by Susan Lewis
‘Who do you think?’ Galina replied, reaching up to peel the wig from her head. Underneath, her hair was flat and colourless and clinging to her skull like a damaged skin.
Rhiannon tried to breathe. A thousand thoughts were crashing through her head; just one emerged from the chaos, turning her weak with fear. The rifle. Galina had the rifle. But there was no sign of it. Galina’s hands were empty.
Rhiannon forced herself to breathe. She had to get a grip, but she was shaking so hard in the aftermath of shock she could barely stand. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said finally.
Galina laughed. ‘What an amazingly stupid question,’ she commented.
Rhiannon looked at her. ‘How did you get here?’ she demanded.
‘By plane,’ Galina answered. ‘How else would I get here? No one realized who I was, of course, not even when they checked me in.’
Rhiannon’s eyes dropped to the discarded wig and a great surge of anger rushed through her. ‘Don’t you know everyone’s looking for you?’ she cried, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘For Christ’s sake, Galina, they think Max . . .’
‘They think Max what?’ Galina said coldly. ‘That he killed me?’ Her lips curled in an arrogant smile.
Rhiannon’s heart was still thumping, her face was drawn in confusion. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Why have you come here?’
Galina’s eyebrows flickered. ‘I thought you would have worked that out for yourself by now,’ she said. She glanced up at the noose and a slow fear bit deep into Rhiannon’s heart.
‘Distraught after being jilted by her lover, Max Romanov,’ Galina said, ‘Rhiannon Edwardes tragically takes her own life.’
Rhiannon stared at her. No one knew Galina was here, no one even knew she was alive, so it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to kill Rhiannon and leave without anyone ever even suspecting she’d been here.
‘Friends say’, Galina went on, ‘that having being jilted twice before, Rhiannon could no longer face the pressures life was putting her under . . . She lost her job just a few months ago . . .’
‘You’ll never get away with it,’ Rhiannon whispered. ‘You’ll never make me do it.’
Galina’s eyes were steady as they looked back her.
‘For God’s sake!’ Rhiannon cried. ‘Don’t you think Max will know, when you suddenly come back from the dead, don’t you think he’ll realize . . .’ Her hands trembled as she dragged them through her hair. She had to make a run for the door. She had to get out of here . . .
‘There was a time when I could make you do anything,’ Galina reminded her smoothly.
Rhiannon’s eyes moved back to her.
‘Do you remember that?’ Galina said. ‘I could make you laugh, I could make you cry, I could make you feel things . . .’
‘I was a child, Galina. Things have changed since then.’
Galina smiled. ‘Haven’t they?’ she remarked drily. ‘But Marina’s a child.’
Rhiannon’s heart stopped beating. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered, feeling her face turn numb.
Galina’s stare was glassy, her mind clearly elsewhere. ‘Marina was younger and more malleable even than you,’ she said softly. ‘And so good at keeping secrets.’
‘Oh God,’ Rhiannon murmured. ‘Tell me I’m dreaming. Please, tell me this isn’t happening.’
Galina laughed. ‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ she said, ‘if we could all just open our eyes and find out we were dreaming.’
‘What did you do to Marina?’ Rhiannon said. ‘What did you make her do?’
Still smiling, Galina sauntered towards the mirror.
Rhiannon glanced at the door. She had a clear path now, but both she and Galina knew that she wasn’t going anywhere until Galina had explained those remarks about Marina.
‘It must be nice having a best friend,’ Galina commented, picking up Rhiannon’s hairbrush and turning it over in her hand.
‘What have you done to Marina?’ Rhiannon demanded.
‘Especially when the best friend lives in a place like this,’ Galina continued, pulling the brush through her hair.
‘Galina! Put the fucking brush down and tell me about Marina,’ Rhiannon yelled.
Galina smirked at her in the mirror, then turning to face her, she folded her arms and leaned against the chest. ‘They say she killed her mother,’ she said.
Rhiannon’s heart missed a beat. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said, they think she did it.’
