Last Resort

by Susan Lewis

  Penny’s heart was thumping; her mind was in such chaos she hardly knew what she was thinking.

  ‘I am going to leave you alone now,’ he said. ‘While I’m gone I want you to think about the implications it will have on your life if you come with me. And if you decide not to come I want you to know that it will change nothing for me: I will still love you. And I will understand.’

  Penny remained where she was for a long time after the door had closed behind him. Her mind was unable to function. Any thought she had seemed to be snapped short by the next. Were all the strange feelings she’d been having lately a prelude to this? Was there some innate warning system inside her that had been challenging her to face what she really felt for him should this moment arrive? She had no answers, neither for herself nor for him. All she knew was that she wanted him to come back, that she didn’t want to think about what he must be putting himself through now wondering what she was going to say.

  She got up, walked over to the window and stared out at the night. It was so dark she couldn’t even see the lake. For some reason it troubled her. Had she expected to find the answer there? Did she really think that the Lady of the Lake would rise up from the depths and show her the way? No, of course she didn’t; yet there was something soothing about looking at the waters. But right now there was nothing to see, nowhere to turn, except to herself and the unanswerable question: did she really love him enough to do what he was asking?

  A tiny frisson of excitement suddenly grazed her heart and she started to smile. It would be the craziest thing she had ever done, to run away with the man she loved, but did she really have it in her to leave everything behind and never look back? It made her light-headed just to think of the danger they would be in, but if he was prepared to face it, then why shouldn’t she? Yes, she had questioned how much she loved him, but wasn’t that only because she had been trying to protect herself? Trying to deny how unbearable her life would be without him?

  ‘Oh God, this is insane,’ she groaned, turning away from the window. She’d truly believed that this was what she wanted, but now it was here she felt so torn, so frustratingly unsure of her own mind. She pictured his face and felt her heart melt with love even as it contracted with fear. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but she knew that he was doing this for her, that had she never come into his life he would have surrendered himself now and returned to the States. The responsibility weighed heavily on her; it was as though she had become his judge and jury, was holding his fate in her hands. She wondered what would become of them, where they would end up. Did it really matter as long as they were together? She pictured her life in France and felt suddenly breathless and panicked by the thought of losing it.

  She stood by the phone for some time, staring down at it, a bewildering emptiness spreading throughout her body. In the end she picked it up and dialled quickly, not knowing what she was going to say, not even thinking about why she should need to speak to David now.

  ‘Oh hi, Penny,’ Marielle’s voice drawled from the sitting room of David’s apartment. ‘We weren’t expecting to hear from you for a while yet. How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine,’ Penny answered dully. She couldn’t speak to David now, not while Marielle was there. Then suddenly she wanted to scream. What was Marielle doing in David’s apartment? Why was she there now, when she, Penny, needed to talk to him! Then, as though she’d asked the questions, Marielle told her.

  ‘David’s not here at the moment,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to the airport to pick up his wife and children.’

  ‘His wife and children?’ Penny repeated, dimly aware of how alien the words sounded.

  ‘That’s right. Apparently they had a long talk on the phone and have decided to give it another go.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Penny said.

  Marielle laughed. ‘He got me out buying flowers to welcome her with – that’s what I’m doing here now,’ she said. ‘You just caught me, in fact – I was about to leave.’

  She gabbled on then about some faxes she had sent through that day, asking Penny if she’d read them and what she thought. Somehow, through the debilitating numbness, Penny managed to answer.

  ‘Is there any message I can leave for David?’ Marielle asked in the end.

  Penny let the question hang for a moment, thinking, quite suddenly, that there were a thousand and one things she wanted to tell him, but knowing now that even if she could he wouldn’t want to hear them. Then, as the door opened and Christian walked in, she looked up into his eyes and felt her heart turn over. He gazed down at her in the semidarkness, his face pale and strained, and she could sense his fear as deeply as she could sense her own. ‘No, no message,’ she said softly and, replacing the receiver, she turned into Christian’s arms.

