There was, just about. She put on a robe this time, holding it off the ground so she didn’t trip, and brought him the other one, enjoying watching him pull off his T-shirt and stand, for a moment, completely naked. Then she picked up her full glass of champagne and handed him his own.
‘I didn’t actually do that on purpose, ’ she said, sitting down in the chair next to the one he had been occupying and patting his to indicate he should sit next to her.
Niels obeyed, looking awkward. She clinked glasses with him, and they drank some champagne.
How funny, she thought. Just now, during sex, it was him who decided everything. And now he’s looking almost hang-dog, waiting for me to tell him what to do.
‘The towel falling off, ’ she clarified, seeing that he wasn’t going to ask her what she meant. ‘I really didn’t mean to. Though’ – she blushed – ‘I expect it’s perfectly obvious that I did want to have sex with you.’
Niels was back to avoiding her gaze again.
‘I really am sorry, ’ he mumbled eventually. ‘Not, you know, for the getting you messy part. For the . . .’ His voice tailed off, and he finished the glass of champagne in one gulp, jumping up and crossing to the fridge to retrieve the bottle.
‘For the what?’ she prompted.
‘For’ – he filled his glass again, and topped up hers – ‘for the – you know. The—’
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Lola tried to fill in the gap.
‘You mean, because you like it a bit rough?’ she said, drinking some more fizz herself, because she wasn’t wholly unembarrassed about the entire situation herself. ‘The spanking me, pulling my hair, all that kind of thing?’
He went as red as a tomato.
‘I never did before!’ he protested, taking another gulp of champagne. Too fast; he choked on some bubbles and Lola had to pound his back.
‘What do you mean, you never did before?’ she asked.
She was not looking at him now either, sensing that this conversation was difficult enough for him without her eyes boring into him. Directing her stare instead to the window next to her, she looked out into the sky, waiting for his answer.
‘Well, not like that!’ Niels sounded very confused. ‘Not, you know . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t mean this to sound rude, ’ he started. ‘But it’s something about you. You sort of . . . bring it out in me.’
‘Me too, ’ she said with great surprise. ‘I mean, I never liked anything like that before. But’ – it was her turn to blush – ‘I never really liked sex that much, believe it or not. I wasn’t that keen on it. Even when Jean-Marc and I fooled around, which we hardly ever did—’
‘Please!’ He raised a hand. ‘Can we never, ever mention that you and Jean-Marc—’
‘No, sure. Right. Absolutely.’ Lola downed the rest of her champagne and reached for the bottle. ‘God, this is a weird situation.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ he agreed fervently, turning to look at her.
She glanced up at him shyly from under her lashes.
‘Niels, ’ she said, unable to stop herself asking the question, ‘why are you single? Or’ – she was struck with horror – ‘are you single? I mean, I assumed—’
‘Yes, of course I am!’ Niels blurted out. ‘I would never—’ He cleared his throat. ‘My mother asks that question a lot, ’ he admitted. ‘Why am I single? And I never know what to say. I mean, I’ve had relationships, but they’ve never really come to anything more. I’m good friends with most of my exes.’
Which means things weren’t that passionate, Lola deduced. Like me and Jean-Marc. If there’s real passion, I can’t imagine that you’d be friends afterwards – it would all blow up like an explosion, not just fizzle out, like Niels is describing.
Niels was refilling his glass, obviously embarrassed by the conversation.
With those exes, he didn’t have sex with them like he just did with me, Lola realised. He said it was me that brought it out in him. Her heart leaped, then sank immediately as she understood what that meant:
He thinks I’m just a tart. The kind of girl you have filthy amazing sex with, not the kind of girl you take home to your mother. Not the kind of girl you even mention when your mother asks why you’re single. The kind of girl you dismiss when you’re done with her, because there are the ‘good’ girls you have passionless relationships with, and then me, who he despises but, maybe because of that, he feels free enough to have the kind of sex with me that he really wants to have . . .
Nothing more. This is all there’ll ever be between Niels and me. Just the sex.
