The Perfect Couple

by Lexi Landsman

  There was a look of delight in her eyes as she waited for his reaction. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  She seemed pleased with herself. ‘I hated seeing you upset, so I thought this might cheer you up before you go back to the hospital.’

  Daniel was taken aback by the gesture from this stranger who was perceptive enough to know not only that he would relish a store like this, but that he needed that flicker of light in his life at that very moment. He didn’t know what came over him but without thinking, Daniel leaned forward and kissed her. Caterina seemed surprised at first and her body stiffened, but then she relaxed and kissed him back, colour blooming on her cheeks.

  Daniel walked her back to the Ponte Vecchio, smiling to himself, his lips still tingling as if she’d left a lingering electrical pulse on them. He wasn’t usually so impulsive, so brazen. His mother’s accident had imbued him with a sense of fragile mortality. So, more than ever, Daniel didn’t want to waste a moment of his life because he knew now that without warning, anything could happen.

  MARCO

  She looked through the peephole of her front door and then opened it, wearing one of my white shirts, unbuttoned, with nothing underneath but a red lace bra and matching G-string. Her breasts pushed upwards over the bra as if they were being squeezed too tight, her dark nipples visible through snatches of the lace. The sight of her bare, youthful flesh was enough to dilute the fury that pulsed through my veins. I had the urge to grab her arse and carry her to the bed in her small apartment and fuck her until I forgot all about this nightmare.

  She threw her arms around me and kissed me hotly, as if it had been weeks since we’d seen each other, instead of days. Then she pushed me back, angrily. ‘Marco, I’ve been worried about you! Why haven’t you answered my calls? Is Sarah okay?’

  I shut the door behind me and checked that the curtains were closed.

  ‘She’s recovering in hospital. She’ll be okay, but she has a form of amnesia and doesn’t remember anything from the time close to the accident, including finding the necklace. And when I went back to the safe yesterday, it was gone.’ I spoke quickly, barely pausing to take a breath.

  Her eyes widened and she gasped. ‘The necklace is gone?’ she said in disbelief. ‘How can that be? You only just found it.’

  I rubbed my temples. ‘It’s completely vanished. The necklace. The pietre dure box. All of it. Every last diamond.’

  ‘But who would have taken it?’ Every now and then, her age and naivety would slap me in the face. She was, after all, only twenty-eight, and probably still thought the world was fair.

  ‘That’s the multimillion-dollar question,’ I said with sarcasm. ‘There are only three people in the world who know that we found the necklace – you, me and Sarah. And one of them can’t remember a damn thing.’

  She had a small one-bedroom apartment and everything in it was white or beige, except for large black-framed fashion photographs on the walls. I sat on her bed and cupped my face in my hands. How had I got myself into such a mess? ‘Sofia, I need you to be honest with me.’ I forced myself to keep my tone gentle and even. ‘A lot is at stake here. I could lose everything. Did you tell anyone what I told you about the necklace? Anyone?’

  When I came to her on my way home that night, I was so exhilarated by what we’d found that I didn’t even think about whether I could trust her. I needed a quick release of all the energy that was buzzing inside me, a nightcap. She seemed to love when I showed up unannounced in the middle of the night and crawled into bed with her, only to leave straight after. A part of me thought she enjoyed being my mistress, that she got a rush from knowing that I found her irresistible and that we could get caught at any moment.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, looking up at me, her eyes large, her hair still messy from sleep. She could sell poison as water and any man would drink it.

  ‘I need you to promise me, Sofia. This is serious. Did you tell anyone? Did you so much as utter a word about it?’

  Sofia pursed her lips and leaned back on her elbows. ‘I told you, no,’ she snapped.

  Sofia might have been more than fifteen years my junior but she did not pander to me. She was feisty, and she knew she had more of a hold over me than I did over her. I softened my tone, knowing that if I pushed her into a corner she wouldn’t cooperate.

  ‘And does anyone know about us?’