  Pierre was trying very hard not to notice how ill Sylvia looked. It had been several months since he’d last seen her and in that time she had lost so much weight it had aged her ten years.

  Did David have any idea she was this bad? he was asking himself, as Sylvia turned from the drinks cabinet in her Regency sitting room and carried two glasses to the table. Should he tell David, he wondered.

  ‘Your face,’ Sylvia smiled, ‘is not normally something that gives you away, Pierre, but I’m afraid on this occasion it is letting you down. However, I am not going to die – at least, not this evening – so you can relax.’

  Pierre was unsure whether or not to smile, but since her own called for a response he forced one.

  ‘It’s cancer,’ she said bluntly. ‘David doesn’t know that, of course, and neither will he until I judge the time to be right.’

  ‘Is it treatable?’ Pierre asked, hoping it was the right thing to say.

  ‘They think so,’ she said, sitting in a chair opposite him. ‘But you’re not here to discuss my health, are you?’

  Pierre stiffened with discomfort. No, he wasn’t, but how could they dismiss such a delicate and vital subject as though it were the weather?

  ‘I take it there’s still no news of Penny?’ Sylvia said, coming straight to the point.

  Pierre shook his head. ‘All we know is that they left Italy three days ago.’

  ‘And what does David say about it?’

  ‘He refuses to discuss it.’

  Sylvia nodded, tapping her fingers on her glass as she stared thoughtfully into space. ‘But no doubt, like the rest of us, he is assuming the worst?’ she said, turning her eyes back to Pierre.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘And you’re afraid,’ she said, ‘that he might do something to try and get her back.’

  Pierre looked at her.

  ‘You’re right to be afraid,’ Sylvia told him. ‘I suspect David is too. Does Penny know how he feels about her? Did he ever tell her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Sylvia laughed mirthlessly. ‘If he didn’t, then he’s shown uncharacteristic restraint. I take it Gabriella knows about Penny?’

  ‘Stirling knows,’ Pierre answered, ‘so I think we must assume that Gabriella does too by now.’

  ‘Which would explain why she wasn’t on that flight,’ Sylvia sighed. Then, shaking her head, she added, ‘It would never have worked. There’s too much bitterness between them now.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘So, what do you want me to do?’

  Having seen for himself how sick she was, Pierre was sorely wishing he hadn’t come. But if he backtracked now those shrewd, still beautiful eyes would see right through him. ‘I want you to help me find Penny,’ he said.

  Sylvia nodded. ‘I thought that’s what you might say. And if we do find her, what then?’

  Pierre flushed. ‘I was hoping you might persuade her to come back before . . . well, before David does something he’ll regret.’

  Sylvia leaned forward to put her drink on the table. Then, after several more moments of deliberation, she said, ‘This wise old bird isn’t as immune to mistakes as she might like to consider herself, Pierre, and I have to confess that Penny Moo
n was a mistake. Not for the magazine, but for David. I chose her to go to France for two reasons, the only two that mattered. The first was because I knew that in her own unique way she would do a good job and I am fond enough of her to want to see her succeed. The second was because I didn’t see her as a woman who would cause David any problems.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘What a misguided fool I was. But then I had never seen David with a woman who wasn’t so beautiful it almost hurt your eyes to look at her. However, Penny’s qualities go much deeper than the skin – we’ve all seen that and we’ve seen, too, the effect it has had on David. But Penny Moon is a headstrong girl with a mind of her own. It’s true she doesn’t always know that mind, but what’s important is she thinks she does. And if she believes herself enough in love with Mureau as she must to have taken off with him the way she has, then I’m not sure there’s anything I can say to influence her.’

  ‘But will you try?’

  Sylvia took her time before replying, but it didn’t take long for Pierre to know that he wasn’t going to get the answer he wanted. ‘To be frank with you, Pierre,’ she said eventually, ‘unless you can persuade me otherwise, my belief is that the damage has already been done, meaning that Penny’s return will serve no purpose now. That isn’t to say that I approve of what she’s doing or wouldn’t like to see her back in France; what I am saying is that I can’t see any way of it helping David now – any way at all.’ Her brilliant eyes were holding firmly to his. ‘We all know who Mureau is and there’s no point fooling ourselves, Pierre, that as far as Stirling is concerned Penny’s association with Mureau is the final nail in David’s coffin. Or it will be if any of us try to get her back.’