She looked over at him, hoping to see something in his eyes that would contradict her gloomy process of deductive reasoning. But he was drinking his champagne and looking down at the Alps below, not even glancing in her direction.
‘I think, ’ he said, ‘we had better finish this bottle, put our seats back, turn the lights off and try to get some sleep.’
‘OK, ’ she said a little sadly. ‘I think sleep’s a great idea.’
He looked hugely relieved.
‘And don’t worry about anything when we land, ’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got Lesley’s passport for you. So you won’t have to show the one you’re travelling on. They never give the passports anything but a quick glance anyway, but just to be on the safe side, I thought it was a good idea to take the precaution. The plane’ll be going back to Milan in a couple of days, and Lesley’ll be fine there till she gets her passport back.’
‘Oh, ’ she said, a bit flattened.
He stared at her.
‘What?’ he said, raising his eyebrows haughtily, back to the bossy, rather scornful Niels that she had first met in the hospital. ‘You don’t think my arrangements are good enough, Princess? What about thanking me for the foresight of having an American stewardess who looks vaguely like you, let alone the considerable inconvenience to me of having to travel with someone who’s completely useless as a stewardess! You can’t even close a fridge door without managing to lose all your clothes!’
Lola blushed. It was her turn to mumble.
‘I just thought you’d left her behind because . . . um . . . because you wanted to be alone with me.’
‘Oh, ’ he said. ‘Well.’ He looked away. ‘I had absolutely no intention of being alone with you at all, in that way. If you want to know. Because of – ahem.’
Lola wasn’t going to let him get away with that.
‘But you’re glad you were, aren’t you?’ she challenged him. ‘I mean, you’re not sorry it happened!’
Look me in the eye, Niels van der Veer, and tell me that you’re sorry we just had totally amazing sex, she thought. I dare you.
Niels’ face was the visual definition of a man caught between a rock and a hard place. There was no way he could deny that he had thoroughly enjoyed himself. And she remembered him lying on top of her afterwards, kissing her hair. There had been tenderness too, even though he’d be loath to admit it. He finished his second glass of champagne in one gulp, the rising colour in his cheeks, his inability to answer her, all the response she needed.
‘I’m not very good at talking about this kind of thing at the best of times, ’ he mumbled eventually.
‘That’s OK, ’ Lola teased. ‘At least you’re very good at doing it.’
Niels was even redder now.
‘We should both try to get some sleep, ’ he said, setting down his glass. ‘You’ve got a lot ahead of you when you get back to New York.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m very sorry about your father. I knew him. Not that well, but I knew him. He was a good man.’
‘He was, ’ Lola said quietly. ‘Thank you.’
She was sure Niels hadn’t deliberately mentioned her father in order to stop her talking about sex, but that was the effect it had had, all the same. The fizz of exhilaration from orgasms and champagne began to fade as she remembered the last time she’d seen Ben Fitzgerald alive, lying in his huge bed, hooked up to beeping monitors. And th
en she thought about what lay ahead of her in New York. It was a more than sobering picture.
‘Here, ’ Niels said, pulling down a couple of blankets from the overhead locker and handing them to her. He followed them with some pillows and a sleep mask. ‘Time to have a rest now. You’ll need your energy soon enough.’
Propping a pillow behind his own head, he reclined his seat and shut his eyes. The conversation, clearly, was over.
Chapter 36
‘Mrs Myers? Mrs Myers? Mrs Myers, we have a search warrant here. You have to let us in!’
Suzanne, panicking, turned to Evie and India for help.
‘What do I do?’ she mouthed.
‘Stall them, ’ India said quickly. ‘I’ll get Evie into bed. We’ll just hope that they still think she’s Lola.’
‘It’ll never work!’ Suzanne wailed.
India’s grimace showed that she knew that too, but she wouldn’t say it.
‘It’s all we’ve got, ’ she whispered, herding Evie back down the corridor to the bedroom.
Suzanne waited as long as she could, until the door was almost bouncing off its hinges as the police banged on it, before she put the chain on and slowly pulled it open. In the gap, she could see the detectives who had visited yesterday; and, standing behind them, a redheaded woman in a cheap suit, her mouth set in a tight line.
