Belle Pearl (9 page)

“There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me.”

“I know that you and Maman left home very young and had to look after yourselves, but she never tells me details. What did she do as a job?”

“She worked as a waitress,” I lied. “Hey, Elodie, I forgot to ask you; how’s the portfolio coming along? Still taking photos? Still making those angry angel collages?”

“Going okay, I guess, but I need to get away for a while,” she said, not wanting to look me in the eye.

I lit the gas. “What’s wrong? You’re not paranoid about being followed again, are you?”

“I need a break but I don’t want to go back to Paris. I want to do some traveling or something. Backpack around Asia. I can go with my roommate, Claire.”

“You know what? There’s a lot to see right here in the United States. There’s no need to go schlepping around dodgy foreign countries when there’s too much unrest in the world right now. Go to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park, why don’t you?”

To my surprise, she replied, “Okay, good idea.”

I tore some fresh basil leaves, sprinkling bits into the pan, and suddenly had a thought. “I have a car…well, it’s Pearl’s car. It’s in San Francisco and needs to be brought to New York. Is your driver’s license in order? And your friend’s?”

Elodie got up and took a couple of beers out of the fridge and offered me one. “Yup. Cool plan. Can we take as long as we like to drive cross-country?”

“Sure. No rush. Just be careful. Don’t go over the speed limit—be prudent. Speak to my assistant, Jim—he can get you your plane tickets there, hotels, whatever you need. Maybe you can even stay with Pearl’s brother. Anyway, the car’s at his place in his garage. I’ll call Anthony and Pearl and get it all arranged. I’m sure Pearl won’t mind—actually you’d be doing her a favor.”

“Why is Pearl’s car in San Francisco? I thought you guys had gone to LA?”

“We did, but she stayed on. Went to visit Anthony. Now she’s in Hawaii visiting her dad.”

Elodie ran her gaze over me, dissecting me, drilling her eyes into my thoughts. “You look guilty, Uncle Alexandre. What’s going on with you and Pearl?”

“Nothing.” I tried to suppress the heat-rush I felt, by turning on the sink faucet and putting the underside of my wrists under cold running water. A trick I learned in the Foreign Legion. As if on cue, my cell started buzzing. The words LAURA popped up on the screen. Elodie picked up my cell without pressing anything, but saw who the caller was.

She arched her brows. “Well aren’t you going to answer it?”

I shook my head.
Fucking psycho Laura, leave me alone!

“She called
me
the other day, you know. She wanted to know Pearl’s number. What’s up?”

“Keep away from Laura, Elodie. Don’t answer her calls and do not, whatever you do, give her any information about
anything
or
anybody
at all.”

“But Laura’s nice! She was always really friendly to me.”

“Was
is the operative word. That accident changed her.”

“So what’s that got to do with Pearl? Why does Laura want to get in touch with her? Why didn’t you go with Pearl to Hawaii?”

I switched off the gas burner. “Would you get us a couple of plates and utensils?”

Elodie got up. “Why didn’t you go to Hawaii with her?” she asked again.

“She needed space. Needed to sort a few things out.”

“I doubt it. Pearl’s crazy about you—anyone can see that. It’s
you,
I bet, playing games. Playing ‘I need space’ games. So typical.”

“We both need a little break.”

“Yeah, right. That’s male code for “back off.”

“Not at all. I want to be with Pearl…she just needs some time on her own and—”

“Ha! You’re just making excuses so that you can behave how you like without any thought for Pearl.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Elodie.”

She sneered at me. “I don’t know what you’re doing, juggling two women at once. Typical man behavior. As if male babies were born with a mean gene in them. You’re all the same—
all
of you. The only difference is, some hide it better than others but the bastard gene is buried into every man’s DNA.”

She had a point.
“That, mademoiselle, is a very uncalled for and rude accusation!”

She put the plates on the table. “I know more about men than you think.” She blew air out of her lips—pouting while she spoke.

“Elodie, I thought you were meant to be going to art college this fall anyway, not traveling about and wasting your time.” I served up our omelets and sat down.

“Next year.”

“Don’t procrastinate.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“And cool it with the cocky attitude, okay?”

She gave me a salute. “Okay, sir!”

Elodie was right. I had the bastard gene in my DNA. What was I playing at? All this,
Let Pearl come to me,
was bullshit. I loved Pearl. Damn it, I couldn’t be happy without her. I was going to go and find her, whether she was ready or not. I was so in love with Pearl Robinson, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

We belonged together and I didn’t want to spend one more day without her. I’d already wasted enough time.

I’d been tracing Pearl’s movements with the tracking device I’d installed on her new cellphone. Guilty. Guilty of obsession, possessiveness, jealousy, and controlling, manipulating behavior of every kind. I convinced myself that all I was doing was keeping a distant eye on her, in case of any emergency; that I could be wherever she was like a knight in shining armor, ready to save her should the occasion rise. Except, my armor was a little rusty, the metal too bulky. Maybe when I was seven years old I’d been a good
chevalier,
a good knight, but now I’d lost the flair. She had been in London for several days. Why? Instead of catching a plane from Hawaii to New York, she’d gone there. Hampstead to be precise. I remember her having told me that Daisy’s mother lived there.

By this point, I knew I needed to go and join her.

I stopped off at my house in Provence first. The pool was being fixed so I had a meeting with the builders, stayed the night, picked up those bloody books of Laura’s, and left. Technically, a few of the books were mine; gifts from her. I could have taken them to Goodwill, or the French equivalent, but somehow getting them free and clear of my house and giving them back to Laura was symbolic—a fresh start for Pearl and me. Returning gifts to the gift bearer sends a clear, no-nonsense message—
get out of my life; not even your gifts hold any meaning anymore.

