Until Death (9 page)

Salvatore came over and put on the mask. He turned side-on to them and began creeping about in an exaggerated manner. Then he turned around suddenly and the transformation was profound. From a grinning, happy face to a grotesque, angry tyrant in less than a second.

‘I’ve used reflective white paint here and here.’ Kelly pointed to the cheeks and parts of the brow.

‘It’s lovely, really lovely,’ Jason said. ‘Move your head more, Salvatore. Is there too much movement?’

Kelly nodded. ‘I can build it up more at the back of the neck so it’s more solid. It’ll make it more comfortable too, and I’m going to line it.’

‘We need to be able to pull the masks upwards and away.’ Jason threw his hands in the air above his head. ‘It’s a change of scene direction.’

Kelly considered this. ‘I could put magnets on the top. Industrial grade are very strong yet small and light …’ She tailed off as Jason groaned and closed his eyes, running a hand through his thick hair. ‘You still getting your headaches?’

He nodded. ‘I’m fine and then bam, suddenly it arrives. I’ve tried all the usual treatments, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, cranio-whatever. Something’s misaligned.’ He shook his head.

‘Is that even a word?’

‘It feels like a word and it suits my problem.’ He gave a sigh. ‘I’m getting so desperate I’m trying a new treatment on Salvatore’s recommendation. You film yourself sleeping. You attach a small fitting like a light bulb to your light in the ceiling in your bedroom, say. It’s motion-sensitive, so it films you as you sleep, gives you an idea what’s going on in the dark hours. If you move too much in your sleep, if you are always on one side, that type of thing. You can interpret whether you’re disturbed subconsciously, apparently. I might be sleep-banging my head against the headboard all night for all I know.’

‘That’d give you a headache.’

‘Quite.’

‘And what have you found?’

‘Nothing unusual so far. You need to do it for a week at least to get a good idea.’

‘It’s fascinating,’ enthused Salvatore. ‘I’ve spent hours with it. I realise that I love looking at myself. I’m vainer than I thought.’

‘You’re not vainer than I thought,’ Jason added. They laughed easily. ‘I’m desperate so I’ll try anything.’ He looked at Kelly. ‘The Sleepchecker camera. I recommend it.’

The door to the studio opened and Medea came in bearing a tray with teas on it. She had added Greek pastries as well. Jason came forward and got all interested in them. ‘Did you cook these?’ He made Medea describe what was in them and listened intently to her replies, leaving Kelly desperately wishing he would ignore her. He was being too polite, he would make too much of an impression, Medea would begin to wonder why. If Medea was in the flat on the rare times she had visitors, she would offer drinks and food, her generosity a cover for her spying. She would report back to Christos later, but Kelly would take her comforts where she could. She was acutely aware that Christos could stop her working whenever he pleased. Finally Medea left with the tray and she relaxed a bit.

‘I can have the masks finished this weekend, magnets included.’

‘They’re not needed until next week. Why not bring them in on Tuesday? That’s the day the PR department wants to do a supplement to the programme with the “behind-the-scenes squirrellers”, so to speak. You get a nice photoshoot.’

‘Oh.’ Kelly looked embarrassed. ‘I’m terrible with pictures, I really hate them, you know. It’s just not for me.’

Jason stared at her, unconvinced. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I think you’d brush up well.’

She felt herself flush. He had this way of dishing out compliments that made her feel good, which made the tired and untended cells of her body crave for more. And that made her hate him.

‘Take the credit, you deserve it. There’ll probably be cheap white wine, you know the drill.’

Kelly stood firm. ‘I’m sorry, Jason. I’ll email through a biog, but I won’t do any pictures.’ She picked distractedly at the fraying hem of her old sweater.

‘You’d get more work, you know.’ Here he was, dangling the dream of money she could earn doing what she loved. He had no idea how unachievable it was. How his castaway comments pierced her to the core.

‘No.’ It came out harsh and offensive.

‘Salvatore, what can I say?’ He looked hurt for a moment but he recovered quickly. He held up a finger and waggled it at her. ‘We’ll start to wonder what you’ve got to hide.’

‘Then again,’ said Salvatore, ‘you’re so much more alluring with something to hide.’

Kelly felt the sweat spring up on her back.

