The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) (32 page)

Meanwhile it feels wrong being half-naked. I pull on some clean clothes. I can’t stand this hostile atmosphere a minute longer. We need distance. How far, how long, I have no idea. Maybe a day. Maybe forever. I start throwing some other clothes into a bag.

I glance out of the window, over the skyline that I will always associate with our brief life together. But it all looks fake now. Precarious, like a painted backdrop. How did I ever think this magnificent palace could be my home?

I have to get out of here. It’s one thing observing Gustav’s fight with his brother. It’s quite another having him turn his anger onto me. If he’d listened to anything I’ve said about my childhood he’d know that I’m not a coward, but I won’t stand and be attacked either.

Individual thoughts rise to the surface like cream curdling. All I’ve done in the last three months is dance to his tune. All I’ve done since Christmas is try to help bring him closer to Pierre. As for Polly – I can’t even think about her.

I catch sight of myself in the mirror. My hair is still damp. My face is scrubbed and unmade-up from the bath. The only things adorning me are the silver bracelet and the golden locket. I yank at them, try to break both the chains, but of course they are unbreakable. Only the best, strongest metals for Gustav Levi.

Then I hear the heavy clunk of the front door, and silence. He really has gone out and left me.

I fasten my bag with the theatrical zip that always heralds a dramatic exit in the movies, my heart hammering with despair and fury, and as if in response my iPad, still plugged into the charger but buried under the rumpled duvet, makes the swooshing, clicking sound that announces that it is coming to life.

The screen is so bright it shines right through the Egyptian cotton sheet. I pick it up. It’s an email. And the sender’s name is Margot.

I should delete it. Whatever hateful nonsense this is, I should delete it. But instead I open the message and a face fills the screen. It’s the woman from the theatre, painted to look like a swan, eyes decorated with the white lace mask, holding a bouquet of edelweiss. She pushes her nose into the flowers, gazes up through heavy, oriental lids. In the background there is some kind of church music. A wedding march. The arrival of the Queen of Sheba.

‘Hello, Serena. I would have sent this direct to Gustav but then, well, you really shouldn’t leave your devices lying around backstage. It was too tempting to make a little mischief. I know this will get to him as soon as you’ve opened it, anyway. You share everything, no? So this is for you, Gustav darling,’ says the woman in a deep, smoker’s voice. ‘Remember these pretty bridal flowers? Remember this wedding music? Remember me?’

I can’t tear my eyes away. The woman is pulling the mask off with one hand, glancing down, picking up a big wad of cotton wool, and wiping it across her eyes. She smudges the black birdlike maquillage into a horrible mess over her cheeks and forehead, then she takes another pad and carefully wipes first one eye, then the other, keeps wiping until all the make-up is gone.

The face is still dead white, the lips bright cerise pink, but the black oriental eyes are the same, staring at me just as they did from those sketches Gustav made in Lugano. The mouth keeps moving, but I can’t hear the words because the organ music fills the air. I back away into the living room, still clutching it.

‘I’ve had enough! Take him!’ I scream like a madwoman at the gloating screen. ‘You’re welcome to him. You’ve won! You’re welcome to the lot of them!’

I drop the iPad from my scorched fingers, grab my bags, and run from the apartment – leaving it, still talking, the screen refusing to fade, on Gustav’s favourite sofa.

I’m standing in front of a giant furnace, blazing out heat like a scene from Dante’s
Inferno,
complete with doomed souls. In the glowing embers I see a burning old building in Paris and a young man carrying his baby brother from the flames.

The people around me shuffle their feet on the concrete floor that sparkles with shards of glass, and I force myself back to the present. Even though this is a pleasure trip I still raise my camera. Even though my hands are shaking with fatigue I wait to capture the performance that is about to begin. The gaping maw of the fire’s grate is for my ‘Windows and Doors’ exhibition. The light and shade is perfect for a moody, typically Venetian composition.

Even in here the sea breeze reaches us, cutting viciously off the iron-grey lagoon separating this little island from the domes and spires of the watery city that rises like a herbaceous border on the horizon.

