by Jagger, Kait
‘Don’t worry, I’m not staying,’ Luna laughed, standing on tiptoe to give the septuagenarian a kiss on the cheek.
At that moment, the heavy wooden door behind them opened suddenly to reveal Florian Wellstone in a rumpled linen suit, hair askew. The tall, thin young man from reception was ushering him out with an air of intense trepidation, like a gazelle herding a jackal. Florian, meanwhile, took in the convivial scene before him and misinterpreted its cause.
‘Here to gloat, Princesss?’ he enquired, eyes scouring her.
Luna involuntarily shrunk from him, looking toward Mr Noakes in confusion. Rafe, who knew nothing about any of this but who clearly didn’t like the looks of Florian, moved to step between him and Luna.
‘Should I phone the police, sir?’ the receptionist asked worriedly.
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ Mr Noakes said.
‘No,’ came a voice behind him. Stefan, emerging from the building like an avenging angel. ‘Mr Wellstone is just leaving.’ Bearing down on Florian, he essentially forced him to keep walking, propelling him toward a taxi rank down the street. As the two men moved away, Rafe caught Luna’s eye and, in a moment of completely unscripted comedy, pointed toward Stefan and mouthed, ‘Is this him?’
Luna didn’t wait for Stefan to return. After assuring Mr Noakes that she was perfectly fine and giving Rafe a hug and a kiss, she headed to the nearest Tube station. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room, staring out across the Thames toward St Paul’s when he got back to the apartment that evening. Striding straight over to her, he held out his hand.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
They walked around the corner to a Turkish restaurant they’d frequented since the night she first told him she loved him. The maître d’ knew them well and immediately ushered them to their favourite table in the corner, bustling off to fetch a bottle of red wine. Once he’d poured two glasses for them and retreated to his station at the front of house, Luna sat in silence, fingers on the stem of her glass.
‘You are angry with me,’ Stefan said.
‘That depends,’ she replied. ‘I thought we agreed that secrets involving Florian are bad for our relationship. Is this what you were going to talk to me about tonight?’
‘It was, I promise.’ He ran a hand through his hair and drained half his glass. ‘What I intended was to come to you having resolved the matter.’
‘What matter? You mean him conspiring with Helen?’
‘Partly that,’ he said. ‘But there is another thing. Three days ago a business acquaintance of mine phoned to tell me about a property scheme he’s been approached to invest in. Luxury apartments and villas in the south of France. A Ponzi scheme, was his first thought when he went through the marketing materials. One of those things where investors are expected to put up money for properties that haven’t even been built yet, that likely never will be built.’
Luna nodded, with an ominous feeling about where this was going.
‘The reason my friend sent it to me is because the scheme is being marketed as Lionsbridge Chateaus, using the family’s coat of arms. The literature implies that this scheme has the backing of the estate.’
‘And Florian is behind this.’
Stefan nodded. ‘I asked the lawyers to arrange today’s meeting to… remind him of his obligations, and inform him of the consequences if he fails to observe them.’
Luna took a sip of her wine, mulling over this revelation. ‘I guess I don’t need to ask how the meeting went.’
‘Very badly, from his perspective,’ Stefan said. ‘I have also given him notice to vacate the flat in Mayfair.’
Luna sat back in her chair, genuinely surprised. ‘You think that’s wise?’ she asked.
‘Wise?’ Stefan snarled. ‘This man abused teenage girls and got away with it. He almost raped you and got away with it.’ Leaning across the table toward her, blue eyes sparkling dangerously, he said, ‘Augusta has tied my hands and I may never be able to bring him to justice, but if I can make him pay in other ways, it is my responsibility and my pleasure to do so.’
If she had ever doubted that Stefan could fully inhabit the role of Marquess, seize his place as lord and master, Luna doubted it no longer. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘You’re right, I’m sure.’
He nodded, then reached for her hand and exhaled heavily. ‘But what I most wanted was to avoid involving you in all this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I see fear in your eyes when he’s near you, Luna, and…’ His face darkened. ‘…I cannot have that. I will not have that.’