  She shook her head and a strand of blonde hair fell forward over her eye. She was a bottle blonde so when she brushed it away, I could see her dark roots creeping through, like a secret trying to escape. I’d had blind trust in this girl and now I realised that I barely knew her and had been careless in covering my tracks. I had a separate cell phone to call and text her but that was about it. We’d often been reckless, leaving the curtains open, kissing on the street late at night. I’d got too cocky.

  ‘So, no one knows, not your mother, not a friend, not a colleague – no one?’

  ‘I don’t discuss my sex life with anyone,’ she said tersely, then came to sit beside me. ‘You’re stressed, I can see that. But you can trust me.’ She rubbed her hand up and down my thigh, edging closer to my crotch. It was a distraction I didn’t need and yet I let her.

  I ran my hands under her shirt. ‘Sorry,’ I said gently, ‘it has been a really tough few days. I didn’t mean to get angry. I just need to know that I can trust you.’

  She slid her underwear off with one hand, then unzipped my pants and sat on my lap, nestling her open legs around me in one fluid motion. Then she grabbed me. ‘Would you do this if you didn’t trust me?’

  I leaned back against the bed, knowing full well that I was a terrible person. My wife was in hospital. A priceless artefact was missing. My career was in danger. And there I was, in bed with my beautiful, young mistress, thinking only with one thing.

  I drove to the hospital feeling satisfied that Sofia hadn’t deceived me and at the same time, feeling guilty for being deceitful to my wife. I scanned my face in the rear-view mirror for any traces of lipstick or evidence of what I’d just done.

  If ever there were a time to end our affair, now would be it. Sofia knew I wasn’t going to leave my wife for her. It wouldn’t be good for my career. People respected us as a couple. Sarah and I had always worked together and we made a good team. My wife had skills that I didn’t, which of course I would never admit. She had put her own research interests aside over the past decade to assist me with mine and to raise our kids. It was a career sacrifice she had seemed more than willing to make.

  When I reached the hospital, I pushed all thoughts of Sofia from my mind. I stopped at the ground-floor florist, and as I scanned each arrangement, a sudden realisation pushed a different wave of guilt over me: I had never bought my wife flowers. Ever. The florist obviously registered my indecision because she asked in a kind voice if I wanted some help.

  ‘I’m looking for some flowers for my wife,’ I said.

  She was wearing a yellow dress, with a floral apron tied at the waist. ‘What does she like?’ she asked, wrinkles crinkling at the sides of her eyes as she smiled.

  It was an innocent question but one that felt heavily weighted after my transgressions. ‘You choose,’ I replied casually.

  She wiped her hands on her apron; the tips of her fingers were stained green. ‘What colours does she like?’

  Again, I had no idea but this time I lied. ‘Pink and yellow.’

  She scanned the flowers and held up a bunch of pink roses and yellow gerberas. ‘What do you think of these?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said, forcing a smile as I watched her cut the stems and bundle the flowers together.

  Sarah once told me when we were studying at Cambridge that you should never trust a man who bought you flowers because it meant he had done something wrong. And I’d used that as a lazy excuse to never surprise her with them. Not even on her birthday or an anniversary. It had taken a car accident for me to b
uy her a bouquet, and I hoped Sarah had long forgotten about her theory. Because she would be right.

  ‘Hello, tesora,’ I said when I walked into her small, private hospital room. The light was pouring through the window and shining onto Sarah, whose hair lay in a mess of red against the white pillow. Her usually sharp features seemed softer, diluted. Even her eyes were a more opaque green. It pained me to see my strong wife so weakened.

  I kissed her cheek. ‘Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I had some work things to sort out.’

  Emily was reading, slouched on a dark blue chair that was pushed up against the window. I kissed my daughter on the head and she smiled, sleepily, and then returned to her book.

  The swelling on Sarah’s left eye had gone down a little but the bruising was more prominent. The burst capillaries under her skin framed her eye in a mess of purple and blue and black, as if the trauma had been tattooed onto her skin. ‘I bought you these,’ I said, handing the bouquet to her.