  Chapter 17

  PENNY WAS STANDING at the foot of the towering grey obelisk of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. The sun was glancing off its myriad windows and thickening the air with a syrupy heat. In front of her the traffic roared past, a perpetual flow of tourist-toting rickshaws, red-and-white taxis and densely packed double-decker trams emblazoned with garish colour. The noise was cacophonous; the crowds moved in an amorphous mass of humanity, gathering at crossings like flies settling on treacle. The rank, humid air was an odorous cocktail of drains, incense and diesel. Looking down on it all, as she had many times these past few days from the terrace of their suite, was like watching the furiously changing pattern of a kaleidoscope at the base of a long, grey tunnel of skyscrapers.

  As she waited for the rhythmic click of the pedestrian-crossing to change to an urgent pulse she forced her arm up through the tightly packed bodies around her to look at the diamond-studded Chopard watch on her wrist. It was almost five o’clock. Christian had been expecting her back by four.

  The traffic slowed to a halt and, surging forward with the crowd, she made yet another futile attempt to shake off Lei Leen and Tse Dong, the couple Christian had assigned to escort her wherever she went and take care of her every need. At five feet four Tse Dong bulged with fiendishly rigid muscle, his squat face and thin, shifting eyes as inscrutable as the culture that had bred him. Lei Leen, his wife, was as readily obsequious as she was round-cheeked and plain, but after their first meeting Penny had detected a trace of humour in her blank, staring eyes that had both surprised and heartened her. But it hadn’t taken long to discover that there was no getting close to Lei Leen. She was as much Christian’s minion as she was Tse Dong’s wife and, as such, she had no right to friendship with the gweipo her boss had fallen in love with and was paying her to serve and protect.

  On reaching the other side of the street Penny turned towards Statue Square, where hot, sweaty tourists were pointing cameras at the colonnaded façade of the Legislative Building. As she looked at their pale, western features her throat tightened as a surging desire to run to them merged despairingly with her envy of their freedom. Feeling Tse Dong press in closer, she averted her eyes and hurried on through the crowds towards the Mandarin Hotel, almost choking on her frustration.

  By the time they reached the hotel she had herself back in control and, as they entered the lift and rose swiftly up through twenty-four floors, she was successfully coaxing herself towards the excitement of showing Christian the outrageously chic and expensive designer clothes her afternoon shopping spree had produced.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d allowed her to go out without him; yesterday she’d ridden the tram on the precipitous route up to the Peak, where she’d stood with a straining mass of spectators watching a Hong Kong film crew staging a frenetic struggle between a martial-art expert and a revoltingly bloated python against the picturesque backdrop of a misted city and harbour. The day before she’d visited Aberdeen to take a boat trip out past the luxury yachts and the ornate floating Chinese restaurant in the harbour to where gnarled and timeworn old fishermen lived in putrefying squalor on board their rotting sampans. There had been other excursions too, to the decorously named and vibrantly oriental Thieves Market; the Fung Ping Shan Museum with its ancient Chinese pottery and Yuan Dynasty crosses; and a brief though tranquillizing stroll through the pergolas and statues of the Aw Boon Haw Gardens. She’d enjoyed them all, for her inherent fascination for anything new enabled her – with some effort, it was true – to suspend the despondency of her predicament and indulge herself in the comforting fantasy that she was simply a tourist. But those moments were preciously few for Tse Dong and Lei Leen were as omnipresent as the soggy air, silently stalking her every move, crushing her space and suffocating her mind like grim, Orwellian jailers. There was nothing she could do about it because Christian was adamant that unless she was with him Tse Dong and Lei Leen must never leave her side.

  ‘But why?’ she had cried the night before, her bright blue eyes flashing with anger and frustration. ‘I feel like you’re keeping me prisoner.’

  Christian’s face darkened with anguish.

