by Susan Lewis
‘We should have stayed in Paris,’ Max smiled, reaching out for her hand.
Rhiannon smiled too, but her heart was as burdened with dread as the sky was with snow. In less than twenty minutes they would arrive at her flat and not long after that he would leave.
‘When are you going to Switzerland?’ she asked, attempting to put some lightness into her voice.
‘Sunday. Galina’s got a few commitments here in London, but by Sunday she’ll be through.’
Rhiannon nodded and turned her eyes to the passing trees that were rigid with frost and the parked cars that were still frozen over after the night’s subzero temperatures.
‘I’m going to talk to her,’ Max said.
Rhiannon turned to look at him, surprise causing her heart to jump. ‘Do you mean about us?’ she said hoarsely.
He nodded.
‘But I thought . . .’
‘Rhiannon, this is crazy,’ he interrupted. ‘We should be together and you know it. Just these past three days have shown us how right we are for each other, on every level, and I want us to have the chance to find out where it’s going, if we really can live together, build a life together and share a family and future like other people in love. God knows we’ve got enough stacked against us, with all your commitments here in London and mine in the States, but we can work those through if Galina would just . . .’ He stopped and Rhiannon felt the guilt that had silenced him move through her too.
‘What are you going to say?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I—,’ He took a breath, then sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
Several minutes ticked by until Rhiannon, on the point of speaking again, suddenly became aware of what the radio DJ was saying. Her insides froze and her eyes were wide with shock as she turned them to Max. His face was already pale, the tension in his jaw visible.
‘So,’ the DJ cried chirpily, ‘the hunt is on. They left Rhiannon Edwardes’s Kensington flat late yesterday afternoon in a black, seven-series BMW and haven’t been seen since.’ He chuckled. ‘Think I’d do the same if someone told me my affair was about to hit the press and my Mrs was on her way – and with a Mrs like Galina Casimir what’s the man thinking of? Still, we’ve only got to think of Camilla Parker Bowles and Paula Yates to be reminded that it’s not always beauty who wins the beast. Anyway, what we want to know – or what the great British tabloids want to know – is where are they now? Have they eloped? Are they just hiding from the happy snappers or are they waiting for the lovely Galina to fly into London later this morning to tell her what good friends they’ve become? Stay tuned, fellow gourmands of gossip, we’ll be back with more after this break.’
Rhiannon reached out and turned off the radio. Max kept his eyes on the road ahead. Uppermost in both their minds now was the fact that thanks to the ‘great British tabloids’ Galina would already know. It was a hell of a way to find out, a public betrayal that no one, least of all Galina, deserved. Rhiannon tried to imagine what it would be like to pick up a newspaper just a few short months after your wedding and discover, along with the rest of the world, that your husband loved someone else. Her stomach clenched with nerves. The story wouldn’t be told like that, of course, there would be no mention of love; it would be put across in as seedy and salacious a manner as possible, with every cliché, innuendo and double entendre the hacks could muster and with a complete disregard for the pain they were causing the innocent.
‘I’ll have to be there when she flies in,’ Max said. ‘The press’ll be all over your apartment, is there somewhere I can drop you?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Rhiannon answered, her heart thudding with misery and anger that they were being forced to part like this. ‘Just drop me at the next lights. I’ll take a cab from there.’
‘Where will you go?’ he said, throwing her an anxious glance.
‘I’ve got the keys to Lizzy’s house. I’ll go there.’ She could see from the look in his eyes that he was having an even harder time about the way they were going to say goodbye than she was, but there was nothing they could do – the papers were on the newsstands, the deceit and duplicity were out and despite how badly it hurt, Rhiannon had to concede that right now Galina’s need was the greater.
‘Just here will be fine,’ she said, as they reached a set of red lights. She was barely able to get the words past the swelling misery in her heart, but gathering up her bag, she pushed open the car door, then turned briefly back to him. ‘Don’t get out,’ she said. ‘I’ll get my coat and bag from the back, then just drive on. I love you.’
