Divas

by Rebecca Chance

  She stood, listening, her feet toasty on the bath mat, warmed by the constant underfloor heating. Yes, there was definitely someone in the apartment. Benny? But he always called first, always. Not that he suspected about Lawrence – Jesus, she damn well hoped he didn’t! But Benny liked her to look a certain way. Dressed up, made up, hair done, and, of course, in some form of sexy legwear and high high heels. Often he’d specify exactly what he wanted her to wear when he called. He had a freaky memory: he’d say stuff like: ‘Those knee-highs I bought you in that SoHo boutique, the white ones with the dots, and the mules with the Lucite heels and the red trim on the third shelf up, OK, baby?’ And he was always right: the shoes were just where he’d said they’d be. She couldn’t give him points for good taste when he thought up her outfits, but then, good taste wasn’t exactly what most men wanted in a mistress.

  Wrapping the bath sheet tightly around her, Evie looked around for her slippers. Benny would freak if she wasn’t wearing something on her feet. Shit, they were nowhere to be seen. When he wasn’t around, she didn’t wear them: she loved the feel of heated marble, or luxury pile carpet, under her bare toes. It was a reminder of how rich she was living. She’d have to distract him by a complaint about his scaring her shitless just using his key and coming in like that when she was in the shower. Working up a rant about how much he’d freaked her out, she crossed the bathroom, biting her lip to get some tears starting. Benny hated it when she cried.

  And after all, who could it be but Benny?

  Evie flung the bathroom door wide, but the scene before her dried up both her tears and her shrieking reproaches to Benny about thinking he was a serial killer come to slaughter her in the shower. Her mouth dropped open, and all that came out was a gulp.

  Standing in the middle of the huge, open-plan living room was a woman, a woman who was taller than most men, with white-blonde hair in a short cut that emphasised her knife-sharp bone structure and the eerie pale blue of her eyes. She was wearing a white cashmere coat, belted tightly at the waist, pearl earrings so huge it was hard to believe they were real, and knee-high brown leather boots. She looked like the villain from a designer sci-fi movie.

  ‘What are you doing in my apartment?’ Evie managed to exclaim, praying to God that the woman was some interior designer Benny had sent round to surprise her.

  But she had a horrible feeling that she knew exactly who this woman was. She’d seen photos of Benny with her in the society pages.

  ‘Mrs Fitzgerald? Just pile all this stuff into trash bags?’ came a man’s voice, deep and rasping, and a Hispanic guy, dressed all in black, emerged from Evie’s bedroom, a rack of her dresses hooked over one brawny arm. He must have been at least six-foot three, and with his shaved head, bodybuilder’s walk and shoulders too big for his suit jacket, he was a type Evie had seen all too often: bodyguard/bouncer/hired muscle. Benny had a bodyguard, sometimes, but Evie had never seen this guy before.

  This guy was from the streets. She could tell by his eyes, which were hard dark shiny stones, and from the backs of his hands, which were marked with faded blue prison tattoos. Probably gang stuff. And it looked as though he was getting them lasered off, because they were blurry in places. But still, to have a bodyguard with visible prison tats? Benny would never have gone for that. That was gangster stuff. Hardcore.

  ‘That’s right, ’ the woman said, staring straight at Evie. ‘Everything into the trash.’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’ Evie said. ‘That’s mine! That’s my stuff!’

  ‘Not any more, ’ the woman – Benny’s wife – said. She smiled. It was terrifying.

  ‘Benny bought all that for me!’ Evie protested. ‘It’s mine! Look, it’s shitty you found out about us this way, but that’s all mine, you can’t just take it—’

  ‘Keep at it, Rico. You know what you’re supposed to do, ’ the woman said to the hired muscle, who nodded and disappeared back into Evie’s bedroom.

  ‘You can’t just trash it!’ Evie stalked across the room to grab her cellphone. ‘I’m calling Benny right now, ’ she said furiously. ‘He won’t let you do this!’

  My shoes! she thought. All my porno sex shoes! Benny’s obsessed with them – no way is he going to let this bitch dump them in the street!

  ‘Call away, ’ Benny’s wife said. It was like watching a skull smile.