S
ylvie pulled on her bikini bottoms and pinged the ties at her hips. She looked out of her changing cubicle at a slice of the Hampstead Heath Women’s Pond. The water looked murky and drab. She shook her shoulders and slapped her thighs. Not the Jersey Shore in July. She knew Kelly would be arriving soon. She knew her routines off by heart. They weren’t difficult to learn, she didn’t have the imagination to vary them. Sylvie’s disdain for her rival came back with full force. All that money and status and she still wasn’t anything more than a retiring mouse. She could mess with her mind in here today, and, really, why the hell not? Sylvie thought of all the oxygen pools and personal trainers across the capital that Kelly could have chosen to keep her tiny body in trim, and here she was, opting for a pleasureless dunk with the lesbians of north London.

Well, anything the mouse could do, she could do better. Sylvie bent forward to stretch her hamstrings but decided against touching the floor with her hands. Too many pubes wriggling in the cracks in the tiles probably, if the women in here were anything to go by. But she would never make the mistake of underestimating Kelly. Christos chose her and married her – a woman with the baggage of grief and a kid but no money to sweeten the deal. She must have had something else. Kooky was alluring, Sylvie needed to remember that. She put her hands on her trim waist and bent sideways as an old woman emerged from the next cubicle wearing an ancient black swimsuit and a woolly hat. Sylvie was as much fascinated as she was horrified. She watched her wobble away to the dock and silently climb down the metal stairs into the water. The pond was fed by an underground stream, greeny black and kinda greasy. Sylvie didn’t care. She had undergone far greater discomforts to get where she was and to get where she was going she would endure even more. She wasn’t prissy or squeamish, she could get stuck in, make no mistake.

She heard the door bang and stepped back into the cubicle. Kelly had arrived. The door to the next cubicle opened and closed and she heard the little sighs and rustles of a woman disrobing inches from her. Sylvie felt her heart beat slower. It was illicit and exciting, listening in on her rival’s private moments, to garments being shed from folds and crevices. She heard the door bang and knew Kelly had gone out to the pond. She pushed her shoulders back, chin forward and followed her out. It was surprisingly quiet out here in the middle of the Heath, the odd plop of hands breaking the still surface of the water or twigs falling from the trees. The lifeguard’s chair was empty.

Kelly was in a wetsuit, standing at the end of the dock, swinging her arms around to warm them up. Her long dark hair cascaded down her back. Silhouetted against the water she was casually beautiful, like a black mermaid plucked from some watery depths. Sylvie felt a flash of hatred for her. Some people didn’t deserve the gifts they were given. Not to cultivate and protect the natural bounty that chance and a bunch of genes had given her, not to appreciate the fortune it had saved her in treatments and surgery meant Kelly was a fool and not deserving of her respect. She was also weak – the old crones in here weren’t insulated with rubber against the cold and neither was she. That weakness was why her husband had been easy to pluck.

She watched Kelly spend a moment stretching her neck from side to side before she turned and climbed down off the jetty. She looked vacant, lost in some other place. As Kelly began to strike out for the middle, Sylvie walked to the end of the jetty, took a deep breath and dived in.

It was fucking freezing. So biting cold she was astounded her poor heart could still beat. She struggled to the surface, unable not to gasp. She saw Kelly front crawling to the rubber ring in insulating neoprene and used her anger to fight off the paralysis brought on by the arctic water. These mad English bitches! She gritted her teeth and struck out after her. With every stroke she got angrier and angrier, her panting not warming her. Kelly turned in a lazy swirl and headed back, passing Sylvie as she went. As they came level Kelly finally saw her and came up short, gulping in some of the murky water. She made a small coughing sound that made Sylvie smile. Behind them a woman screamed as her skin made contact with the water.

Sylvie saw Kelly swear and her mouth contract in an unbecoming line. She watched Kelly swim away faster. Sylvie ploughed on in the debilitating cold for the ring, touched it and turned. She was doing breast stroke now, it was too cold to get her head under. Kelly was nearly at the dock and turning again for another lap. ‘Bring it on,’ Sylvie muttered and began to swim after Kelly, determined to overtake her, but she hadn’t reckoned on Kelly being such a good swimmer. She liked that it was more of a battle than she had been expecting. They were both swimming hard now, Kelly front crawling ahead with a good technique and the right equipment. Sylvie toiled on, her feet and hands numb. She saw Kelly turn at the ring and head back; she dug deep and sped up further, feeling ridiculous, dragged far from her comfort zone. The lizard in the hat was already limping back to the changing rooms.

