Sonja had picked up the empty glass before Lorraine had time to say anything and disappeared into the kitchen with her own untouched coffee: it was clear she wanted an excuse to absent herself for a few moments. Lorraine would have liked a closer look at the rest of the house, while Sonja clattered with the ice-dispenser in the kitchen, but it was the studio she most wanted to see, and now that she had mentioned the art fraud, she could hardly ask to see it without as good as announcing to Sonja that she suspected her. But did she suspect her: The woman didn’t seem interested enough in money to commit such a crime — but, on the other hand, there was something about her that made one feel that death was near her.
However, by the time she came back with a tray, Sonja had readjusted her manner.
‘How well did you know Raymond Vallance?’ Lorraine ventured.
Sonja snorted with laughter as she handed Lorraine another tall glass of Coke. ‘Raymond Vallance was an albatross round Harry’s neck.’ For all her amusement, there was venom in her voice. ‘He destroyed any talent Harry might have had, convincing him that all those disgusting frat-party movies he made were worth a good goddamn. Any merit there was in that whole period of Harry’s career he drew from me. That’s where my own creativity went — he sucked it out of me and put it into his own work.’
‘I’m sure,’ Lorraine agreed. Vallance and Sonja were like a pair of bookends, she thought, perfectly matched in their unshakeable belief that the other had been Nathan’s evil genius and they themselves the true muse.
‘Raymond never forgave Harry for marrying me, needing me more than he needed him,’ Sonja went on, well into her stride now in ripping the ageing matinée idol apart. ‘He hated both of us, in a way, though he tried to get me into bed, of course. I thought, talk about obvious, darling, if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one he’s with.’
Lorraine smiled: Sonja was no slouch in the bitching department. She said, ‘He had something similar going with Cindy, it seems.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Sonja said. ‘Poor kid — I never met her except at the funeral, though, of course, I saw pictures.’
‘I don’t suppose she ever wrote to you,’ Lorraine asked casually.
Sonja looked at her with interest. ‘Yes, she did — pages and pages. I knew why she wrote — she was embarrassed about calling, never thought she was entitled to five minutes of anybody’s time. Sometimes I wish I’d given her a little more... I don’t know, time, assistance.’ There was real sadness and self-blame in Sonja’s voice.
‘You never felt jealous of Cindy?’ Lorraine asked gently.
‘Not really,’ Sonja said. ‘Harry wasn’t the same person I had known by the time he married her. Vallance and... and Kendall had carved him up between them by the time Cindy got him. He was no longer a man... but, then, Kendall was never a person at all.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lorraine had now dropped all pretence of confining her questions to the art fraud: she was trying to find out who murdered Harry Nathan, and wondered whether the killer might be sitting right in front of her.
‘Kendall was similar to Harry in a way. There was something central missing from both of them,’ Sonja said, with some deliberation. Lorraine had the impression she was delivering verdicts she had considered for years. ‘Kendall, however, was full of insecurity, or she was to start with, whereas I don’t think Harry ever had a self-critical thought in his life. Kendall came into our lives when our relationship was hitting a transition. Harry had been eating me to keep himself alive and fuel his work for years. Perhaps if we had had children it would have been different, but... I let him do it. I suppose it took me quite a while to grow up.’ Sonja gave another wry smile. ‘Then I wanted to live my own life and create for myself, and Harry would have had to find some reason to be with me other than what... he could consume of me. Obviously that was difficult for him. Harry never liked to do anything that was difficult.’
Sonja had got up again, part of her seeming barely conscious of Lorraine, though another part of her, Lorraine somehow knew, had been waiting for years for an anonymous listener — a confessor. ‘I don’t really think Kendall set out to destroy our marriage. She loved me first, if you like. She had nothing, was nothing, knew how to be nothing when I met her.’ She was staring out to sea, as though hypnotized, her gaze drawn to the horizon like a compass needle to the north. A moment later, though, her voice seemed more normal as she went on. ‘As I said earlier, to try to repeat the past is a sort of death.’
‘But Harry must have loved you, even at the end,’ Lorraine said, conscious that she was perhaps pushing the other woman into deep water. ‘You were the constant in his life.’
Sonja shook her head. ‘Vallance was the constant. I realize that now. He was there before me and he was there after me.’
‘But Harry left Vallance nothing in the will. He must have wanted to recognize something in leaving the entire property to you.’
‘It comes to me only by default,’ Sonja said. ‘Neither he nor I could ever have predicted that both Kendall and Cindy would drop dead.’ She turned round. ‘And, of course, who knows? I might drop dead. I have another day to go, don’t I?’ There was a strange, hunted look in the back of her cat’s eyes that chilled Lorraine, as if she were waiting for an executioner to arrive, for an axe to fall.
Lorraine realized that she had been sitting very still, barely blinking. She made herself move now, swirling the ice in her glass as though to chase away ghosts with the sound. ‘I think that’s correct — but you’re most unlikely to die.’
‘Well,’ Sonja said, and again Lorraine had the sense that she was listening to the expression of thoughts that had been considered and rearranged many times, ‘there is life and life. Or, rather, there is life and there is existence without dignity, which one betrays oneself to endure. I used to think that there was some kind of other dignity in endurance, but it is better to be dead than betrayed, I think now.’ She had been talking rapidly and fell silent just as suddenly, then turned back to the sea again.
‘Who do you think killed Harry Nathan?’ Lorraine found herself asking, without really meaning to do so, as though it were the only chance she would ever have.
‘Harry Nathan killed himself,’ Sonja said, her voice low, resonant, beautiful. ‘He became a thing that someone would destroy.’
The screen door banged at the front of the house, and Sonja started and looked round. ‘Arthur,’ she said, with a smile. ‘He doesn’t trust me alone for too long.’
No wonder, Lorraine thought, glancing at her watch. He hadn’t been gone long and Sonja was already circling round the subjects of killing and death.
Sonja walked back into the kitchen and called upstairs, ‘We’re down here, Arthur.’
Did she want to warn him that she wasn’t alone: Lorraine wondered.
The big man lost no time in joining them and Lorraine saw his eyes go immediately to Sonja, as though trying to gauge her mood. ‘Mrs Page, how nice you’re still here,’ he said, with a polite smile. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I join you.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. He sat down beside her and Sonja disappeared inside, murmuring that she would bring out some wine. ‘Do you work out here?’ she asked, pretending to be making small-talk but, in fact, trying to place the man, as he well knew.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do, on and off.’
‘Are you a writer?’ She knew she sounded pushy now but she didn’t care: it was the only way she could do her job.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m a painter.’
Well, that was interesting, Lorraine thought.
‘I don’t suppose I’m allowed to see any of your work,’ she said, with a fake, girlish laugh she suspected didn’t fool him for a minute.