Belle Pearl (12 page)

“Darling,” Laura purred into the line like the
Macbeth
witch she was, “so glad we’re going to finally get a chance to chat.”

My mouth was a thin hard line, my teeth clenched like clamps. “I have nothing to say to you, Laura, I’m going to hang up.”

She quickly replied, “If you don’t want your mother to be arrested for murder, you’d better hear me out.”

I felt like a cartoon character being steamrolled. I looked down at my feet and saw that I was still in one piece but my body was experiencing a strange flattening sensation as if I were actually part of the floor itself.

I did a fake, raucous laugh. “You have a great imagination, Laura.”

“Alex, I’m not in the mood to play your beating around the bush game. I’ve given you so many chances to make amends with me—nothing has worked so now I’m going to have to get tough.”

“I don’t have time for this nonsense, I’m hanging up.” But I didn’t hang up. I couldn’t. I stayed on the line, my brain desperately trying to find a way out. I cast my gaze furtively around the store to see if eyes were on me but people were too busy shopping for holiday treats to notice. I said nothing more, just waited to see what would come next.

She went on, “I mean it. I have evidence. You were a fool to leave hip replacement parts hidden in that bookshelf. You supposed, I’m sure, that nobody would have known what they were. Well I
did.”

Jesus! It had simply slipped my mind!
“I got those bits of junk from a
vide grenier,”
I said with a weak chuckle, knowing she wouldn’t buy my lie. As if I would buy hip replacement parts at a yard sale.

“Traceable, Alex, and you know it. Because if the patient has trouble after an operation—years later—the prosthesis needs to be traced to the manufacturer. Same thing with the teeth that I found stuffed inside a chopped out encyclopedia. Dental records, Alex. And just like the hip parts, I’d say those teeth belonged to a man. A man that I would also say, quite definitely, was your own father.”

“You’re insane, Laura,” I croaked out, my mouth dry as desert sand.

“Scotland Yard might not think I’m so insane. We all watch CSI. Things are very state-of-the-art these days with forensics.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I have proof. Has your mobile phone been acting up a little lately?”

Duh. How had I been so dumb?
In my line of work, especially! She’d bloody listened in on my calls or seen a text message. I knew that it was possible these days. Without even touching someone’s cell you could eavesdrop on a conversation. Calls, text messages—everything could be monitored by the intruder, even if you weren’t actively talking on the phone. Spyware had become so advanced the cell could act as a recording device—as if the listener were sitting right next to you. I thought of a call I’d made to my mother back in the summer, telling her…what
had
I told her? I couldn’t even remember but whatever it was, Laura had cottoned on. She’d been eavesdropping on Pearl, too. That’s how Laura knew all those intimate details about her shenanigans with Alessandra.
What a dunce I’d been not to preempt that!

“Alex? Are you still there?’

“Yes, I’m still here.” I couldn’t do any more denying. “What do you want, Laura? Money?”

“Don’t be silly! What I want money can’t buy.”

“Most things have a price. What’s your price, Laura?”

“Happiness.”

“You
have
happiness: a very kind husband, a stunning house, money. Your health is back. What
more
do you want?”

“Simple. I want you.”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“Your choice. Either your mum ends up rotting in jail or you be nice to me.”

If only Pearl hadn’t done a runner! We’d be married. A wife can’t be forced to testify against her husband. We’d be a team.
I stood there in silence in the middle of the store, amidst the beautiful display of gourmet foods. I was speechless. My fist was clenched in a ball while the other hand clawed the receiver of my cell. I had to sort this shit out. Now. I had visions in my head of a bus mowing Laura down, or her choking to death on a fish bone.

I heaved out a long breath and said, “I’ll come and see you in London and we can talk this through.”

“Good boy. I knew you’d see the light. I’ll expect you by latest tomorrow. No stalling, Alex. Can’t wait to see you, darling. Bye, bye.”

I bought an apple juice, glugged it all down in one go and called my mother, letting her know I’d be coming to Paris.

Christmas was around the corner. Pearl and I had ordered a tree and bought hand-made glass decorations to adorn it with. She had even found a special red silk ribbon for Rex. Everything was on the brink of perfection.

Until now.

I stood on the sidewalk and noticed my hand was trembling. I needed to call Pearl. This news would be the nail in the coffin for me. For us.

I was totally fucked.
Merdre!

Her cell number was ominously out of order; a voice message saying it was no longer valid. I called her landline in hope.

In dread.

She finally picked up. “Pearl, baby,” I said quietly. I could hear the tremors in my voice. “Your cell isn’t going through.”

“That’s because I changed my phone number. It was hacked. By Laura.”

“I know.”

“What? You
knew
this? Why the hell didn’t you warn me?”

“Because I’ve just found out myself. I’m sorry, I’ve been a fucking idiot; I can’t believe I didn’t think of that one, especially in my line of business. I’m so sorry, chérie.”

“This is monstrous,” she said, her voice cracking. Little did she know the monster had gotten even more out of control.

I swallowed. The lump in my throat barely giving me airspace. “Baby, I’ve got bad news. I have to go away for a week or so. It’s an emergency; I have to see my mother.”

“Oh my God, she’s not ill, is she?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Are Sophie and Elodie okay?”

“Yes, everyone’s fine. Look, I wouldn’t be going if it weren’t an emergency.”

“What, Alexandre? Why aren’t you saying what the emergency is?”

“When we’re married I’ll tell you.” As I said those words I realized it came out wrong. Like some sort of moral blackmail. Pearl latched onto that immediately, chewed me out, and then added:

“But what about the holidays?”