  ‘I’m never on my own,’ she went on heatedly, ‘not even for a minute, and I can’t stand it. I need to breathe! I need to have time for myself. What is it? Are you afraid I’m going to run away?’

  ‘Chérie,’ he sighed, attempting to pull her into his arms and looking hopelessly dejected when she resisted. ‘You have to understand the position we’re in here,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard, but there are certain things I have to tie up and arrangements to be made for how we’re going to live once we leave Hong Kong. If I could I’d come sightseeing with you myself, I’d like nothing more than to spend all my time with you, but right now it just isn’t possible. So please, try to be patient. It won’t be for much longer.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, Christian,’ she cried in exasperation, her voice echoing around the pale marble walls of the opulent bathroom. ‘The point is that I don’t want Tse Dong breathing down my neck every minute of the day, treating me like I’m some kind of god-damned prisoner!’

  ‘I’ll have a word with him,’ Christian responded, reaching up to adjust the towel that was tumbling from her hair. ‘He is a little overzealous, I know, but he knows how much I care about you and I’d never forgive him if anything happened to you.’

  Had the telephone not rung at that moment, as it constantly did day and night, she might have pursued it further; but, knowing she wouldn’t win anyway, she’d sunk herself irritably into the vast, foaming jacuzzi bath and flicked mindlessly at the remote control, changing channels on the TV monitor in the gold-painted dome overhead.

  With the jets of water pummelling her body, she felt the anger seep steadily away as the weight of despondency and shame began to erode the pretence she had enclosed herself in. At times it was as though she were standing aloof from herself, watching herself with the curious detachment of a stranger. But there were so many recriminations begging to be heard, so much regret and dread waiting to flood her mind with the enormity of what she had done, that as always she turned herself away from it, unable to face either the pain or the guilt.

  Now, buoyed by the fleeting intoxication of having spent something in the region of thirty thousan
d dollars at the designer emporiums of Landmark and Prince’s Building, she let herself in through the door of their suite eager, despite all her misgivings, to see Christian. He took such pleasure in giving her things and though she’d been unaware of possessing such a wanton materialistic streak before she seemed, to Christian’s delight, to be having no problem at all in giving it free rein.

  Leaving Tse Dong and Lei Leen to struggle into the hall with her parcels she pushed open the door of the sitting room, to be met by a fog of cigar smoke mingling with the bitter smell of alcohol and the gutteral murmurings of Cantonese. The light in her eyes instantly died as the voices fell into silence and her face tightened with resentment.

  ‘Ah, chérie,’ Christian said, extricating himself from the group of fat, hostile little men who were turning on the sofas in the raised seating area to look down at her. Behind the contorting lenses of pebble glasses their eyes were implacable, but their malice, along with the murky corruptness of their dealings, stained the air.

  ‘I was beginning to worry,’ Christian said, walking around the statue of the Tang Dynasty horse and coming down the carpeted steps to greet her. Though his eyes were shining with indulgent laughter, his face was strained and he seemed uncharacteristically on edge.

  Putting an arm around her, he turned back to the men, who were getting reluctantly to their feet. Penny recognized some of them, for they had become regular visitors these past few days and they did no more to disguise their resentment than she did. She knew that as a woman she was so far beneath their contempt that it was only Christian’s presence that forced them to acknowledge her at all. Even so, only one or two muttered a greeting, calling her by the name on her new passport, Madame Sevier.

  ‘So, have you bankrupted me?’ Christian asked, smiling and bringing her further into the room.

  Penny was about to respond, when a telephone rang and numerous hands made ridiculous lunges towards briefcases and pockets. The door opened behind her as Tse Dong and Lei Leen came in, followed by the oval-faced butler with his soft Confucian eyes and long-toothed smile. He was carrying a tray of steaming dim sum. Christian waved him towards the dining table, while raising his voice to the man who was shouting into the phone. Since both were speaking in Cantonese Penny had no idea what was going on as a couple of the others rapidly punched out numbers on their mobile phones while the fax pumped through messages in an untidy, illegible calligraphy.