Sucked under by the cold water, Sylvie felt the indignities of playing the waiting game, of being the mistress, an object of pity and scorn, always waiting and hoping he would leave his wife. Well, she wanted to shove their pity down their fucking throats. The cold bit down and she powered on, gaining slowly on Kelly ahead of her. What women did for men, what she did! Agreeing to take the little whiny one horse-riding! The anger inside her began to warm her up.

Kelly reached the jetty and turned again, passing Sylvie for another lap. She had a look of triumph which made Sylvie mad. Real mad. She began to front crawl, head under the water, going all out to catch up the wife ahead. She was going to win, it just required more effort. She got to the ring and had gained a few metres; she powered on. She was stronger, faster, more agile, more determined than her rival. Of that she had no doubt. The outcome was already set. She was level with Kelly’s feet, the jetty a few metres ahead. They were locked in a race as important as an Olympic final. She gave a last push, her muscles and tendons straining, her heart burning, as they reached the jetty at the same time. Sylvie grabbed a hold on it, gasping with the cold and the exertion.

A wave of water slapped her in the face, Kelly planing it with her palm at her. ‘Stay away from me, stay away from my kids.’

Sylvie swooshed the water back. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ She reared up and dunked Kelly’s head under the water. She felt her rival flailing as she let go.

Kelly flew up out of the water and tried to slap Sylvie round the face. ‘Why did you tell Florence I was going away?’

‘Because you are.’

‘You’ll be waiting for ever, you stupid cow, he’s never going to leave me.’

Sylvie laughed. Her emotions changed in an instant – now she was enjoying this. She liked it when she got under people’s skin, when she made them show their hidden selves. ‘Wouldn’t he like this? Us fighting over him?’ She dunked Kelly’s head under again.

‘Ladies!’ The lifeguard was above them on the dock. ‘That’s enough. Out. Now.’ She bent down and grabbed at Kelly’s hand and half pulled her out of the water.

‘You bitch,’ Kelly spat down at Sylvie.

‘Stop it!’ shouted the lifeguard. ‘This is a nurturing place for women to come. Peaceful. Leave your arguments at the door.’ They always called upon the sisterhood to protect them, thought Sylvie; they conjured it like some holy relic, something that could ward off evil.

Sylvie watched Kelly stomp away to the changing rooms, her wet hair spraying angrily. She climbed out via the stairs. She didn’t feel cold now, she felt energised, her skin bright red and burning. Pleasure and pain were often chasing each other, fluid as emotions. What she felt so strongly one moment, what consumed her completely, could be ditched by the next. Kelly disappeared into the building. Sylvie felt her obsession with her begin to drain away as surely as the brackish water drained off her toned limbs. Kelly had nowhere interesting to go and no one interesting to meet. The battle was already won.

K
elly didn’t dismiss the Hampstead experience so quickly. She was not that kind of personality. It churned in her stomach like a badly digested meal, anger and outrage mixing and parting. She stomped down the paths of the Heath towards Camden, swearing to herself she was angry enough to kill Sylvie. The cheek of her. To follow her to her sanctuary, the one place she could feel at peace, where Amber and Michael were somehow closer to her. Sylvie had no idea of the layers of memory and pain she had intruded on so heartlessly. It was her or Sylvie, this situation couldn’t continue. The bag with the wetsuit banged ceaselessly against her legs as she went. The usual bracing post-swim high didn’t materialise as she hit the road at the bottom of the Heath. Nothing would change. Nothing could change. She felt tears of helplessness prick her eyes and she was ashamed. Oh, how she had changed from the feisty twenty-something who had taken on the bad bits of the world and lost herself so spectacularly.

She trudged on, hardly knowing where she was going. She ended up in Camden when she passed a Spystore. Jason’s conversation came back to her as she stared in at the window. A moment later she went in and bought the Sleepchecker camera he had raved about. Christos had installed a video system that had cost thousands to keep a check on her. She’d buy one for £39.99 and see if it could help her find a way out.