She’s gone.
I pay and leave. There’s nothing else to do, and I can’t stay, not after the commotion I’ve caused. When I reach the car I open the window then light a cigarette from the packet I’ve started to keep in the glove compartment. I think of Hugh – he doesn’t approve of smoking in the car – and wish I could be with him right now.
I screwed it up. I don’t know what I could have done differently, but I screwed it up.
I exhale, sit back in the leather seat. I’ve parked on a side-street just off Portland Place and can see the doorway to the hotel framed in the wing mirror. Even though it must be after midnight now, people are still coming and going.
I wonder if Anna was right. Maybe it really is all about my sister’s money, though not in the way she imagines. I imagine Lukas, hearing about Kate’s death, moving in on me but then finding out my sister had left all the cash to her best friend.
But no, that makes no sense; he was definitely seeing Anna first, before Kate died. I’m back to square one.
Again the same thought forms, the one that’s been haunting me. It grows, I can’t shake it, can’t hold it down. It’s because I know he lives in Paris, now. It rises to the surface, inexorable, unstoppable.
It was him.
But it can’t be. There’s Kate’s earring; they’ve made an arrest. Plus, we know the police checked everyone out, all Kate’s online contacts. They’re satisfied. It can’t have been him.
So why did he target me, then? Or am I not a target at all – was it just sheer chance?
I finish my cigarette then toss it on to the pavement, through the half-open window. Straight away I feel the urge to light another; I fight it, but it seems pointless, futile. I have to calm my mind. I have to sort it out. I lift my bag off the passenger seat and begin to rummage inside it.
It happens quickly. I don’t see him come out of the hotel, don’t hear him approach, I’m barely aware of him opening the door. I look up and he’s there; I’ve gone from alone to not-alone in an instant. My heart leaps with sudden terror.
‘What the—?’ I begin, but he turns to me.
‘Surprise!’ His exclamation is dry and humourless. His face is inches from mine; he smells of aftershave, the one I’m used to. The fragrance of wood – sandalwood, I think – mixed with something else, something medicinal. He looks paler than I remember, his features thinner. I try to tell myself that if I met him now I wouldn’t look twice, but it’s a lie.
‘Lukas,’ I gasp. My muscle memory kicks in once again; instinctively I shoot as far back in my seat as I can, move as far away from him as I can get without opening the door and running. I wonder if that is what I should be doing. Running.
‘What d’you want?’
‘Oh, sweetheart. Don’t be like that…’ His voice sounds thick, not like him at all.
‘Where’s Anna?’ I have visions of her upstairs, pacing. I wonder if she knows he’s with me; it’s possible he’s told her he’s just popped out for a walk, to get some air.
He smiles. It’s bitter, resentful. ‘Relax. I don’t know what you think is going on, but let me tell you, you’re wrong on every count.’ He pauses. ‘Anna’s upstairs,’ he says. ‘I left her in the shower.’ He grins. I wonder if I’m supposed to find his comment suggestive, sexual. Titillating. Is this the game he’s playing? The three of us, upstairs, naked.
‘She knows I’m here. She sent me. She’s sorry about losing her temper. She wants you to come up and have a drink with us. Sort things out.’ He shrugs. ‘So how about it?’
I want to believe him, but I don’t. How can I? Anna thinks I’ve met him for the first time tonight.
‘Who are you? Tell me what you want.’ He ignores me.
‘No? Didn’t think so.’ He turns. ‘Look. Anna’s a big girl. She can look after herself. I don’t know why you want to come and interfere.’
‘Interfere?’
‘Warning her away? Telling her I’m not who she thinks I am? Maybe I’m exactly who she thinks I am, just not who you thought I was.’ He looks thoughtful. ‘Maybe it’s you who doesn’t know anything about me. Not her.’ He leans towards me. ‘Anna trusts me, you know? She tells me everything…’
I think of the printout I have in my bag. I should’ve given it to her when I had the chance.
‘Maybe, for now—’ I begin, but he moves abruptly. He grabs my arm, twisting it as he does so. It’s sudden, and brutal. I cry out, a scream of shock and pain, and then I’m silenced.
‘You know,’ he hisses, still holding my arm, still digging in his fingers, ‘I don’t like little tarts like you who come between me and my fun. So, this is what’s going to happen…’ He twists my arm further. I struggle, but he holds me. He’s using only one hand yet still it seems easy for him. It feels as if he could snap my arm with hardly any effort at all, as if that’s exactly what he’d like to do. I gasp once more; again I remember his hands on me, how once they’d caressed the very skin that now screams with pain. ‘You’re going to get the fuck out of my life,’ he says. ‘You’re going to leave Anna alone, and you’re not going to interfere. Get it?’
I gather all my strength. I turn to him; finally I manage to wrench my arm from his. ‘Or what? I saw you, you know. Earlier. Getting into the lift. You didn’t look that in love to me. I don’t know what you’re doing, but she doesn’t deserve it. She’s done nothing to you. She really thinks you love her.’
I feel his resolve waver, just slightly. I’ve hit a nerve. But then he speaks. ‘It makes no difference to me what you think you saw.’ His smile is sickly, thin. ‘And you are going to leave us alone.’
He seems so certain. Dread fills me.
‘Or what?’
‘Or I might just make my private archive a little bit more public…’
I don’t understand what he’s saying, yet I feel myself tense. It’s as if my body has already worked it out while my mind lags behind.
‘Your what—?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ve got some very interesting photos in my collection. Videos, too. Want to see?’
I feel myself falling. He seems so totally confident. I’m no one, nothing. He could destroy me, without even having to try.
I shake my head. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through some screens. ‘Ah. This is a good one.’
He selects a photograph, and the glow from the screen briefly illuminates the dark interior of the car, then he angles the screen so that I can see the picture. It’s a woman, taken from the waist up. She’s naked.
It takes me a moment to realize it’s me.
I gasp. ‘This is…’ I begin, but the words catch in my mouth and I can’t get them out.
‘This is from that first time…’ he says. ‘The first time you turned your camera on. D’you remember?’
I do. I’d been in my studio, the door locked. I’d angled my camera, stood up. I felt stupid, at first, but then I’d become swept up in it until there was just me, and him, and the rest of the world had faded to nothing.
The betrayal seems absolute. I can’t look at it any more, but neither do I want to look at him.
‘You took it… you kept it?’
‘I like having an archive.’ He shrugs, as if it’s nothing. ‘For when I’m bored, you know?’
‘How dare you!’ Fury is rising in my chest, but something else, too. A new fear, cold and hard and piercing. If he has this, I think, then he’ll have more.
He begins to scroll through his phone. ‘I have plenty of others,’ he’s saying. ‘This, for example? Or this?’
He shows me image after image. A rerun of the past few months, the edited highlights. Almost every time I’d stripped for him, because he was bored, or horny, and I missed him and wanted to please him. With each picture I sink lower, until I feel I’m drowning. The water is closing over me, invading me, until I can’t breathe.