Priceless (50 page)

“And now I’ve been laid off.” Tom was referring to a job he’d had at an investment bank run by the husband of one of Donna’s friends.

“You have?”

“Yes. Last in, first out. Don’t worry,” he added quickly. “You’ll still get money for Katie.”

“Actually,” Serena said truthfully, “That wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to set up on my own, of course.”

“It’s what you always hoped to do eventually,” Serena reminded him. “You’re just doing it a little earlier than you thought. That’s all.”

“Donna isn’t happy. She thinks I should just get another job. But it’s not so easy. The market is flooded with guys ten years younger than me. All the guys my age are being laid off.”

“And setting up on their own,” Serena murmured. She imagined Donna’s horror at the thought that she had accidentally traded down. Perhaps she’d thought that Tom would one day eclipse her husband, and now she realized that he wouldn’t. Who was going to keep Donna
in Pilates lessons for the rest of her life? Perhaps she was thinking, God forbid, that she might even have to get a job. No wonder she was making Tom’s life a misery.

“I’ve been thinking about calling my company Phoenix. It speaks of rebirth and success, don’t you think?”

“I think it speaks of a middle-aged, unemployed banker taking a last shot at owning an Aston Martin.”

Tom managed a smile. “You’re right.” He downed half a glass of wine. “I have fucked up, Serena. Everything I touched has turned to shit. Sitting here in this kitchen talking to you, with our daughter playing upstairs, feels so right. It’s so comfortable. You understand me.”

I just don’t expect anything of you
, Serena thought.

“You wouldn’t be barking at me every morning, asking me to produce a fucking spreadsheet showing how my job search is progressing. I swear when I signed on for Jobseeker’s Allowance after college, the woman at the job center didn’t ride my arse about it like Donna does.”

“The woman at the job center probably didn’t have a Pilates habit,” Serena said, and smiled.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I’m nudging fifty. I’m unemployed. I’m living with a woman who only ever looks at me now with disappointment in her eyes. What did I do, Serena? Why did I leave you? You were the best thing in my life.”

Serena shook her head ever so slightly.

“Why didn’t you try harder to stop me?”

“Why didn’t you try harder to stay?”

“I don’t know. Because … because it was all getting so stifling,” he said. “It was the same thing every day. I’d come home and find you covered in baby sick.”

“From
our
baby,” Serena pointed out.

“Come on,” said Tom, “you have to admit that you weren’t the woman I married.”

Serena reeled. But managed not to fight back. There was no point. She had long since let go of Tom Macdonald. And he was deep in his cups. He was slurring his words.

“Donna was so different,” he recalled. “She paid attention to me.”

“Because she didn’t have to pay attention to anything else. She paid people to do the worrying for her,” Serena said.

“Suddenly, it seemed like there was fun to be had again. You can’t blame me. I was doing eleven hours a day at work. I was under incredible stress.… But I got it wrong. I should have told you what was going through my head. I can see that now. Can you ever forgive me? Sit here, Serena. Sit next to me. I want to hold you. I want to come back to you. I want to work on our marriage.”

It had taken a long time, but now Serena knew that she was over Tom Macdonald. People had told her that this moment would come. That one day he would tell her that he had made a mistake, and beg to be allowed to come back. Night after night she had dreamed of it. Longed to hear him say that he loved her. She imagined that she would hesitate for just a moment, to give him pause, before she threw herself into his arms and told him, yes, yes, he must never go away again.

But now that the moment had arrived, she felt quite differently.

“Tom,” she said, “we don’t have a marriage to work on anymore. We’re divorced.”

Serena put him to bed in the spare room. Her ex-husband. She didn’t want him anymore. It was over. As was her career as a forger. She’d survived the end of her marriage and her involvement with Julian. She had a wonderful daughter, she had her health and her talent.
She would work on original paintings. Make a name for herself in her own right. She would raise a happy daughter. It was time to move forward with no regrets, she told herself as Tom began snoring next door. No regrets. Especially not about Yasha …

CHAPTER 72

Y
asha had been deadly serious when he’d said that he thought he and Serena should remain apart for her safety. But that didn’t mean he didn’t think about her. He thought about her often. He could picture her smiling face as she played with her daughter on the terrace in Italy. He could hear the soft sighs that escaped her mouth when they made love in his apartment in London.

He tried to put her out of his mind, but eventually he knew that he had to see her. The Ricasoli was old news. Belanov had cashed his check. The new owner professed himself delighted. Perhaps it was safe for Yasha to make his move now. With the SIM card from Julian Trebarwen’s phone safely in his possession, Yasha knew that there was no danger of any revelations unless Serena herself chose to make them. And Yasha longed to see her. He had something he desperately wanted to show her. He had a task ahead that would require her help.

He arrived on her doorstep just after Tom left with Katie for their holiday. He was carrying the accordion case in which he had secreted
The Virgin
for its trip to Italy all those months before.

•          •          •

Serena had been right. The painting of Ricasoli’s
The Virgin Before the Annunciation
that had sold through Ludbrook’s had not been the original but her own clever fake. However, the painting that had been submitted to a barrage of carbon dating tests was the original. Evgeny Belanov knew nothing of the switch. The oligarch had never even known that there was a painting to switch with his priceless chattel. As far as Belanov was concerned, Yasha and Leonid had spent the three weeks between the Virgin’s purchase and her arrival on his yacht taking the scenic route across Europe. He knew nothing at all of the house in Tuscany and Serena.