*
Luna’s displeasure with him had dissipated the minute he’d explained his reasons for secrecy, and they spoke no more of Florian that night. Unsaid things hung between them, however, and, perhaps because he sensed it, Stefan decided to work from home the following day.
The two of them staked claims to opposite ends of the sofa first thing and got on with their respective tasks, occasionally exchanging a few words but for the most part tacitly ignoring each other. Late that morning, Luna’s phone buzzed while Stefan was in the middle of a conference call. To avoid disturbing him, she stood and moved toward the hallway.
Stefan popped his head in the bedroom shortly thereafter, only to find his fiancée hurriedly loading her backpack, pulling on a cardigan. ‘What are you doing, Luna?’ he asked sharply, coming to stand in front of her.
‘I need to get to Heathrow,’ she said, slipping her feet into her trainers. ‘My grandmother has asked to see me.’
‘Your… grandmother.’
‘My father’s mother. We’re estranged, she and I, but there are occasions when I have to…’ Luna trailed off, ‘wait upon her.’ Her lips curved at this old-fashioned turn of phrase, but her eyes remained sombre.
‘Where does she live?’
‘Manchester.’
Stefan picked up her backpack and slung it over his shoulder. ‘I’m coming with you.’ Before Luna could fashion a rebuttal, or even open her mouth, he said firmly, ‘No arguments, Luna.’
She’d have liked to show him Manchester under different circumstances. To take him past her old student digs in Fallowfield, and the curry mile in Rusholme. But it wasn’t that kind of visit. So instead they rented a car at the airport and made the short drive to Chorlton, the neighbourhood in south Manchester where her grandmother lived. Luna parked a block away from her grandmother’s brick terraced house and turned to face him.
‘I need you to let me do the talking in there,’ she said. ‘Can you do that?’ Stefan nodded slowly, watching as she removed her engagement ring. ‘I don’t want her to know you, what you are to me,’ she explained, and put the ring in her pocket.
Marika Gregory’s small front garden was ablaze with colour, lush with carefully tended plants and flowers. Even by Chorlton’s gentrified standards, her hanging baskets and tubs overflowing with lavender and aromatic herbs stood out like a beacon to horticulture. The latch on her wrought-iron gate was rusty, however, and the gate groaned on its hinges like the gate in a story Luna’s mother used to read her when she was little, Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga the witch, the child eater.
Luna knocked on the red painted door and waited, checking her watch. Lateness was a punishable offence here at her grandmother’s house; on a previous visit, Luna had been unavoidably detained, arriving forty-five minutes past her allotted hour only to find the house dark, no reply to her repeated knocks. Though she was certain, very certain, that her grandmother was at home.
The door opened to reveal a thin, angular woman with long steel-grey hair and white-blue eyes, the mirror of Luna’s own.
‘You’re here then,’ she said unsmilingly, scanning Luna up and down. A quick glance at Stefan and a frown. Like tardiness, additional guests were unwelcome, an unwonted distraction in Marika Gregory’s eyes. The older woman’s gaze returned to Luna’s, found no quarter there, so she stood aside and wordlessly invited them both in.
The air inside her grandmother’s house was, as ever, redolent of mothballs, Luna’s second most hated smell after lilies. Marika led them into a small front room with an electric fire in the fireplace and a large, intricate Persian rug on the floor. The furnishings in the room were all antique, some of them family heirlooms.
Had their relationship been different, Luna might have wished to know more about her father’s mother, daughter to Czech elite, forced to leave the country in the aftermath of the Prague Spring. But her father, himself estranged from Marika ever since she shunned his new bride, had told Luna almost nothing about his family. And her own, limited involvement with her grandmother had killed any desire for greater understanding.
Luna and Stefan arranged themselves slightly awkwardly on the small settee, designed for petite, 19th-century bodies rather than six-foot-three Swedes, and Marika sat opposite them on a straight-backed mahogany chair with a heavily embroidered seat cushion.
She had laid out a full vintage tea set made of Bohemian blue glass with gold filigree and set about pouring tea for them, serving Stefan first, eyes flitting repeatedly back to Luna.