‘I’ll call you,’ he said as she pressed her lips to his.
She smiled, touched his cheek, then getting out of the car, went round to the boot, took out her things and slammed it closed. She knew, as he merged back into the traffic, that he was watching her in the mirror, but turning away quickly she started to search the traffic for the yellow light of a taxi. One came almost immediately and giving the driver Lizzy’s address she climbed into the rear seat and sat with her forehead resting in one hand until the journey was over. It wasn’t so much a fear of being recognized that was causing her to hide her face, it was more a need to hide the tears of frustration and despair.
Lizzy’s small terraced house off Chiswick High Road was cold and unwelcoming – at least it seemed that way until Rhiannon found the heating controls and threw off the dust sheets. After lighting the gas fire she went to search out some coffee, then thought better of putting on the TV. She’d been to this house so many times over the years that it was like a second home, but never once had she imagined finding herself here alone and in such a state of anxiety and distress. She looked around at the weathered pine surfaces, the copper pans hanging from an overhead rack, the garlic and dried chillies and Sainsbury’s pots of herbs. She must call Lizzy and tell her she was there, but first she had to find someone who would bring her the papers and some things from her flat.
Since Sharon had gone off skiing with Lucy, Rhiannon picked up the phone and called the Check It Out office. Jolene wasn’t there, but Carrie, one of the senior researchers, needed no persuading to help out.
‘You’re not going to like what you see,’ Carrie warned her an hour later when she dropped a newspaper on the kitchen table. ‘It’s only in the Mail so far, obviously they got the exclusive, but you can be sure it’ll be all over the rest of the tabloids by this time tomorrow.’
‘How nice, something to look forward to,’ Rhiannon responded bitterly. The time she had spent waiting had been terrible as she’d paced the floor, trying to bring herself under control and accept that this nightmare was happening. It was almost too shocking to absorb, that one minute they could be driving along talking about how much they loved each other and the next she was on the street hailing a cab. Her head was reeling, her heart in turmoil. He didn’t know Lizzy’s number so he couldn’t call and though she was struggling to ignore it she had a horrible and unsuppressible feeling that this exposé had put an end to their relationship more surely and more swiftly than if one of them had died, for the damage it would almost certainly have caused Galina wasn’t something Max would ever be able to walk away from now.
Realizing that Carrie was watching her, she finished stirring the coffee and handed her a cup.
‘We didn’t have any idea,’ Rhiannon told her. ‘The first we knew of it was just over an hour ago when we were driving along in the car. We’d just come back from Paris.’
Carrie nodded and tucked the frizzy sweep of her chestnut hair behind one ear. Her face was small and mouselike, with cute pointy features and big sapphire eyes that were watching Rhiannon with genuine concern. ‘I think you should know’, she said, ‘that Jolene tipped off Susan Posner.’
Rhiannon’s eyes closed as her heart turned over. ‘Susan Posner,’ she repeated. ‘I’d guessed Jolene, but Susan Posner never entered my mind.’
‘Well, hers is the byline,’ Carrie said.
Rhiannon glanced at t
he paper, then quickly averted her eyes. ‘What does she say?’ she asked.
Carrie grimaced. ‘In a nutshell, she’s saying that Max Romanov has been abusing Galina for years, that he’s a sick man who needs help desperately, that his friends have known for years that he isn’t in full control of himself and that they are no longer prepared to stand by and watch him destroy Galina the way he did his first wife, Carolyn. In short, the man’s a monster who should be locked away for the rest of his natural, which there’s every chance he will be once the new evidence that has come into Ms Posner’s possession regarding the death of his first wife is handed over to the District Attorney.’
Rhiannon looked haggard as her eyes drifted back to the paper and her heart churned with the pain of what he must be suffering now. ‘If you knew him,’ she said to Carrie, turning the newspaper to look at a profile shot of her and Max laughing into each other’s eyes. It was too close to be able to tell where it had been taken, but she guessed it had happened when she’d run up the steps after him yesterday morning because he’d forgotten his phone. Neither of them had ever dreamt, as he’d pulled her into his arms and given her one last kiss before getting into the car, that a photographer was tracking them with a telephoto lens. But then, the subjects of such shots weren’t supposed to know, were they?