I lean against the wall and watch as a young guy saunters out from a back room, unbuttoning a loose white shirt. There’s no fanfare except a muttered commentary from the tour guide in charge of the tourist group beside me. I try to listen in, but she’s speaking in a language I don’t recognise and in any case I’m distracted by the long hard stare I’m getting from the guy as he strips to the waist.

The flirtatious glance is all part of the show, a trick to improve sales, and it must have the desired effect. The other tourists all clap enthusiastically as the shirt comes off. The guy picks up a long metal pipe and plunges it without further ado into the bubbling furnace. The back of his head, spine and legs are painted with darkness, the outline of his face, chest and arms thrown into relief by the roaring light.

The muscles in his shoulders and arms flex as the glass blower grasps the pipe. His ribs jab through his skin. All that intense heat must knock the breath out of you.

‘I’ll have him washed and brought to my room,’ one of the other tourists mutters.

My stomach tightens. The cold air has brought tears to my eyes. Not just the cold air. I feel so alone here. And stupid. I am missing Gustav as badly as if someone has chopped off one of my limbs.

I’m standing in the one place I’ve dreamed about revisiting, but what’s obsessing me is the mess I’ve left behind me. Gustav slamming the door of the flat without another word. Me left alone to zip up my bags, enraged by his distrust and scared shitless by that iPad message. A very quiet voice inside me, constantly being squashed down by all the other arguments, wonders if I was too hasty running off like that. But if I’d stayed, would he have come back? Was that one of his midnight flits, as Pierre called them? Would he have listened even if I’d wanted to talk?

I can’t hold on to this kind of anger for long. All I know now is that the oceans I’ve put between us may have calmed me down a little, but they have solved nothing, just made me realise that the one man I want by my side isn’t here.

A wedge of muscle thickens down each side of his back as the young man manipulates his iron pipe, dipping it into the furnace again. I know from my researches into glassmaking that the furnace is called the glory hole. When I read that, lying in the First Class cabin the Weinmeyers had booked for me, my first instinct was to text something obscene to Polly, because I could hear her reaction:
He can poke my glory hole any time!

But Polly and I are not on speaking terms. In fact, I don’t even know where she is. My darling cousin has taken leave of her senses. She’s decided that I’ve stolen her boyfriend and trashed her life, and Gustav thinks the same thing.

The glass blower scoops out a sort of jelly and dances across the cold workshop to a slab of marble where he rolls and flips it, constantly lifting and twisting and swinging his pipe. Then he lowers his mouth and his cheeks pull in as he starts to suck. There’s a muted collective gasp around me.

For the millionth time I wrestle with the temptation to make that call. Swallow my pride and sort this out. I need to know how Gustav has reacted to that iPad video. Why the hell did I leave it there? If Margot and Pierre filmed that together, then they are even more evil than I thought. They are finding their way back to Gustav.

The glass blower rotates and twists his pipe as his cheeks blow life into the red-hot globule gathered at the end and coax it into shape. As the embryonic glass elongates at the end of that pipe it swells and grows, unmistakably resembling a hard-on.

A frantic, hopeless desire grips me. My body, my heart, arguing with my head. I can’t switch this off. Gustav is on the other side of the world, but who am I kidding? It felt right to jump on the first flight out here. Remember, Gustav was very quick to believe that I had let his brother kiss me. But that could have been part of Pierre’s plan. And I was starting to warm to Pierre. Part of the plan, too. He was working some of that sinister magic on me.

But Gustav has hurt me by believing Polly’s stupid photograph rather than me. That injustice will keep me in Venice, and away from him. Let him get on with his life without me by his side, and deal with his poisonous brother on his own.

The glass blower sketches another
pas de deux
with his instrument, coaxing the elegant line of metal as he breathes air down the tube, and look how the globular mass responds, fading from garish tangerine to a rosy hue and forming into a lovely oval.

If this was the last moment of my life I would discard everything else. I would want Gustav’s hands running over me, coaxing my body into amazing shapes. No words. Just a mind-blowing reunion.

The ballet slows as the glass blower, still swinging his pipe to keep the momentum, rolls the dark-pink mass onto another slab and then suddenly, with his free hand, pinches the neck of the glass, which has stretched into a column, and decapitates it. Then it’s over. The shapeless, molten mass has turned into a unique ruby-red glass vase.

And everything will be all right, because I have work to do, and a life to get on with.