Rhiannon’s face was ashen. Minute after minute ticked by as she and Galina stared at each other in the dim golden light. It explained so much. Why Max would never discuss his wife’s death; why the charges had been dropped; why he was allowing Maurice to do what he was doing. Her head was spinning, but through the chaos she could already see the terrifying truth. ‘But she didn’t, did she?’ she whispered. ‘You did.’
Galina’s eyes widened and deep down inside Rhiannon felt sick. The horror of the lie was so great that even though she’d guessed it she still couldn’t make herself believe it. The pain, the fear, the torment, the unbelievable guilt that both Max and his daughter had suffered, because of this woman’s staggering ability to manipulate, to grab everything she wanted for herself . . .
‘How?’ she said. ‘I thought you were in Los Angeles when it happened . . .’
‘I was,’ Galina answered. ‘And I wasn’t. I mean, I was in LA in the morning, then I decided, on the spur of the moment, to fly over to New York and surprise Max. I did that sometimes, just turned up without warning.’ She grinned. ‘Carolyn hated it. Anyway, I got there some time around seven. No one heard me come in, it would have been difficult when they were making so much noise. God, were they making a noise. Yelling and screaming at each other like they were going to tear each other to pieces. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a mother and daughter fight like that. You’d never believe a seven-year-old could hold her own so well, but of course, she’s Max’s daughter and she was fighting for someone she loved – and that someone was me. Max was trying to break it up, but Carolyn just went right on screaming at Marina, telling her she had to stay away from me, that she was going to stop me coming to the house, that I was a selfish, crazy bitch and that Max was going to have to choose between her and me . . . The woman was hysterical. So was Marina. She told her mother she hated her. She accused her of always taking away the things she loved, but she wasn’t going to let her take me away. She said she was going to leave with me, that she would never come back . . . She even hit her mother, banging her little fists into Carolyn and telling her she wished she were dead. Max grabbed her away and carried her into the bathroom to try and calm her down. God, she was in a state. So was Carolyn. I thought about going in to try and break it up myself at one point, but obviously I would only have made it worse. So I went to my room and waited for the dust to settle.
‘Obviously things were much more serious than I’d realized. I always knew Carolyn hated me and was jealous of me, but hearing her say it, hearing her throw the ultimatum at Max, telling him he had to choose between me and her when Marina was so distressed . . . Well, I knew there was every chance Max would take Carolyn’s side. No matter how responsible he felt for me, Marina was his daughter and Carolyn was Marina’s mother. Meaning that no matter what his feelings were for the rest of us, there was never any question that Marina would come first. And Marina was Carolyn’s flesh and blood. The trouble was, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Max and Marina were my life. They were my family. Max would have married me if Carolyn hadn’t come along and got herself pregnant; he would have married me and Marina would have been mine. So you see, really, by rights, they were mine. They didn’t belong to Carolyn. She’d stolen them from me and now she was trying to make Max get rid of me. Well, I couldn’t let her do that. I had to defend myself, fight for what was mine, and the only way I could do that was to get rid of her. If I hadn’t she’d have won, she’d have ended up taking everything that was mine and I wou
ld have had nothing. She left me no choice. So when Max went out a couple of hours later, I waited until Carolyn was asleep, then I went to her room, took the gun from her bedside drawer and shot her through the head.’
Rhiannon was staring at her, frozen in the horror of what she was hearing. There was no emotion attached to it, no recognition that what she had done might have been in any way wrong.
‘What about Marina?’ Rhiannon said. ‘How did you . . . ?’ She stopped, unable to make herself put into words the hideousness of what she was about to say.