“But you commissioned the painting for Belanov.” Serena was confused.

“I’m afraid I lied to you about that,” said Yasha. “Your painting was always for me.”

“And Leonid? He was Belanov’s man.”

“Leonid’s nobody’s man. And everybody’s. The money I gave him to help me out was enough to convince his wife to give him one more chance.”

“And you trusted him to keep quiet?”

“After I saw the way he was around your daughter, yes. Besides, he has as much to lose now as I do.”

And so Yasha explained to Serena how he had bided his time, keeping her painting hidden away until the right moment had come. He said he had always known that Belanov would not want to keep the Ricasoli for himself. Yasha’s own upbringing made it easy for him to understand the richer man. It didn’t matter that the Ricasoli Virgin was unique, one of a kind, priceless. Yasha knew that Belanov would eventually look at the painting, just fifteen inches square, and think he wanted more for his money. No matter how precious, one small painting
would start to look like a very bad deal when Belanov could have a super-yacht or a dozen houses in its place.

“I knew he would sell it. So I made sure I advised him on the sale. For security and his privacy, I told him that the Ricasoli should be viewed in a bank vault. I took the original into the bank vault in my faithful accordion case, but it was your painting that went into the safe.”

“But why did you take the risk? Why were you involved in the first place?”

“Belanov was the only person standing between my brother and jail. The night the painting was sold, my brother was discovered in the animal hold of a 747 from Moscow. Hardly the safe first-class passage for him that my client promised as part of my commission for
The Virgin’
s sale. Still, my brother lived. When the police turned up at my gallery that night, I was certain they would have far worse news.”

Serena listened in disbelief.

“So now the saga is almost complete. Belanov has exchanged what he thought was a real Ricasoli for nearly a hundred million pounds, which is what he really wanted in the first place. My brother is no longer in danger of spending the rest of his life in a Russian jail. And I still have the real Virgin.”

He tapped the accordion case.

“Would you care to come on a musical tour of Europe with me?” he asked Serena.

A week later, they were back in Italy, at a tiny church in a village near Naples.

The priest welcomed them warmly. Yasha had called ahead to let him know that they would be arriving, with a gift for the priest and his congregation. Like Robin Hood, Yasha had decided it was time to redistribute some wealth.

In the welcome coolness of the sacristy, Yasha opened the accordion case once more.

“It is a very good copy.” The priest nodded when he saw the painting. “Thank you for offering it to us. I am very glad to accept. When I heard that
The Virgin
had been rediscovered, I prayed with all my heart that she might find her way back to us. This church has never quite forgiven itself for letting her go when times got hard in the eighteenth century. But times are still hard, and not even the Vatican could have paid the price they wanted for her this time. A hundred million, you say?”

“Ninety-nine million, five hundred.”

“Silly money.”

Yasha and Serena murmured sympathetically.

“Still, there is something of the original’s spirit here in your copy,” the priest continued. “And I know that she will make people very happy indeed. Shall we put her back in her place?”

Yasha and Serena followed the priest to the tiny chapel off the main body of the church, where
The Virgin
had spent her early years. Yasha smiled to himself as the priest told them that the original had been slightly bigger. He really did have no idea that what he was holding was the real thing.

At last Serena saw how
The Virgin
was supposed to have looked. In the quiet light of the candles, the gold leaf that surrounded her head seemed to glow with an inner light of its own. There was a magic here that was lost when you saw the painting under the bright lights of a gallery.

“Thank you,” said the priest. “For bringing our lady back to us. Would you like to stay for lunch, perhaps? There is enough for all.”

Yasha answered for them. “That’s very kind,” he said, “but we have a plane to catch.”

Serena gave him a quizzical look. He explained once they were outside.

“I do not want to waste a single moment of my time with you with a priest sitting between us. There’s a good restaurant in the village if you’re hungry.”

“Not really,” said Serena.

“Then what shall we do?” Yasha asked.

“I’m sure we’ll think of something. Do you think they’ll let us into the hotel room yet?”

The room was plain but perfect, with its dark wood furniture and crisp white linen. Two single beds, placed decently far apart. (Yasha had forgotten to ask for a
letto matrimoniale.)
Voile curtains fluttered at the windows. There was a small terrace that overlooked the sea, which was where Yasha joined Serena now. He put his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder.

“You can see Capri from here,” he told her.

“I’ve always wanted to go there,” said Serena.

“Scene of some very bad behavior,” said Yasha. “You know what Caligula did on that island? He had virgins shipped over there by the dozen to amuse himself and his friends.”

“Tell me more. What did he do with them?”

“Why don’t you come inside and I’ll show you?”

Serena laughed and let herself be led back into the cool dark bedroom, full of desire and delight as Yasha spun stories about the erotic history of Italy from the Romans to the Renaissance. She had never known any man who could turn her on with knowledge.

But as Yasha peeled Serena’s white dress from her warm and sticky body and she returned the favor and licked the salty sweat from his chest, neither of them knew just how closely they were reliving history. The narrow single bed on which they chose to express their
love for each other stood in the exact spot where once there had been a screen to change behind. And as Serena cried out in her passion, giving herself up to her lover completely, her voice echoed the earlier passionate cries of an innocent village girl who had stepped behind that screen to be ruined by Giancarlo Ricasoli.

CHAPTER 73