  Evie stabbed at her speed dial key, ringing Benny’s private line, her brain racing frantically. She was used to crises, used to threats of trouble and violence – she had grown up in one of the worst projects in Spanish Harlem, a pretty girl with no one to protect her. Her father wasn’t even a distant memory – he’d walked out on her mother when Evie’s sister was still five months off being born. Evie’s mother Mariluz was too busy complaining about her own troubles to spare a thought for Evie, and while Mariluz cosseted Evie’s little sister Ria, Evie was out on her own, dealing with the gangs, the dealers, the guys trying to get with her, or pimp her out, or both.

  Evie had had to fight for everything she’d ever got in life. Every single thing. She’d seen the worst things that could happen, and the people who’d done them and then laughed about it afterwards. And now, appraising Benny’s wife, she knew instinctively that she was in the presence of an enemy worse than any she had ever encountered in her short hard life. Not just because she had that look in her cold blue eyes, the killer look. Because she had more power to execute her wishes than anyone Evie had ever met before.

  Apart from Benny. And Benny wasn’t answering his phone. Evie tried again, going for his cellphone number. It started to ring and, a second later, she heard Benny’s ringtone in her ear, a classical music piece that he’d told her was his favourite. But how come she was hearing it? Was she so freaked out by this woman’s invasion of her home that she was hallucinating Benny’s cellphone ring?

  Then she realised that she wasn’t. Because Benny’s wife was reaching in her coat pocket. The woman’s smile deepened still further, like a slash, as her hand came out holding a ringing phone.

  ‘Benny’s not answering his phone any more, ’ she said.‘Benny will never be answering his phone again.’

  Evie’s phone dropped onto the wooden floor with an ominous cracking sound.

  ‘Benny’s dead?’ Evie gasped.

  ‘He might as well be. He’s in a coma, ’ Benny’s wife informed her with as much emotion as if she were reading out stock prices. ‘Which means you’re out of here. You’ve got twenty minutes to pack up as much as you can and get out.’

  ‘But I live here! You can’t just—’

  The ice-blue eyes gleamed. ‘You should have got Benny to put the apartment in your name, shouldn’t you? Stupid girl. You won’t make that mistake with the next man you whore for.’ She lifted her wrist so the coat cuff could slide down her arm, revealing a watch so thickly studded with diamonds Evie was surprised it didn’t blind her. ‘Twenty minutes and counting, ’ she observed.

  Evie knew she wasn’t bluffing. She grabbed the towel tighter around her and sprinted for her bedroom door. The Hispanic guy – Rico – had already pulled out so many of her lovely things that she could have cried to see them so contemptuously tossed aside, her shoes knocked off the shelves to the floor as if he’d just swiped along them with his arm, her lingerie lying in piles on the bed and floor as if he’d lifted them out from their drawers and thrown them over his shoulder. But that wasn’t what she was focusing on. She was staring at him as he pulled out a leather box from the built-in, cedar-lined cupboard and shouted:

  ‘Mrs Fitzgerald? I think I found it.’

  Evie’s blood turned to ice water.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No! You can’t take that! It’s mine!’

  She leaped at him, fingers hooked into claws, pretty face distorted into a mask of fury, grabbing for it. Rico knocked her away with one elbow to her jaw, still holding the box. Evie landed on the bed face down, limbs sprawling, dazed from the blow, and then Rico did take one hand from the box. He leaned down an
d pulled the towel right out from under her, flipping her over like a pancake as he did so.

  ‘Nice tits, ’ he said, staring at her naked body and nodding appraisingly. ‘I don’t like them too big.’

  Fury gave Evie the strength to jump off the bed, drag on some sweatpants and a T-shirt and dash out of the room after Rico, despite the pounding in her jaw that was still making her dizzy.

  In the living-room, he was standing holding the box open, presenting it to his boss, who was extracting from it exactly the items that Evie was desperate for. She held them up, one in each hand, tilting them back and forth, watching them shine. Twin circles, each the diameter of a small teacup, silver fabric richly encrusted with sewn-on diamonds, glittering as if they were worth a small fortune. Which, to Evie, they were.

