The Diamond Ring. Primula Bond

look comfortable there. That’s where we watched the fireworks on New Year’s Eve,’ says Pierre. ‘Kind of where this all began.’

      I turn my back on the fledgling spring day that has arrived overnight and allow myself to look at him. No green coat. No velvet breeches. No peacock feather. Just a new hangdog expression.

      Before I know what’s happening, I have flown across the room and smacked him, hard, across the face.

      The sound ricochets around the room. Pierre takes the blow with barely a flinch. Just a momentary closing of his dark eyes. The silence ticks by as we watch my handprint come up in livid stripes.

      So much for growing wiser. I shouldn’t have done that. I daren’t look at Gustav.

      ‘Nothing began,’ I reply coldly, backing away from him. ‘Not between you and me, anyway. Come on. You know why you’re here, so let’s just get on with it.’

      ‘Serena, please.’ Gustav clears his throat. He starts to walk towards me, eyeing his brother as if he might bite, or make a run for it. He changes his mind and stays where he is, halfway between us. ‘She has a right to be angry, though, P. That bitch Margot has told us everything.’

      ‘I can’t think what she’s told you. I haven’t spoken to her since that night at the theatre. I thought she’d long since left New York when I told her I wasn’t playing ball.’ Pierre’s knuckles whiten as he clutches his drink. ‘She was grossly insulted, of course, rained down curses on my head. On all our heads—’

      ‘Which is why I’d abseil into a volcano rather than be in her presence again.’ Gustav keeps it very quiet. ‘But into her presence we were enticed. It transpires she did leave New York, but only to track your movements in Venice. She sent us your peacock feather as evidence of your gatecrashing the Carnivale ball and pretending to be me. It spooked us, as intended, but we – Serena – thought it was from you. From your Venetian costume.’ Gustav gestures towards the caramel suede sofa facing the window. ‘Sit down.’

      ‘You’ve told him everything?’ Pierre doesn’t move, but fixes his eyes on me.

      ‘Of course I have. That’s why you’re here,’ I reply, edging round the other sofas back to the windowsill. ‘Your brother wants to hear it from you.’

      ‘I know Margot instructed you to do whatever it took to remove Serena from the equation so that you, and she, could get close to me. She made out the twisted argument that Serena would somehow block any reconciliation between us, which would be funny if it wasn’t farcical.’ Gustav sighs and gazes at me, the flame in his eyes so hot Pierre can’t possibly miss it. ‘All this girl has ever done is support our efforts. But then at the first sign of trouble in our relationship you took the idea and ran with it. You fancied my girlfriend for yourself.’

      I rest my fingers on the window for a moment. ‘That sound like a fair summary to you, Levi?’

      Pierre plonks himself down and pushes his body into the corner of the big sofa as if trying to make himself smaller. One knee jerks up and down so much that he puts the glass down on the table.

      ‘Yes, I was in Venice. And yes, I was with Serena. But all I want is for us to be friends,’ Pierre pins his eyes on me as he touches the red mark. ‘I come in peace.’

      My hand still stings as I study his face. He’s lost some of the chunkiness around the neck and shoulders. The aggressive spiky hair has relaxed into surprising wild curls and the Californian sun has already tanned him. He’s smart, and clean, surprisingly so, in a lightweight blue suit.

      Goddammit, he’s looking good.

      But the best thing is that now he looks a lot less like Gustav.

      Now he’s here in front of me, I let myself feel it for the last time. Pierre’s weight. The give of the cushions beneath us. His hands on me—

      ‘When you say with Serena’ – Gustav takes a step towards Pierre, then veers round him and walks to the other end of the room – ‘did you want her for yourself?’

      Pierre’s eyes slide over to his brother. There’s a strange calmness about him I don’t remember seeing before. And a tinge of sadness. But that could still be fake. As Margot said, the guy lives and works with actors. This humility is probably assumed, like everything else about him.

      ‘What has she told you?’

      ‘I’m asking you to tell us the truth, P. It’s not up to Serena to defend herself.’

      Pierre puts his head in his hands and it’s a relief to have that glittering black stare extinguished for a moment. ‘I mean Margot. What has she told you?’

      ‘That you fucked my fiancée.’

      The vicious words scatter around the space. Pierre and I flinch simultaneously. My head knocks against the thick glass window pane, setting up a new aching throb through my body. Pierre keeps his eyes on me, as if we are two naughty pupils being chastised by the headmaster.

      Gustav’s eyes move from me to his brother and back again as he starts to pace back towards the sofa.

      Pierre collects himself and sits up straighter. He pushes forward slowly. He fixes his eyes on me. On the bites on my neck. My bruised, unpainted lips. My hair, tied in two loose plaits. He folds his arms. He could say anything right now. Absolutely anything. And it would all be over. This triangle taken apart, brick by brick. The three of us would never see each other again.

      ‘Serena was so beautiful that night, G. You should have been there.’

      Pierre has taken aim and shot us.

      ‘What the hell kind of answer is that?’ Gustav gasps, grabbing at his brother’s folded arms to wrench them out of the defensive position. ‘What did you do to her?’

      Pierre catches Gustav’s hands and pushes them away from him.

      ‘I wanted her. OK? I admit it. Look at her. She’s gorgeous. I’d fancied her since – oh, God, I was going to say since that evening she and I spent talking in the Gramercy cocktail bar, but if I’m honest it was as early as New Year’s Eve, when I showed her the scars from the fire. Nearly every woman in my life has been repelled by my body, Gustav. You wouldn’t know what that’s like. But Serena? She just looked as if she wanted to help.’

      ‘One of the many reasons I adore this girl.’ Gustav folds his arms now. His legs are slightly akimbo, like a soldier. He glances across at me. ‘But she’s mine. Not yours.’

       Mine, mine. Mine.

      They are both studying me as if I’m an exhibit in a trial. There’s unabashed admiration in Pierre’s face, and pure, possessive love in Gustav’s. I jam my hands between my knees and say nothing.

      Pierre stands up, takes a couple of paces and kicks at the basket of logs beside the empty fire.

      ‘I have a vacuum in my life, Gustav, where a good woman should be. And don’t talk to me about Polly. I feel rotten about that, and one day I’ll tell her so. But Serena – the attraction grew worse after that day we spent at the theatre. Then we had those cocktails at the Gramercy Hotel. Serena wanted to know why I’d dumped her cousin, but even when I went off on a tangent, blaming Margot, blaming my scars, blaming everyone and everything for making me such a shit, she still listened. Anyway, when I arrived at your apartment a few days later to return the camera equipment she’d left behind at the theatre – and yes, I admit I’d deliberately locked it away as an excuse to visit her – you’d obviously had some kind of row, and she’d taken off to Venice. Alone. So I took a chance. I’m a chancer, G. You know that. Only this was the most dangerous gamble I’d ever taken.’

      ‘You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know, P.’ Gustav growls. ‘Did you fuck Serena in Venice?’

      Margot’s words, screaming at us down that dark stairwell.

       They were fucking, Gustav!