‘If you knew him,’ she repeated, ‘you’d know that he’s incapable of everything she’s accusing him of.’
Carrie sucked in her cheeks and though she tried to meet Rhiannon’s eyes she didn’t quite make it.
Rhiannon turned away and went to stand at the back door, where the stained-glass window was clouded with condensation. Lifting a finger, she wiped a ragged pattern in the moisture and looked through a blue pane at the damp and lifeless garden outside. She wondered if Galina’s plane had landed on time – if it had, she and Max would be together somewhere now, somewhere where he could shield her from this hideous intrusion in their lives. But escaping the spotlight of the press would do nothing to repair the damage that had already been done, nor would it lessen the repercussions as they continued to tear mercilessly through their lives. For her, Rhiannon, it wouldn’t be so bad, but for Max it seemed the nightmare was only going to get worse.
‘Does she say what the new evidence is?’ Rhiannon asked.
‘No,’ Carrie answered. ‘She’s openly accused the New York Police Department of a cover-up though, so I guess she must feel she’s on pretty solid ground with whatever she does have.’
‘Have you heard anything on the news about Galina this morning?’ Rhiannon asked after a while.
‘Only that the rest of her tour has been cancelled.’
‘As quickly as that?’ Rhiannon said, turning round in surprise.
Carrie shrugged. ‘That’s what I heard.’
Rhiannon felt suddenly sick as she wondered if, apart from everything else it was going to cost him, their three days together were going to be responsible for invoking the clause in Galina’s contract that made him liable for the multi-million-dollar Conspiracy campaign.
‘Did you remember my address book?’ she asked Carrie. ‘I’d better call Lizzy and tell her I’m here.’
‘It’s in the box with the computer,’ Carrie answered. ‘You were right not to go back there, incidentally, they’ve got the place staked out, no doubt awaiting your return, and I had the devil’s own job getting them off my tail when I left. Made me feel like Princess Di.’
Rhiannon gave no response to the feeble attempt at humour. She wanted Carrie to go now. She didn’t want her here any more, because she didn’t want to sit in the same room as someone who believed Max would do a single one of the things The Poisoner had accused him of, never mind murder.
‘If there’s anything else I can do, just give me a call,’ Carrie said, as Rhiannon opened the front door for her to leave.
‘Thank you,’ Rhiannon replied, smiling politely. ‘There is one thing, actually: you can tell Jolene not to bother calling me again. We have no more to say to each other.’
Carrie nodded and looked down at the floor. ‘I’m amazed you trusted him, Rhiannon,’ she said.
‘Frankly, so am I,’ Rhiannon retorted. ‘But then it’s at times like this that you find out how very few people you can trust.’
Carrie blushed. ‘Look, I don’t know the man like you do,’ she said defensively. ‘All I know is what I saw, and if he’s responsible for making Galina look the way she does in some of those photos . . .’
Rhiannon’s face had turned white. ‘Look at me, Carrie,’ she seethed. ‘Go on, look at me. Do you see any bruises? Do you see any cuts or scratches? Any injuries at all? Would you like me to take my clothes off so you can be absolutely sure I’m not covering anything up? All he’s ever done to Galina is protect her . . .’
‘Rhiannon, all I’m saying is The Poisoner’s case is a pretty convincing one,’ Carrie cut in. ‘But if you tell me he didn’t do it, that he’s no abuser of women . . .’ She stopped, inhaled deeply then said, ‘I think you’d better go and read it for yourself.’
By the time Rhiannon finished reading her only hope was that Susan Posner was in hiding somewhere, because if Max didn’t kill her for this, then she, Rhiannon, would. As any journalist knew, the positioning of facts was crucial to the message you wanted to get across, and the way Susan Posner had positioned her facts had turned her article into as masterful a hatchet job as Rhiannon had ever read in her life.