‘A friend?’ she asked eventually, to which Luna nodded, not offering his name. Again, Marika accepted this unquestioningly, and thereafter completely ignored Stefan. When she had served Luna and then herself, her grandmother sat up straight in her chair, eyes consuming Luna hungrily.
Luna sipped her tea and returned the cup to its saucer. Waiting.
‘I have found something in the attic,’ Marika said at length. ‘Perhaps it was your mother’s. I don’t know.’
Ah, yes. As expected. Mentally bracing herself, Luna replied, ‘Perhaps. If I could see it—’
Marika made a slight grunting noise, as if to say not so fast. Impatience was another forbidden offence here in her house, so Luna lifted her eyebrows in acquiescence and lapsed back into silence.
‘So, I am at the hairdresser this week,’ her grandmother said apropos of nothing, her Czech accent still thick after decades in England. ‘And the women there, they are saying, “Oh, Marika, we have seen your boy’s advertisement,” and, “Oh, Marika, how proud you must be.”’ Her grandmother lifted her teacup to her thin, downturned lips, adding, ‘“Such a talented boy, such a shame.”’ She held a ring-laden hand up to her carefully coiffed hair, its curls tamed into slate waves.
‘Yes, he was extremely talented,’ Luna said.
Her grandmother appeared not to hear her, for she repeated, ‘“Such a shame, and you his mother, with nothing left of him. Nothing to show for all those years of keeping him fed and clothed, schooled.”’
‘You have your memories,’ Luna said. ‘As have I.’
‘Yes!’ her grandmother cried eagerly, leaning forward in her chair. ‘But you have more than just memories, don’t you?’
Luna sighed and placed her teacup and saucer on the table. She could almost feel the waves of confusion rolling off Stefan at this extraordinary exchange. But she couldn’t think of him, not now.
‘He would not have wanted his mother, his poor mother left with so little, while his selfish daughter lives like a princess,’ her grandmother was saying.
Luna looked down at her cotton sundress and cardigan, then around the room. ‘You appear to be doing well enough.’
‘You are just like her,’ Marika Gregory seethed. ‘Just like that silly, empty girl who stole my Lukas away from me. That selfish, stupid girl…’
She faltered then, realising too late that she had overplayed her hand. For as Marika’s final words escaped her lips Luna stood in a rush, her knees slamming into the coffee table, causing the glass cups and teapot to chime against each other.
‘Enough,’ she said icily. ‘You will not speak of my mother.’
Looking up at her, Stefan quickly deposited his teacup on the table and made to rise. Immediately the balance of power in the room shifted. Her grandmother lifted her hand, waving it to them, urging them to sit.
‘This thing you’ve found,’ Luna said, her patience exhausted. ‘Show it to me.’
Her grandmother made to balk, but as her pale blue eyes connected with Luna’s own, she seemed to recognise that she’d lost this round. Standing, she went to the next room. Stefan turned to Luna on the settee, his expression incredulous, but she held up a finger to him. Later. Marika Gregory was down but she wasn’t out, not yet.
Her grandmother returned a moment later carrying a small rosewood apothecary chest. Luna’s heart leapt at the sight of it and she struggled to keep the expression on her face blank, disinterested. Reseating herself on her throne, the older woman settled the chest on her lap, turning it around for Luna to see. Four large drawers at the bottom, six smaller ones in the middle, and eight tiny ones at the top.
‘Yes, that’s my mother’s,’ Luna said, cursing the slight tremble in her voice, which her grandmother heard and which caused her to tighten her grip on the chest.
‘You are sure?’ Marika asked, her tone climbing precipitously at the end of the sentence, like she was talking to a confused child. Luna felt Stefan’s body grow tight next to hers as he began to understand the game that was being played here.
She placed a brief, reassuring hand on his arm and said, ‘I’m sure.’ And rose again, coming to stand in front of her grandmother’s chair. She held her hands out and for a brief moment, Marika looked almost ready to climb up off the mat. But then, reluctantly, she handed the chest to Luna. Who looked at Stefan, motioning her head toward the front door. They moved swiftly, in tandem, Marika following behind. Stefan opened the door and stood against it for Luna, who turned to look at her grandmother.