Galina shrugged. ‘That was easy,’ she said. ‘I just took the gun into Marina’s bedroom, put it into her hands while she was asleep and left it there. The only problem was, she woke up. But she was so sleepy: the fight with her mother had exhausted her. I spoke to her for a while. I explained everything to her, how I had seen what she did to her mother, that Carolyn had deserved it and that everything would be all right. I told her she was too young to go to prison and that Daddy and I would still love her, it wouldn’t make any difference. I explained that I wasn’t really in New York, that I was in LA, but like an angel I was talking to her in a dream, because I knew what she had done and I wanted her to know that it would be all right. Then I made her promise that she would never tell anyone I could speak to her in her sleep that way, that it would be our secret, just us two. And she never did tell, or maybe she was so sleepy she just didn’t remember. Who knows? All I know is that when Max came back and found Carolyn shot through the head and the gun in Marina’s bed he did the craziest thing you could think of and wiped the gun clean of Marina’s prints and smothered it in his own. Then he called the police.’
Rhiannon’s heart was aching as she tried to imagine the horror and desperation that had driven him to try and protect his daughter by taking the blame upon himself. ‘And what about you?’ she said. ‘I thought there were records to say you were in LA.’
‘There are. Because I was. I took the next flight back, got myself over to Venice and found a couple of guys in a night-club there who enjoyed the same kind of sport as I enjoy. I was hospitalized at two in the morning, got myself twenty-three stitches and no one ever thought to check the airlines, or what time I had wandered into the night-club. Someone did think to ask the concierge in my building if he’d seen me that day, though, and he said he had. I don’t know why he said that, I guess he just thought he did.’
Rhiannon put a hand to her head. It was all so horrible and crazy and tragically irreversible that she didn’t know what to say. All she could think about was Max and how terrible this must all have been for him. ‘So why were the charges dropped against Max?’ she said finally.
‘Because I went to see Judge Zamokhov,’ Galina answered, ‘and told him it was Marina who had killed Carolyn. The judge was an old friend of Max’s grandfather. I knew he’d listen to me and I knew he’d understand why Max had done what he had, you know, to protect his little girl. So the judge spoke in the right people’s ears and the charges’, she flicked her fingers, ‘simply vanished.’ She laughed. ‘Max was furious when he found out. He didn’t want anyone to know about Marina, not even someone like the judge. But then I made him realize that if I hadn’t spoken out he’d have ended up in prison, or worse, and what good would he be to Marina then? So you see, it all worked out perfectly in the end.’
Rhiannon’s breathing was shallow. She was so stunned by what she was hearing she could hardly make herself believe it. There was still no real emotion in Galina’s voice, no remorse or guilt, just a benign matter-of-factness that she had achieved exactly what she’d set out to achieve – and that it had all been so simple that it was very probably preordained.
‘So how did Max find out the truth?’ Rhiannon said after a while.
Galina’s head went to one side. ‘How do you think?’ she said. ‘Marina told him. It seems she did remember me talking to her that night after all. She also remembers making the promise never to tell. And she kept that promise all this time. She never even discussed it with me. Remarkable, don’t you think? Admirable, even. But then, children are the best keepers of secrets, providing you tell them in the right way.’ Her eyes were shining with a sly kind of humour. ‘I could always make you keep a secret,’ she said.
Rhiannon looked at her and for the first time in years she felt the strange hypnotic kind of power that Galina had had over her as a child starting to steal back into her heart. But she wasn’t going to let it happen. She was an adult now and those terrible confidences she had kept as a child were going to remain buried for ever. It would serve no purpose to remember them now, nor would allowing herself to recall how, just a few short months ago, Galina had managed to persuade her to get into a bath-tub, as if she had still been thirteen years old.
Galina smiled. ‘I expect you’re wondering what made Marina break her promise, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I know I would be, if I were you.’ Her eyes narrowed and she laughed again. ‘It was you,’ she said. ‘You were the one who forced her to reveal our secret, because you were the one who was threatening to take my place in her daddy’s life.’ She chuckled and shook her head as though marvelling at the way things had turned out. ‘Obviously, in that funny little mind of hers, she’d managed to work a lot of things out, like the fact that it wasn’t her who had killed her mommy. That it was me, because I’d been there that night and had made her promise never to tell. She’s bright, she could work those kind of things out; her problem was she didn’t know what to do about it. So, I guess like most kids, she tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, that it would all go away providing she didn’t think about it. But then you came along and she got scared. She thought that if her daddy chose you and not me, I’d end up doing the same to you as I had to her mommy and try to make her take the blame for that too.’