  ‘What do you call these again?’ she inquired.

  ‘Pasties, Mrs Fitzgerald, ’ Rico said, winking unpleasantly at Evie. ‘Strippers wear ’em to cover their, uh –’

  ‘Nipples, ’ Mrs Fitzgerald finished. She looked at Evie. ‘And I suppose you generally tear them off for the grand finale and throw them into the audience, do you?’ She was smiling still. ‘Not these ones, though. Benny paid a hundred thousand for them. That makes them strictly for private performances only.’

  And she tilted her hand still more so that the diamond-covered pasties dangled temptingly from her fingers, as if she were taunting Evie, daring her to come and take them.

  ‘Give them back!’ Evie yelled, running towards her.

  Rico moved fast. He caught her upper arms, stopping her in her tracks. Evie wriggled and fought and kicked at him with her bare feet, but Rico’s grip just tightened till she yelped in pain.

  ‘I don’t think so, ’ said Mrs Fitzgerald, laughing. ‘Out of the question! This was how I found out about you – doing checks on Benny’s credit cards. Custom-made diamond pasties. Very funny. I don’t think I’ll have them broken up – I think I’ll keep them. They’ll make me smile every time I look at them.’

  Snapping open the crocodile-skin purse that hung from her wrist, she dropped in the pasties.

  ‘You can’t take those!’ Evie screamed. ‘OK, so the apartment’s not in my name, but the pasties are mine! Benny gave them to me! They were a gift!’

  ‘Sue me, ’ said Benny’s wife. ‘Really. Go ahead and sue me.’

  And she smiled again.

  Evie stopped kicking. She hung in Rico’s grip like a rag doll, momentarily paralysed with the shock.

  ‘Now, I’m being nice to you, ’ Mrs Fitzgerald said. She consulted her watch again. ‘You have fifteen minutes left. I’d make good use of them if I were you. Or do you want me to tell Rico to throw you out now, just as you are?’

  Evie had been right about Benny’s wife. This was a woman who loved to exercise every ounce of power that she could, in the worst possible way. She was enjoying throwing Evie out of what she thought was her home, stealing Evie’s property before her eyes, and mocking her with it. She was enjoying humiliating Evie by making her tear free of Rico, run back into the bedroom, drag down her suitcases and grab great handfuls of her clothes, stuffing them in as fast as she could, snatching as much of value as she could possibly manage, tearing into the bathroom to get her expensive toiletries, emptying out her secret stash of cash in the cistern, where she kept it in a plastic bag. She was enjoying watching Evie run around like a mad thing, those icy eyes gleaming with pleasure at having reduced her to the mortification of doing a supermarket sweep on her own possessions.

  And when Evie pulled her suitcases out into the living room, sweating because she was wearing three coats, one over the other, since she couldn’t fit them in the suitcases, that bitch was standing there, arms folded, swinging her shiny crocodile bag slowly back and forth from its gilt chain hung over one white cashmere-clad elbow, so as to emphasise that she had Evie’s precious diamond pasties inside. Those diamonds were Evie’s talisman, her security. They were everything she had in the world of solid value. Her fingers were itching to snatch that bag off the bitch’s arm.

  But Rico was standing right beside her, arms similarly folded, and Evie knew there was no way she could grab her jewels and run before Rico got to her. Besides, the bitch would just have her arrested.

  So Evie stuck her chin in the air and crossed the room, pulling her suitcases behind her. She wouldn’t look back for one last glance at her beautiful apartment, at its suede sofas and hardwood floors and recessed lighting, at the floor-to-ceiling windows with their view over downtown skyscrapers and the Hudson River beyond, because if she did, she might start crying. And she never cried.

  She dragged open the door and pulled her cases through, swallowing hard as it shut behind her. Evie’s perfect life was over, as if it had never been. She pressed the button for the lift. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was going down.

  Behind her, her old front door swung open.

  ‘Mrs Fitzgerald thought you might want this, ’ Rico rasped. ‘She says she don’t need it.’

  And Evie heard the familiar clatter of a dismantled pole being dropped to the floor.