  She took them with her good hand and breathed in their scent. ‘You never buy me flowers,’ she said, surprised and pleased. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s the least I could do. Emily, will you go find a vase to put them in?’ I asked. When she left the room, I ran my hand down Sarah’s cheek. ‘How did you sleep?’

  ‘I had one of those dreamless sleeps and woke up feeling very heavy. I’d love to get out of here.’

  ‘You just have to sit tight until you’re well enough.’

  Sarah seemed much more lucid today. I desperately wanted to ask her directly about the necklace, so it took all my willpower to play the good husband first. ‘How’s your wrist feeling?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s a throbbing pain but they’ve given me something for that. It will heal.’

  Bones could break and repair themselves, so surely memory could do the same?

  I kissed her good hand. She smiled, and I could sense in her tender expression and in the way she looked at me lovingly, that she trusted me unreservedly and wholeheartedly. And that realisation hurt like hell.

  Emily walked back into the room and placed the vase of flowers on a shelf.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ Sarah said.

  I’d held off as long as I could. Now I needed to ask Sarah before the media storm got worse. ‘Emily, you must be hungry. Why don’t you go downstairs and get something to eat?’

  ‘Mamma, what can I get you? A cornetto? A coffee, perhaps? Papà?’

  ‘I’m fine, sweetheart. Just get something for yourself,’ I said, and handed Emily some money.

  ‘How’s your memory today, tesora?’ I said once Emily was gone. ‘Has anything come back to you about the night of the accident?’

  Sarah gazed out the window and slowly shook her head. She touched the part of the bandage covering her temple as if her memory were a place she could feel. Then she sighed and dropped her hand in frustration. ‘Nothing. It’s just a black hole.’

  I echoed her sigh and took a deep breath. The doctors had said that the more time that passed, the less likely it was that her memories would ever return. I swallowed, trying to digest that our greatest discovery might have become our greatest demise.

  ‘Sarah, something happened before your accident that I need to tell you.’

  SARAH

  There’s something in Marco’s voice that frightens me when he says he has something to tell me. Maybe it’s the note of fear, so subtle it would be missed by anyone who didn’t know him as well as I do. Or perhaps it’s the way his eyes seem to have darkened.

  He has been warm and loving this morning, but now he seems on edge. ‘What is it?’ I ask, afraid of what he might tell me.

  He stands up and rubs the stubble on his chin, which he does when he’s stressed. ‘What’s the last thing you remember before the accident?’

  ‘Like I said, having coffee at Caffè Giacosa,’ I reply, wondering where he’s leading.

  ‘That’s it. Nothing else? You don’t remember going back to the excavation site at night?’

  I scan my memories, searching for anything I can recover – a snapshot, a sound, a smell, anything. But nothing comes to me. Only a void in time. It’s like a portion of my life has been deleted or simply failed to encode. It’s gone. Irretrievable. Untraceable. ‘No, I don’t remember anything. Why?’

  Marco sits down and draws his breath. He holds a steady gaze as if willing his eyes and voice to trigger me to recall something. Then he tells me everything – about the scans, the pictures, the fissure, that I went back to the site. He pauses as if waiting for it all to come back to me. But nothing has twigged in my mind. ‘Does that jog your memory at all?’

  ‘I don’t remember a single thing of what you’re telling me. My mind is still completely blank,’ I say, desperate to know more. ‘So what happened when I got to the site?’

  His expression is unreadable but his voice is firm and serious. ‘You found it. You found the necklace, Sarah.’

  Blood rushes away from my skin as his words begin to sink in. ‘The Saint Januarius necklace?’ I say slowly, cautiously, hoping it to be true.

  ‘Yes,’ he says simply, and I can’t understand why there is a disconcerting chasm between what he’s saying and how he says it.

  This is the jewel he has devoted his career to finding. It’s the reason I gave up my career.

  ‘So … where is it?’ I feel a sense of rapture and jubilation, and I wonder if I felt the same way the first time I discovered it. I have so many questions I want to ask him: How did I find it? Where did I find it? What condition is it in?