There is a deep hush inside the workshop. Everyone here seems reluctant to break the spell. But then the tourists start whispering, and gradually my scattered thoughts rearrange themselves into a pattern, like the multicoloured particles in a mosaic.

I approach the workbench. I study the vase closely, adjust the lighting over it, take some pictures of it with both my camera and my phone.

‘Please gift-wrap this and ship it to this address in Manhattan. The smaller one can be delivered direct to the Palazzo Weinmeyer. From me. Serena Folkes.’

I hear the cool authority in my voice and this time I catch a look of genuine admiration in the guy’s face. He looks me up and down, the expensive clothes, the quick slick of lipstick, the contrasting wild russet hair. He nods obsequiously and retreats to the back office to fetch the shipping documents.

I straighten my duck-egg-blue and white spotted silk scarf as I wait. I close my eyes, crumple the ends of the scarf up to my nose to sniff the slight remaining traces of Gustav’s tang from when he last wound it round my neck.

I walk slowly round the workshop. I finger the delicate glass ornaments, vases, bottles and bowls. I recognise the bulbous red goblets sitting on the equally delicate shelving. The Weinmeyers filled one of these with wine in their house on the Upper East Side and tried to seduce me. Spotlights are cleverly angled to make the glass objects glow, red, orange, green, blue. Seahorses, budding flowers, plain dishes, fragile glasses, all set out here for the discerning buyer.

The man emerges from the back office attired now in shirt and jacket, a pair of cool glasses on his nose. He hands me some forms and a pen. The guide ushers the tourists out of the workshop like a bunch of school kids.

‘
Grazie
,’ I murmur to the young glass blower and owner of the factory as I sign the forms with a flourish. ‘Signora Weinmeyer is going to love it.’

The first part of my mission has been accomplished. The Weinmeyers sent me to Venice ahead of them to check up on some rare black Murano glass chandeliers that are being made for the New York mansion, but actually they recognised that the sea air might do me some good. They have been so kind to me over the last couple of days, revealing a genuinely nurturing side to their flamboyant personalities, and I want to treat them to something.

I follow the straggle of tourists along the main street of pastel-coloured houses, past other closing workshops fronted by their little outlets. Every window glitters with glass trinkets. A low green canal runs along the centre of the street, boats bobbing listlessly.

A cold wet wind blows off the lagoon, slapping some life into me as I stare out over the water. It’s good to be travelling again, the best possible therapy, especially as this time I’ve got money, decent clothes, some clients eager for my expertise, and leisure to gather material for my next exhibition. After only a few days in Venice I can already feel myself loosening, at least physically. If only Gustav was here, if somehow we had made up, this would be perfect.

I falter as I reach the
vaporetto
stop to wait for the water bus. All very well thinking about my next exhibition, but that was going to be in New York, with Gustav’s help and patronage. If I’m on my own again I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board, comb through every new contact and client, and stage it myself.

The watery city is low-slung, balancing on its jigsaw of islands. Above the red-tiled roofs the apricot finger of the campanile beside San Marco Cathedral points up into a heavy sky laden with rain, and other bell towers rise here and there over the city as if answering a call.

Now the
vaporetto
has reached us and is churning up the water as it heaves round to reverse against the quay. The rattle of the barrier, the rumble and vibration of the engine beneath my feet as the boat strikes out across the lagoon are so familiar from when I was here last summer. Although speed limits were introduced years ago to try to reduce the damaging effects of the motorised wake of the
moto ondoso
, the streamlined wooden taxis passing us still look like racehorses straining at the gates.

The water bus drops me at Riva degli Schiavoni, the strip of pavement that passes outside my hotel, edging the south side of the city. A few yards further along is the Bridge of Sighs and the pink and white wedding-cake façade of the Doge’s Palace. I can hear the thud of music coming from the Piazza San Marco. They’re setting up stages and sound systems for the famous annual Carnevale, which starts in a few days’ time and will stretch itself out for as many days and nights as it can justify. It is always held in February, when Venice is at its coldest, but the Carnevale always coincides with Valentine’s Day, too, which adds to its magic. With the masks and costumes and noise and flares and baroque atmosphere, it is like a romantic version of Halloween.