are you OK, Polly?’

She nods sharply, grabs at my sleeve as if she’s about to faint. ‘Sure. Cold, that’s all.’

I put my arm round her, pull her close, rub her arms to warm her up. ‘And now I’m here for the foreseeable future. I haven’t even got a ticket out of New York because our stay is open-ended! So I can spend lots of time with you, meet your friends, see what you do every day, maybe even come and work with you if you can pull some strings?’

‘It’s been more than two weeks since New Year’s Eve, Rena. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.’ Polly pushes her cold face up against mine. But it feels more like a knock than a hug. Her cheeks are so bony. ‘But I guess I should forgive you. You’re head over heels. That bloom. Is that what love is supposed to look like?’

‘Honestly, Pol, you make it sound as if I’ve got it all sorted, but I’ll never take any of this for granted. Not for a second. I worked hard to get here. Gustav and I had a business arrangement and I had to prove myself. Anything could happen in the future, but I’m going to do everything I can not to jinx this.’ I pull my white hat down over my hair to stop it whipping into my eyes. I’m aware she’s studying me closely, as if she can’t work me out, and the blue light of her gaze is unnerving.

‘You’ve got it so right. And I think I’ve got it so wrong,’ she murmurs so quietly that I’m not sure I’ve heard right.

‘It was a rocky path for me and Gustav, Polly. If you can call eggshells rocky. We started out so incredibly wary. Trust, intimacy – some seriously thorny issues to deal with. It was supposed to be all about my photographs and the exhibition, and physical companionship from me in return, all very clinical, but who were we kidding? It was lust at first sight! Seriously, Pol. We were horribly mixed up, both of us. You know all about my past, you were the only good thing in it, but that Margot, and Pierre, they nearly destroyed Gustav’s ability to get close to anyone ever again.’

‘You could have called me. I would have come to you, wherever you were. I could have helped. Or I could have advised you to steer well clear. You’ve had enough horrors in your own life, Rena, abandoned as a newborn, taken in by those evil people who never showed you a moment’s kindness, you’ve struggled enough to emerge from that life as beautifully as you have without being troubled by someone else’s problems!’

‘I know, hon, and thank God you were there when we were kids, but I don’t think you could have helped me when I met Gustav. His problems are my problems now. I didn’t want to steer anywhere that wasn’t towards him, but it was still a journey I had to navigate on my own.’

She pulls away, but our arms are still linked. ‘It’s that ex-wife that worries me. You don’t need that kind of grief.’

I can’t hide my reaction. I realise I’ve dropped her arm. ‘Margot is long gone, Polly. The boys have got better things to talk about now, and they’re emailing each other every day. Come on. Lighten up! You and I have got so much to look forward to.’

‘Look at you. All grown up.’ Her bright-blue eyes are fixed on a point just past my shoulder. I can tell she’s only half-listening to me and I can’t understand it. I dig my elbow into her ribs.

‘Well, I’m being rewarded now! Frequent filthy sex with a hunky, rich, adoring, imaginative male? What’s not to like?’

She doesn’t cave in and snigger as I expect. Instead her eyes remain fixedly open and staring away from me, as if she’s forcing the tears away. ‘Stop boring on about your perfect love life, Rena!’

My mouth drops open. She may as well have slapped me across the face.

‘I wasn’t just talking about me, Pol! I meant that another thing that feels so great right now is that we’ve both got lovely men – and they’re related! So you’d know all about hot sex when you’re dating Gustav’s brother!’

But Polly’s face snaps closed and she pulls me back inside. ‘Let’s just get on with the tourist bit!’

I drag my feet, prickling with annoyance as she harangues me into the queue to have our photograph taken. When it’s developed it creates the illusion that we’re perched precariously on a girder as in the 1931 Charles Ebbets photo of a row of construction workers having ‘Lunch Atop a Skycraper’.

‘I thought we would skate first, then eat? I haven’t tried out any of the rinks since I moved here, and I could really do with the exercise,’ she declares briskly when we’re back on the ground.

I follow her mutely, allow her to take on the role of leader. After all, it’s her traditional role when we’re together, and it’ll stop us having to talk. Her strange, abrupt behaviour is totally out of character, especially when we’ve got so much to look forward to. My insides churn with anxiety. She’s always been my anchor in life, but today she seems to have drifted away from me, as if she’s storing up something unpleasant or difficult to say. I feel as if I’ve upset her. But I can’t think what I’ve done wrong. I glance at my watch, wondering if I can make my excuses instead of having lunch as we’d arranged.

But now we’re at the ice rink, catching it when it’s almost empty. As we’re lacing up our boots my golden locket falls out of my collar.

‘Pretty necklace,’ Polly remarks, in an oddly cold voice that jerks as she loops the laces tightly round her ankles. ‘Pure gold?’

I hold up the little locket, watching the light catch on the golden surface. ‘It was a Christmas present from Gustav.’

‘He has good taste. Come on, let’s get going before the hordes arrive.’

I tuck the locket safely back inside my jacket. We skate out and, after some slow swizzles to get into our stride, soon we’re twirling in the middle of the Rockefeller ice rink, smirking at the handful of stumblers clutching the sides while we glide and turn effortlessly in the very small space. Polly was right. Fresh air, clean exercise, the lovely speed of skating that gives you an elegance you never achieve on two flat feet.

When the rink clears for lunchtime, Polly bats her eyelashes at some officials so we’re allowed to stay on while they brush the ice. We float round in silence, soothed by the goldfish repetition of our circuit, but her preoccupation is still hard to ignore. My chest starts to feel tight. Polly is the closest thing I have to a relative, and yet there’s a force field around her today that I’ve never sensed before, made all the weirder by the high, feverish colour in her cheeks.

‘Polly! Spill! Is everything OK?’ I venture at last as the stars and stripes of several American flags and bright lights of the Rockefeller Center circle around us. ‘Something’s up, I can tell. You look more glum than glam. You look, really, well, you look–’

‘Like shit? That all you can say when you deign to tear yourself away from your sugar daddy?’ She skates away, scooting up a shower of ice. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

‘Hey, cool it, hon! I just meant you look like you need some TLC. A square meal and a big hug.’ I catch up with her, grab her and shake her. ‘You’ve always looked out for me. Let me worry about you for a change. I reckon you’re too thin, for a start. Pierre’s obviously not taking care of you, but then I get the impression he isn’t exactly the nurturing type, is he, especially as he and Gustav are so preoccupied with getting things back on track. I’m here now. So talk to me.’

‘All the women in Manhattan look like this,’ she snorts, bending her knees and swooping low. ‘By the way, Tomas has been asking after you. He’s never gotten over meeting you at the Halloween party in Covent Garden, how you wandered out onto the patio like a vision in virginal white. I don’t know what you did or said to him, but he thinks you’re hot enough to scorch.’

I blush uncomfortably. ‘He wanted me to go down on him, but I blew him out. As it were. I’d just met Gustav, and he was all I could think about.

‘But I don’t want to talk about him. Answer my question, Polly.’ I pull my hat further over my eyes. The cold noon is being spattered by tiny specks of gritty rain. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

She shoots over to the edge and sprays up a hockey stop.

‘If you really want to know, it’s Margot.’

My toe pick catches and I topple hard, falling upon her and bashing us both against the barrier. The breath is knocked out of me as I struggle to get upright. I realise I’ve bitten my lower lip and can taste blood.