‘This is the last time you’ll see me,’ she said gravely. ‘Don’t bother contacting Mr Noakes again. I won’t come.’
And then she saw despair in her grandmother’s eyes. Despair and rage. That her luck had finally run out, and Luna had gotten the thing, the only thing, she’d ever wanted from her.
*
‘If she’d given me this the first time she made me go there, I’d have stopped the visits then,’ Luna said later, sitting on their bed at the apartment, the chest resting on her lap. ‘But she didn’t know that, thank God, or I’d never have gotten it back.’
‘How many times have you visited her?’ Stefan asked.
‘Six? Seven? Once every year or two,’ Luna replied absently. Stefan came toward her and placed his hands over hers, gently unlocking her fingers, which were white against the chest, and placing it on the dressing table. He returned and sat on the edge of the bed, taking her cold hands in his.
‘I promised you once that I would never press you on the matter of your parents,’ he said, eyes gentle upon her, ‘and I will honour that promise, no matter what. But, Luna, I want to know you.’
Luna looked down at their entwined hands, and his ring, back on the third finger of her left hand.
‘She asked for an open casket, at my father’s funeral…’ she began.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Devastation. That was the word that best captured twelve-year-old Stellaluna Gregory’s mindset on the day of her father’s funeral, hastily arranged in a small church just outside of Newbury.
Complete and utter devastation, a never-ending vista of scorched earth that snuffed out all other emotions. Sadness, anger, love… even any curiosity she might have felt at seeing her grandmother for the first time, sitting ramrod straight in the front pew a few feet away from her son’s casket.
The funeral director had done his best with Lukas Gregory, though Luna later learned that he’d strongly advised against the open casket. Her father had fallen in front of a train, after all, sustaining massive injuries that were difficult to conceal, even using all his mortician’s skill. But Marika Gregory had been insistent. She wanted to see her boy, one last time.
So the sight of her father looking nothing like himself, like a grim, plasticine parody of the man he’d been, only added to his daughter’s devastation.
Her grandmot
her, this woman she didn’t know, insisted on Luna sitting next to her, holding her hand throughout the brief service. Again, at the time, Luna was too far gone to care what she did, what happened to her. She only vaguely took in the presence of many of her father’s musical friends, and completely missed Rafe Davies, who confirmed years later that he had been in attendance, his downturned, sad eyes going even sadder at the memory of the little girl in the front pew.
Her grandmother disappeared immediately after the service, having exchanged not a single word with her. Though Marika Gregory did speak at some length with Luna’s headmistress, who at the time must have been grateful to discover that there was some family, someone to take charge of this wordless, devastated twelve-year-old.
Luna could only speculate on how that gratitude must have grown into desperate thankfulness, after her student returned to St Catherine’s and promptly despatched the counsellor assigned to help her ‘process her grief’ with a carefully placed, icy stiletto during their fourth session together. And refused to continue attending daily services in the school chapel, offering no explanation other than, ‘No, I don’t see the point.’
Her grandmother was working behind the scenes throughout this time, however, cleaning out her parents’ rented house, stripping it of everything of value. She phoned the school when she was finished, asking them to send Luna to collect her things.
The house was empty when Luna arrived in her headmistress’s car, the two of them walking inside to find all the furniture gone, her parents’ bedroom shorn of all her father’s and, more heart-rendingly, her mother’s things: the apothecary chest, Emily’s clothes and make-up, which Lukas Gregory had left untouched since her death and which Luna regularly, in the months after losing her, would sneak into the bedroom to touch and smell. All of it gone. Just a tiny pile of Luna’s clothes on the floor of her own bedroom.
Luna looked at her headmistress then, standing in that house, and waited for her to see what she saw, that Luna’s life had been stolen, every tangible piece of evidence that she’d once had a family, a mother who loved her and a father… but her headmistress looked away and Luna caught a brief glimpse of the fear in her eyes. Fear of a little girl’s unforgiving gaze.