“I know, I’m as disappointed as you are.”

“Disappointed? That doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel, Alexandre. I’m fucking devastated.” Pearl rarely swore. “It’s our first ever Christmas together.”

“I’m in a real bind, baby. A real mess. I need to see my mom. I don’t want to lie to you, chérie, so please don’t ask me any more questions.”

“You’re going to London, aren’t you?” Her voice was an ice pick.

“I have no choice.”

“We always have a choice, Alexandre. Only abused children or animals, or women who are locked up in a basement somewhere, with their passports taken away from them working as slave prostitutes for their sick pimps, or starving people in Africa—they don’t have choices, but us? You and I do have choices because we’re the lucky ones who live in wealthy western civilizations. We
do
have choices, so don’t lay that shit on me.”

I listened to Pearl’s rant. A knot tightened in my throat.
A choice with a price to pay so high, I’d never forgive myself.
My mind flitted to Pearl being gang raped at college. She didn’t have a choice then, although I knew that she was still blaming herself. Those fuckers would get their comeuppance—one of them I’d already tracked down. I thought of Laura again. How she was fucking up everyone’s lives. I said in a low voice, “External forces are trying to pull us apart.”

“Laura, you mean,” Pearl said flatly. Just hearing that woman’s name made the apple juice I’d drunk rise in my throat.

“Yes,” I admitted, shame caught in my vocal chords.

It was all my fault. That bloody evidence had been sitting happily in a drawer at my mother’s in Paris. I brought it to my house in Provence to make sure my stepfather would never find it. To protect my mother. To make her safe. What a fucking joke!

“Laura,” Pearl repeated. “You’re going to see Laura?”

My internal voice pattered on in my head:
I should have chucked the teeth and hip parts in a river but my mother wanted to keep them as a souvenir to remind her that he was dead. Really dead. My instinct begged me to destroy everything. And I didn’t fucking listen.

“Laura,” she said again, annunciating the L.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Pearl hung up.

11

I
f you asked me to describe Christmas with my mother, or my trip to London to see Laura, or anything about that dark period, I couldn’t. It was a gauzy haze of nothingness, like white noise on an old TV screen. I do remember my mantra,
What’s yours will come back to you,
and I said this to myself over and over, truly believing it. If Pearl and I were meant to be together, then all this Laura business would somehow sort itself out.

But all that happened was that things got worse.

Laura had stashed the evidence in a safety deposit box at an undisclosed bank. Or so she told me. With a letter saying that if some strange accident befell her, that it would be murder. Names cited. Namely me. She didn’t admit to this in so many words, but that was the gist of it. Meanwhile she wanted us to get married.

Or else.

I didn’t tell Sophie any of this, and my mother was so distraught that she lay in bed reading romance novels, eating pretzels and drinking white wine, pretending she had the flu, begging me every day by telephone to find a solution.

I called Pearl but of course she never picked up. It seemed she now went about without a cellphone—normal, why would she want Laura tracing her calls? Or me, knowing her every movement? So every now and then, I had a chat on her landline with Daisy or Anthony, who had come to visit her for Christmas. She was fine, they told me, but had no interest of having anything to do with me as long as Laura was in the picture.

I didn’t pursue Pearl. How could I until I had a plan up my sleeve? I watched her from afar, though, as she stalked Rex when he went for his walks to Central Park with his ‘nanny’ Sally. I was stalking her and she was stalking Rex. Ironic. That was what gave me hope. Pearl, Rex and I were a little family unit. We belonged together. I knew that we had a chance when I observed her excitement every time she saw him. I followed her like some sort of detective in a hard-boiled Raymond Chandler novel—keeping my distance, ducking into alleys, lurking behind corners and trees. All I needed was a Fedora hat to complete the look. I had taken to wearing a long, dark, wool, military coat. I wondered what war hero had played his part in it. Did he die on the battlefield or come home triumphant?

I was in my own mini battlefield right now.

An emotional battlefield.

I had become a recluse in my apartment in New York, sporadically going to visit my mother in Paris, or Laura in London, trying to convince her to put an end to her blackmail. She wanted me to father her child. Insane. I was going to give it one more go, I decided. One more go to convince her that her scheme was crazy; that I could never love her child—that the only child I wanted was Pearl’s. I had even fantasized about taking Laura heli-skiing, deep sea diving; on some dangerous, life-defying vacation where an accident could happen and nobody could prove a thing. But every time, my mother’s face would loom before me, her misting eyes wide, her plea pitiful. She had finally found some peace in her world. I needed to protect her, and the letter Laura spoke of in that safe-deposit box, coupled with the evidence, made the risk too great, although my instinct told me she was bluffing.

The morning was icy and crisp; showing New York City at its most beautiful. Snowflakes drifted through the air as if in slow motion, and an orange glow of sun was casting warm gleams onto the white landscape of Central Park. Dogs were loose, playing and rolling about with each other; their tails up, their owners proud. The dog world going on in the park amused me; the one place where social classes of all ranks could mix happily because they all shared something in common: canines. Park Avenue heiresses and blue collar workers all eyed up their babies, talking of nothing but their dogs’ vets visits, eating habits, and quirks. I watched as Pearl and Sally exchanged dialogue and observed Rex, who trotted happily off with Pearl into the depth of the park. I didn’t like it the way Pearl was so nonchalant about her own safety. Into the depth of the wood she went, into the Ramble, alone, where some people prowled for anonymous sexual encounters, attracted by the thick cloak of vegetation, serpentine paths, giant boulders and meandering streams.