‘Mrs Myers, the front desk rang up, I assume, ’ the woman said. ‘I’m Serena Mackesy, an Assistant District Attorney from the DA’s office. We have a warrant to search the apartment. We’re checking that your daughter, Lola Fitzgerald, is on the premises. I’m here because I’ve met Ms Fitzgerald at the DA’s office, and can identify her.’
Bowing to fate, Suzanne nodded and closed the door just enough to slip off the chain. A door banged further down the apartment – maybe a signal to say that India and Evie were ready for them. There was nothing more Suzanne could do. And Evie really did look a lot like Lola. The same build, the same colouring, very similar features – maybe, without having them both there, standing next to each other, this woman wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other—
Serena Mackesy was first through the door, the detectives standing back to let her through.
‘I should let you know, Mrs Myers, ’ she said, patting her briefcase, ‘that I have photographs here of Ms Fitzgerald and of Evie Lopez. Our office contacted the publicist of that burlesque place where Ms Lopez performs and got a publicity shot of her. If it’s Evie Lopez you have in this apartment, pretending to be Ms Fitzgerald, I’ll know. Detective Morgan’ – she gestured at the cop who had seen Evie yesterday – ‘has been shown the photographs, and he’s pretty sure it was Ms Lopez he saw in here yesterday, not Ms Fitzgerald.’
Jerry pulled an apologetic face at Suzanne.
‘Uh, it’s down that corridor, ’ he said, pointing the way for ADA Mackesy.
Suzanne watched hopelessly as they trooped off down the hall in the direction of Evie’s bedroom. She supposed she should follow them, but her feet refused to move. All this stress ever since the news of Lola’s arrest, the rush to organise the feeding of the animals, because Neville, bless his heart, had offered to come with her for the funeral, so they’d had to scrabble around to find someone in Whitstable to look after her whole animal family while he, too, was away. Neville was back in Whitstable now, of course, and thank God he was, because one of the llamas had contracted a bad head cold.
Suzanne couldn’t wait to rejoin him. This wasn’t her world any more, and she couldn’t believe she had ever lived in it. She hated the ridiculous over-consumption. She hated the luxury apartment so high up in the sky you had to go down in a lift to reach Central Park and feel the earth under your feet again. Most of all, she hated the drama that Carin Fitzgerald, that terrible woman, created with everything she touched. Drama and destruction. She was like a plague in human form.
And now Carin had somehow managed to set up Lola, Suzanne’s beloved daughter, for murdering her father. Lola would be arrested again, and this time she wouldn’t get bail. She might even be convicted.
It was no wonder that Suzanne couldn’t manage to move from where she stood, leaning hopelessly against the wall of the foyer, staring unseeingly at her own reflection in the gilded mirror hung above the table opposite.
They were all emerging again. Suzanne watched them walk back down the corridor, and she could see that something had changed; they had been pumped up, alert, when they came in. Now it was as if the energy had been drained out of them through the soles of their feet. Serena Mackesy was first, carrying her briefcase at the same angle; it didn’t look as if she had pulled it out to check any photographs at all. Then Detective Garcia, rubbing his hand over his bald scalp, and finally, Detective Morgan.
‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Myers, ’ ADA Mackesy said politely. ‘You understand, we had to check.’
‘Just doing our job, ma’am, ’ Detective Garcia mumbled. ‘We won’t be bothering you again.’
Suzanne’s heart leaped. Had it worked? Had this Mackesy woman, and Garcia, really all been fooled by Evie with the pink cakey cream blotches on her face?
‘Um, Mrs Myers—’ Detective Morgan had halted in front of her. ‘I took the liberty of bringing this—’ He was extracting a photo from his pocket, what looked like a printout from the internet, folded in two. It was her as the Sunsilk girl, in full colour, wearing the wretched blue swimsuit that had made her famous, her blonde hair streaming down her back.
He held it out to her with a pen. ‘I wasn’t going to ask if, you know, things didn’t go so well. But since everything’s OK – would you mind signing it for me?’