I took a nice, small and discreet room, not at The Connaught, but another hotel, just in case Laura decided to track me down. Annoyingly, when I asked one of the members of staff to wrap some gifts for my mother—some cashmere scarfs I’d bought—they also giftwrapped the bloody box of books. I didn’t have time to unwrap it. But the last thing I wanted was for Laura to believe I was showering her with gifts or there was some good, pre-Christmas feeling on my part. No, I wanted to ice her out. I’d go there, give her the books and get my Aston Martin, which James had been kindly looking after for me—it was parked in their garage which I still had the keys to. I’d asked him to run the engine every now and then to keep it tuned. I’d bought the car in England and had hoped to drive it to France with Pearl, but we hadn’t had a chance. Right now, the idea of my precious classic car being anywhere near Laura was making me nervous—I could just imagine her dousing it with acid or something, stripping off the beautiful gunmetal-gray paintwork.

I couldn’t wait to snip all ties with her.

8

T
he hotel didn’t have a gym so I used one close by. I wanted to expend some of the pent-up, surplus energy I had, which was playing tricks with my brain; making me angry and quietly aggressive. I knew part of the reason was because I hadn’t had sex for nearly two weeks. It shouldn’t have affected me; I’d been without sex for long stretches before, when I was in the French Foreign Legion, but that was before I met Pearl. She was imprinted on my brain. I tossed and turned at night, smelling her, hearing her sweet voice, feeling that silky soft skin, dreaming of fucking her. Hearing her whimper when she came, the tears that would fall when her orgasm was so intense she couldn’t believe it was true.

After the gym, I showered, then checked my cell to see Pearl’s whereabouts. A rush of adrenaline spiked my veins; she was at James and Laura’s house! What the fuck? Not only was Laura playing games with me, but she was obviously fucking with Pearl, too. Regret washed over me—I should have warned Pearl—told her how dangerous Laura was. She must have called Pearl again after the ‘Sophie is a killer call’ to set up some sort of meeting. I dashed over to my hotel to grab the box of books and set off in the direction of Chelsea. Finally, I could deal with the problem in situ. I’d confront Laura with Pearl right there; Laura’s lies would be etched across her face and Pearl would believe me. We could be rid of Laura, once and for all; face the music together as a couple. I hailed a cab and jumped in, giving the taxi driver Laura’s exclusive Chelsea address.

I thought back to my code; treating women with respect at all times, no matter how unhinged they were. Bad idea. I should have told the lot of them to fuck off a long time ago. Laura, Claudine, even Indira. After the way my father treated my mother, I swore I’d always be gentle with women in every circumstance—the idea of being like him in any way disgusted me. But my kindness wasn’t paying off; it had got me in a tangled web with a whole lot of Black Widow spiders out to gobble me up.

“Can you please step on it—don’t mean to be rude but I’m in a hurry,” I said to the driver who was chatting away in his Cockney accent about immigration.

“No problem, gov. It’s those bastard eastern European scum and the like. Vey come ‘ere expectin’ work, stealin’ jobs from decent British citizens. Arf of ‘em ‘av illegal, dodgy businesses, drugs, prostitution and ve like—vey really are ve scum of ve earf.”
They really are the scum of the earth,
I finally realized he was saying.

“Is there a shortcut?” I suggested.

At first he thought I was engaging in conversation so I repeated, “Can we get there any faster? It’s an emergency.”

He swerved to the right and took a narrow street through the back of Belgravia. “Are you Rumanian, or sumfing?”

“No. French.”

“Like a few frogs legs, do ya? Snails?” He laughed at his joke.

Finally we arrived. I shoved too many pound notes in the driver’s hand, not waiting for change, and dashed to Laura and James’s front steps, rapping hard on the brass doorknocker. Laura came out and grinned at me, flinging her arms about me as if we were two long-lost, passionate lovers. I held the box of books out and pushed my way through the door.

“How lovely, Alex—you brought me a present; how sweet of you.”

Once inside the house, I shouted, “Pearl? Are you here?”

Laura started laughing. “She just left.”

I dropped the box on the marble floor; it landed with a thud. “Damn! How long ago?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Damn,” I cursed again.

“She doesn’t want to see you, Alex, so I wouldn’t get your knickers in a twist.”

I wanted to ignore her quip but heard myself ask, “She said that?”

“Yes. She came to England especially to see me.”

“Bullshit Laura.”

“It’s not bullshit. She told me you’d split up and that she’d had enough and was going to start dating other men. That she’d had time to mull things over in Hawaii. She said she didn’t have time for silly games and that she understood that you were too immature for her—she wants to go out with someone her own age.”

I wanted to believe that Laura was lying but she knew about Pearl being in Hawaii—her conversation with Elodie had been before Pearl had even decided to go to Hawaii. Laura’s words stung like little poison darts. Perhaps there was an element of truth to them. I
had
been acting immaturely and it wasn’t a surprise Pearl wanted to date a more mature man. Fuck! I now regretted leaving her in tears in the backyard at her brother’s. Begging me to give her another chance, I pretended her words were empty. I’d behaved like a total, coldblooded bastard. In that moment—in Anthony’s garden—it hadn’t occurred to me that Pearl had choices; she could simply dump me. Dump me at the drop of a hat. She was gorgeous—she could get any man. What the fuck had I been thinking?