  Evie wanted desperately to walk into the lift and not look back. But all she had in the world was the cash she had on her. She didn’t have a bank account, only credit cards, and she was sure that the bitch would have had those all stopped by now. She couldn’t afford to turn down anything she could take with her. And a good pole cost $250.

  ‘I need the carrying case for it, ’ she said to Rico, trying to sound as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He wasn’t fooled. Those hard black eyes looked her up and down, and slowly, he smiled. ‘You want me to get it for you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I can’t hear you, babe.’

  ‘Yes, ’ she said.

  His tongue flicked out, and he licked his lips.

  ‘How much d’ya want it?’

  She shrugged, staring back at him. This wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with men like Rico, and the most important thing was to show no emotion at all.

  ‘Shit, you’re a hard case, ’ Rico said, staring at her hard. ‘I like that.’

  He turned and went inside, coming out a short time later with the plastic carrying case for the pole. But he didn’t go back into the apartment again straight away: he stood there, watching her, as she knelt down and slid the sections of the pole into each other, and then into the case, moving awkwardly in the bulky coats. Eventually she got it done and stood up again, pressing the button for the lift. Rico watched as she dragged in her cases and then came back for the pole, smirking at her efforts.

  Just as the doors were about to close, Rico made his move. He stuck one meaty arm into the cabin, blocking the doors, and with the other he reached forwards and grabbed Evie’s crotch through her sweatpants.

  ‘Just so you remember me, babe, ’ he said, leering at her.

  His fingers dug in so tight that when he finally let go, she could still feel their grip. She’d have bruises tomorrow.

  Evie’s eyes were dry as old bone. Her lips were set in a thin, hard line. She watched herself in the shiny brass doors as the lift sank towards ground level, towards everything she’d fought all her life to get away from, and she made a promise to herself: one day she’d be back in the sky again, up in a penthouse, with her name on it this time. And if it was the last thing she ever did in this life, she’d see that bitch crawling at her feet.

  Chapter 3

  Lola was dragged back into consciousness by a screaming headache. She fought it as long as she could, but eventually the sensation that someone had driven a metal curtain rod into one of her ears and out of the other was so painful that she opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She didn’t recognise the room she had been sleeping in, but she didn’t expect to. As soon as she’d woken up, she had remembered exactly what had happened just before she passed out. All of it. The universe had no mercy for Lola today. Her memory wasn’t giving her a gradual rele
ase of information: it was all flooding back in one fell swoop.

  She had to have a painkiller. Climbing out of the bed someone had put her in, she headed for the en-suite bathroom. In Lola’s world, all bedrooms had en suites, and sure enough, this one did too . . . but its gleaming mirrored cabinets were completely empty. Damn. Guest bathroom. Raisin-Face had a lot more space in her small mews house than it seemed, because these rooms were huge.

  Confused now, Lola pushed open the bedroom door, and got the kind of shock a first-time passenger on the Tardis must have. Instead of the narrow little hallway she’d been expecting, she was faced with the generous curve of a wide staircase, bathed in light streaming gently through a domed skylight set into the high ceiling, two floors up. Walls papered in pale-yellow stripes, hung with black-and-white 18th-century prints of birds and flowers . . . this house was definitely familiar, and equally definitely not Raisin-Face’s. It had to be about ten times the size.

  Lola racked what was left of her brain cells – i.e. the ones she hadn’t burned out with cocktails and coke the night before – and came up with nothing. She started down the stairs, which ran all the way around the well of the atrium in a very dramatic fashion, and halfway down, seeing the black-and-white chequered marble of the entrance hall, she had the memory flash she needed to realise where she was.

  This was Devon’s in-laws’ Belgravia town house. Devon and Piers had stood just where Lola was now for the wedding photos: she could still see Devon’s priceless Honiton lace train, a family heirloom, carefully arranged by Madison to spill all the way down the rest of the stairs and puddle beautifully at the bottom. Devon’s diamond tiara and necklace had been family heirlooms too, heavy enough to give Devon a sore neck of which she had boasted for months afterwards. Piers might not be the brightest lightbulb in the chandelier, but there were definite advantages to marrying the heir to the Claverford dukedom.