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s the thing, Sarah.’ He pauses. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until you were well enough but time is of the essence.’

  It’s only then I realise that what I assumed was masking his elation – his expression of concern – is not for my welfare but for something else. The slump in his shoulders, the sweat on his shirt; he’s weighed down, burdened by something. ‘Tell me, what?’

  Marco buries his head in his hands and then runs them down his face. He takes a deep breath. ‘It’s vanished, Sarah. The necklace is gone.’

  There’s a quiver in his voice and it resounds through me, a disquieting echo. ‘What do you mean it’s gone? You just said I found it.’

  ‘You did.’ He speaks quickly, nervously now. ‘After you found it, you called me to come to the lab. I rushed over there and we admired it together.’ He stands up and walks towards the window. His face lightens as if he’s back there in the lab, reliving the moment. ‘I wish you could remember, because it was incredible. I was so proud of you and so happy that we’d found it.’ He smiles. ‘Our life’s work finally amounting to something that would make the history books.’ I want to stay in this part of the story, the happy part. I almost don’t want to hear the rest.

  ‘It was perfectly preserved in the pietre dure box. Centuries of European history bound in diamonds and stones, exhumed from the earth and finally given its resurrection. Every thing we’d researched was there. Everything.’ He sighs. ‘We were its new guardians. And we failed. We lost it.’

  His frown lines seem to deepen now and his eyes become so dark that it’s as if his smile from seconds earlier was a figment of my imagination. ‘What do you mean, we lost it?’

  ‘We put in the lab’s safe.’ He paces around the room. ‘I mean, you and I both triple-checked it was locked and everything was secure before we left. We were going to come back first thing in the morning, before any members of the team arrived. And then you had the accident.’

  Maybe it’s a remnant of my brain trauma, but my head starts to ache as I struggle to make sense of what he’s telling me. ‘I don’t understand how it could disappear. When did you go back to the lab?’

  ‘I left you at the hospital at around seven in the morning so I could get to the safe before the team arrived.’

  I’ve never seen Marco so distressed. His eyes are glassy, like he could cry at any moment. ‘The neckl
ace was gone. The box too.’

  That night is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces only he can fill in. At the moment, I can see fragments from the picture he is painting; the rest is a blank space. I need him to tell me every last detail so I can attempt to pull it all together into a cohesive sequence. ‘Did anyone else know what we’d found?’

  ‘No. No one,’ he says quickly. ‘We were the only ones. I mean, it was the middle of the night, for God’s sake.’ Now anger bubbles over in his voice. ‘Who could have gotten into the lab? Our security protocols are tight! I mean, it has to be an inside job. It has to be someone on our team.’ He pauses and takes a deep breath. ‘Or perhaps, we were being watched.’

  The idea makes the hairs on my arms prick up. My head continues to throb under the strain of trying to remember. ‘If no one on our team knew, then how is it possible that it was stolen?’

  I am angry at myself for not being able to recall anything. This is too important to simply forget. The word forget doesn’t even seem right. It makes it sound as if I have a choice.

  Marco goes to stand by the window, his back towards me. It seems like minutes pass before he turns back around.

  ‘I did something stupid, Sarah.’ His voice is low and grim.

  I brace myself as I wait for him to continue.

  He sighs. ‘I emailed our team and the media, and told them to meet outside the lab for an important announcement in the morning.’

  An act of incomprehensible stupidity. There’s no doubt. That one email could have quickly circulated and got into the wrong hands. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell him what he already knows.

  ‘Was I aware that you wrote this email?’ I ask. If I did, I’m as much to blame.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, his back still turned to me as he gazes out the window again. ‘You tried to dissuade me. I wish I’d listened.’

  I want to comfort him and tell him it’s okay, it was a simple mistake. But it wasn’t. If we don’t get the necklace back and word of what happened gets out, our careers are over. And worse, suspicions will fall on us. We could be jailed.