The pictures of Galina were horrible. The bruising on her face and welts on certain parts of her body rendered her almost unrecognizable. They were spread across the centre pages and made all the more terrible by the contrasting colour shot of how she appeared for Conspiracy.
Rhiannon felt sick to her stomach as she read about how Max had dominated Galina’s life since she was a child, how he had used her early infatuation to introduce her to the sadistic horrors and mental cruelty that had now become almost a part of their daily routine; and how he had visited the same kind of torment on countless other women, including his deceased wife, Carolyn. Galina, it said, had agreed to become his second wife because she was too terrified to say no, and to show his contempt for her he had forced her to undergo a tacky and degrading ceremony in a Strip chapel in Las Vegas – before abandoning her on their honeymoon night to spend it with his latest mistress, Rhiannon Edwardes. It was also reported how, just before the wedding, he had spent the night with Rhiannon at Galina’s own apartment in the Marina del Rey area of Los Angeles.
‘With friends like Rhiannon . . .’ Susan Posner had scathingly remarked, before going on to report on Rhiannon’s own failed marriage in the middle of last year and the man who had spurned Rhiannon some years before that in favour of her old school friend, Galina Casimir.
The suspicious circumstances surrounding Carolyn’s death and the aborted trial that followed were dealt with in a separate window, along with the claim that a massive police and State Department cover-up had prevented justice from being done at the time of the killing. But new evidence just come to light would, Posner was confident, ensure that the guilty were finally brought to task.
Also in a story of its own was the mysterious death of a Memphis photographer who, only hours before his murder, had approached one of Max Romanov’s magazines with a possible blackmail threat concerning some explicit shots of Galina. As far as was known no money had ever changed hands, nor were any photographs or negatives ever recovered from the photographer’s studio. But it was known that Max Romanov had made an unscheduled visit to Memphis that day, Posner concluded.
Pushing the paper away, Rhiannon put her head in her hands and wept out of sheer fury. Never had she known a story to be so manipulated, misrepresented or misconstrued – and to have someone she loved at the centre of it was too terrible to bear. Not for a single minute did she doubt Max, all she knew was an insufferable and overwhelming impotence at being unable to do anything to help him. She felt bitterly ashamed of her profession that it could harbour in its ranks someone
like Susan Posner, who had twisted everything so disastrously out of proportion and was now using it to destroy people’s lives.
Later in the day she called Lucy and Sharon at their hotel in Chamonix to tell them what had happened. ‘I’ll call Lizzy in a minute,’ she said, ‘and see if it’s OK to go to South Africa sooner rather than later. I’m sure it will be, but I need to get into my flat before I can go and God only knows when that will be.’
‘Not a problem,’ Lucy told her. ‘Just hold on there and I’ll give you the number for a couple of detectives who owe me a favour. Yes, here it is. Are you ready? Their names are Harrington and Farre, both sergeants. Explain who you are, that you’re a friend of mine and that you would like some assistance in returning to your address. They’ll work something out for you.’
‘Lucy, what would I do without you?’ Rhiannon choked as she laughed.
‘I know, I’m priceless,’ Lucy replied. ‘Call me as soon as you know what’s happening and where you’re going to be,’ and with that she rang off.
The next two days were a nightmare for Rhiannon as she watched the terrible revelations appear one after the other in the British, and now, too, the American papers. In comparison to what they were doing to Max she was getting off lightly, though her annulled marriage never failed to get a mention, nor did the fact that Galina had once stolen the man she was about to marry. The implications were that she was a wronged and bitter woman who didn’t give a damn about anyone, least of all her best friend whose earlier transgression was now being paid back in spades. Poor, beautiful Galina who had been betrayed and deceived by the two people she loved most in the world. Shots of Rhiannon and Max in the garden of her flat, on the beach in Marina del Rey, walking in Kensington and even carrying out the rubbish, were splashed all over the papers. She guessed she just had to be thankful that no one had managed to hide a lens in her bedroom.