Rhiannon’s heart churned to think of such pain and fear in a little girl’s heart. God only knew what damage it had done, or how much, in the years to come, she would suffer for all this. Her eyes moved back to Galina. There was nothing she could say, no words to express what she was feeling inside. She had always known that Galina would go to almost any lengths to get what she wanted, but that she could have done this to an innocent child, a child who had loved and trusted her so much, a child whom she claimed to love too, was an act of such despicable cruelty that it went beyond any words Rhiannon could find.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Galina said.
Rhiannon waited.
‘You’re thinking that I should be forced to own up to what I did. That’s what Max said. He wants me to confess and get help. He won’t stand by me, though. He told me that. He said he doesn’t want me in his life any more. He says we’re through, that he never wants to see me again.’ She swallowed hard, then forced a laugh through it. ‘I suppose he thinks that’ll leave the way clear for you,’ she said.
Smiling, she pushed herself away from the chest and walked back across the room. ‘He’s wrong about that though,’ she said, her face only inches from Rhiannon’s as she passed, ‘because it’s not going to happen.’
Rhiannon’s heart was starting to pound. Her eyes were drawn to where the wig lay tangled on the floor, then a sharp fear stabbed at her heart as the missing gun suddenly flashed in her mind again. Her eyes flew back to Galina and the smile on Galina’s lips turned her blood to ice.
They continued to look at each other, their eyes seeming to fence in the darkness as Galina’s gleamed a challenge that in the end Rhiannon was forced to meet.
‘You’re not sick,’ Rhiannon whispered. ‘All those stories you told about being disturbed by your grandmother, about taking on the guilt yourself, feeling that you have to suffer the way she suffered . . . They’re just an excuse, aren’t they? You do what you do because you enjoy it.’
Galina’s smile widened.
Rhiannon watched her, feeling the disgust sink right into her soul. ‘And Maurice,’ she said, ‘Maurice finds the men for you.’
Galina’s eyebrows
lifted as her jaw went to one side. She didn’t admit it, but she didn’t have to – Rhiannon knew it was the truth.
‘No, you’re not sick,’ Rhiannon said, ‘at least not in the way you want everyone to believe. You’re worse, much worse.’ Her lips were tight with revulsion. ‘I’d never have believed that anyone could fool Max,’ she said, ‘but you managed it, didn’t you? God, how you managed it. You turned yourself into a victim, knowing that was the surest way to get to him. You knew how much he cared about what happened to his family, to your family, to all the people who suffered during those terrible years and the lasting effects on the generations that have followed. You knew that and you used it, twisted it, exploited it . . .’ Her eyes closed as her heart flooded with pain. ‘And what you did to his daughter . . .’ she whispered. ‘Dear God, Galina, your manipulation, your selfishness . . .’ She stopped and took a breath. ‘I just thank God they’ve ended up costing you so much. But however much, it’ll never be enough to make up for what you’ve done to Marina.’
Galina laughed and Rhiannon looked at her in mute disgust.
‘Where’s the gun?’ Rhiannon asked.
Galina seemed surprised, then impressed.
‘It’s in here somewhere,’ Rhiannon said.
Galina’s expression turned to one of delight. ‘How do you know that?’ she said.
‘It would be the only way you could force me to put that rope around my neck,’ Rhiannon answered.
Galina wrinkled her nose, as if trying to make up her mind what her next move in the game should be. ‘You know, I lied about the rope,’ she said in the end. ‘I let you think it was for you, but it’s not. It’s for me.’
Rhiannon’s eyes widened as her heart slowed on the terrible realization of what Galina was intending. It was strange how easily she could read her now, when she’d never been able to before. Everything was planned out and as though Galina had explained it all in words Rhiannon could see how very simple it was. She was going to kill them both.
Rhiannon started to speak, then stopped. Galina was reaching into the shadows behind her, her eyes still fixed on Rhiannon’s.