Her brain racing with speculation, her heart high, she smiled at him as she took both pen and paper and quickly rested the photo on the hall table, signing her name.
‘Oh boy, that’s the smile right there!’ he crowed.‘You don’t look a day older, ma’am!’
‘Detective, ’ she informed him, ‘this smile is murder to hold for hours. Believe me, I’m very glad not to have to do that any more.’
‘Oh, wow—’ He was reading what she had written. ‘With love, Suzanne. Jeez, Mrs Myers, thanks so much – that’s real nice of you, considering—’
She closed the door on the three of them and sprinted back down the corridor faster than she had thought possible at her age. As she tore into Lola’s bedroom, she stopped dead in astonishment.
Her daughter was sitting upright in bed, a sheet held up to her shoulders.
India was collapsed in an armchair, clutching her head as if she had a migraine.
And Evie Lopez, her ex-husband’s mistress, was crawling out from under the bed, her face now a smeared mass of pink cracking make-up.
Suzanne stared at the scene in front of her and started laughing so hard her eyes watered over.
‘When we landed at Teterboro, Niels had a helicopter waiting already, ’ Lola was explaining. ‘It shot me over to the East Side helipad and then I grabbed a cab over here.’ She pulled a face. ‘It took longer to get across town in a cab than the helicopter journey, believe it or not.’
‘Cross-town traffic’s a bitch, ’ Evie said sympathetically.
‘But at least I spent the drive working out how to get back into the apartment without being spotted!’ Lola’s eyes were bright with enthusiasm: she was really pleased with herself. ‘I worked out where the service entrance was, just round the corner from the garages. I’d noticed it because they always have big laundry bins there, rolling out all the dirty sheets and towels and things. So I got the cab to let me off there, and sneaked in. All the maids have pass-keys, you know. It still works like a hotel if you want, they’ll change your linen every day. And if you look at the corridor from the outside of the suite, you can see there are a couple of extra doors for the cleaners, so they don’t bother you by using the main ones. I just slipped one of the maids a twenty to let me in further down.’
She giggled.
‘It was like something out of a
farce, really. I mean, if it hadn’t been so serious. India saw me come in – I was just opposite my bedroom – and she grabbed my arm and pulled me in and started ripping off my sweater, like she wanted to have sex with me or something.’
‘You should be so lucky!’ India, overhearing this, called from the dining-room.
‘And she practically threw me into bed – I was getting in while Evie was scrambling out the other side and crawling underneath it. And about two seconds later, this DA and two cops all piled in, and I had barely got my sweater off, so I grabbed at the sheet to cover me like I was shocked—’
‘Which was the perfect finishing touch, ’ India called.
‘—and poor things, I did feel sorry for them. They looked so embarrassed, ’ Lola said with great satisfaction. ‘Both the guys just goggled at me. And then the DA said to one of them, suspiciously, “Is this the woman that you saw before, Detective?” and he went all pink and said he thought so, but I’d been looking pretty bad last time, and then he said, “Wow, Ms Fitzgerald, your skin has really cleared up!” and I had no idea what he was talking about, because I’d barely seen Evie’s face yet, but I just said, “Thank you, ” because I didn’t know what else to say. And then they all left with their tails between their legs.’
The doorbell rang, and Suzanne went to answer it.
‘Hey everyone!’ carolled another voice from the hallway.
‘David!’ Lola cried joyously, running out to greet him. ‘I didn’t know you were coming! No one tells me anything!’
David looked very well. His blue eyes were bright, their whites very clear, and he exuded the health and poise of a gay man who’s spending every evening at the gym after work. He wore a tight blue T-shirt over cream chinos, and his dark hair was cropped short.
‘Darling!’ He enfolded her in a hug. ‘It’s lovely to see you! My goodness, this must be your gorgeous mama! How beautiful she is!’
‘Mummy, this is David – Jean-Marc’s boyfriend, ’ Lola introduced him. ‘And David, this is India.’
‘I know exactly who you are, ’ David said, shaking India’s hand. ‘Lola’s very best friend. She’s so lucky to have you.’
Divas Page 37
