Divas (49 page)

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.’

India went pink with pleasure.

‘Well, how nice to find a little party!’ David exclaimed. ‘I just dropped by to give you news about Jean—’ He looked at Lola. ‘He’s doing
fantastically.
Really, it’s from night to day, if you think about how unhappy he was at Desert Springs. Not that it was Desert Springs’ fault, of course, they did me the world of
good, but poor Jean just wasn’t ready to come out
and
clean up his act at the same time! And now he’s doing so well that they let him ring me every week. He’ll be out in a
fortnight, tops. Maybe even less.’

‘Oh, that’s great!’ Lola exclaimed, hugging David again. ‘I’m so happy for him! And you, of course!’ She tried to make her voice light as she asked:
‘Does Niels know? Have you been talking to him?’

‘I haven’t, but Jean has, ’ David said.‘That man scares the life out of me. In a mainly good way, but
still
—’ He rolled his eyes at India.
‘Jean-Marc’s brother, ’ he explained, probably thinking she might not know who they were talking about.

‘Oh, I met him once, ’ India said, going even pinker. ‘He’s
gorgeous
. But very – grumpy.’

And he hasn’t been in touch once since we landed at Teterboro,
Lola thought rather sadly.
He didn’t even kiss me goodbye. I mean, he’d sorted out the helicopter and
everything, which was nice of him, but then he just went on to Houston, I suppose. And I remembered him saying that the plane was going back to Milan in a couple of days, so he probably just took
his meetings in Houston and then got on the jet again and went back to Milan, and back to Bellagio and the Villa Aurora as if I’d never even turned up there in the first place.

As if we’d never had amazing sex on the plane. He gave me a ride back to New York, and he got paid for it. End of story. Who needs him, anyway?

The doorbell rang again, and Lola went to answer it.

‘Thai, Japanese and Italian, ’ she said, lugging in the bags of food. ‘We couldn’t decide what to get, so we ordered a bit of everything.’

‘It’s the New York way!’ David said cheerfully.

‘David, do stay and eat with us, ’ Suzanne said, pulling up another chair to the table. ‘There’s so much food, really.’

‘Love to, ’ David said happily. ‘Lola, darling—’ He patted the chair on his other side. ‘Tell me everything! What’s going on with your trial? When does
it start?’

‘In two days, ’ Lola said, sitting down.

‘Oh,
darling
—’

‘Sometimes I manage to forget it’s happening for hours at a time, ’ she said, trying to smile but, from David’s expression, not doing a very good job. ‘And
sometimes, I don’t. Before I went to Italy – while we were waiting for Evie’s passport to come through – I had several sessions with a sort of coach Simon Poluck hired. She
questions you as if she were a lawyer, and you give your testimony, and then she tells you you’re doing it all wrong and what you should be saying instead. I have to start again first thing
tomorrow morning.’ She shivered. ‘It was really horrible, just going over the same thing again and again till you want to scream. And then she pretends to be the prosecution, and
she’s really hostile, and you have to keep calm and not let her anger you, but it’s OK to get upset as long as I don’t get angry, because if I’m angry, the jury will think
that I’m possibly a killer, because killers have bad tempers.’

She managed a smile now, a bitter one.

‘I have to be careful not to get wound up by anything she says, even when she pounds the desk and storms around the room. I just have to sit there looking upset and helpless and like
someone who couldn’t possibly kill anyone at all, let alone my own father.’

Tears sprung to her eyes. Her mother jumped up and came to stand behind her, massaging her shoulders.

David clicked his tongue.

‘I mean, we
all
have tempers, ’ he muttered. ‘And
I’d
be cross if someone were shouting at me, telling me I’d done something awful.’

‘Exactly!’

Lola was really crying now. ‘I’m sorry—’ she stammered through her tears. ‘I’m trying to be brave, but sometimes it just gets too much. I mean, I’m
freaking out at the thought of starting those sessions again, and if I hated
them
, the trial’s going to be a hundred times worse.’

‘Oh,
darling
—’

Suzanne was embracing her, India was looking anxious and David was pouring her a glass of water and handing her tissues. Lola was surrounded by people who cared about her, people who
didn’t think for a moment that she had killed her father.

But Lola was incapable of being consoled. Sympathetic as they were, none of them could really help her. When she went into court, wearing one of the simple, restrained, not-too-expensive-looking
dark outfits that the jury consultant had approved for her, she would sit there at the defence table all alone. Oh, Simon Poluck, and two other lawyers (one for the forensic evidence, one a medical
expert) would be there with her, plus the jury consultant and the testimony coach. But none of them would be convicted if the case went against her. They’d all be paid – not the bonuses
they would get if she were acquitted, but they’d still all be paid. They would all be able to walk away.

Only she would go to prison. If Joe Scutellaro didn’t change his story after all.

Only she would be serving twenty-five to life in a maximum-security prison, if she were convicted.

Lola put her head down on the table and sobbed her heart out in absolute terror.

‘L
ook at her!’ Joshua Greene bellowed, as best he could in his light tenor voice. He lowered it even further for his next line, which
he delivered while still pointing accusingly at Lola.

‘
Look
at her, ladies and gentlemen, ’ he insisted. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, would it? But don’t be fooled by her appearance. Before this trial is
over, you will have heard clear and certain evidence that Lola Fitzgerald – this pretty, fragile girl – murdered her own father in cold blood. When he tragically slipped into a diabetic
coma, her stepmother, a woman of great principle, shocked by the reports of her stepdaughter’s decadent and debauched behaviour, decided that it was time to take a stand. Courageously, she
did what her husband had been wanting to do for some time, but had been too weak to act upon. She carried out his wishes in cutting off her stepdaughter financially, hoping against hope that the
shock would bring this young woman to her senses. Little did she know that Lola Fitzgerald would be unable to envision a world in which her father’s money did not ease her every
need.’

Joshua Greene turned on his heel and paced away from Lola and the defendant’s table.

‘What did she do?’ he demanded, in a voice trembling with the magnitude of what he was about to say. ‘She came to visit her father, the father who was lying, helpless, in a
coma. The father who could not raise a hand to defend himself against her. Then’ – he drew in a breath – ‘she made an excuse to send away the nurse who would have been his
security. And, ladies and gentlemen, this depraved young woman took a syringe from his bedside table, and a vial of insulin from the fridge below, and injected her father with a lethal
dose.’

He swivelled dramatically, facing the jury full on.

‘She knew that as long as her father lived, her stepmother Carin would have control of his money. She had been told by her stepmother that access to her trust fund was blocked for the
foreseeable future, in the hope that she would start to earn her own living, to build a more worthwhile life than the shallow, drug-obsessed existence she had been living up till that point. She
knew that her only hope of regaining access to her father’s extensive fortune was to have his will executed, a will in which he left his beloved daughter half of everything he owned. And so,
ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Lola Fitzgerald killed her own father for the most sordid, heinous motive in the world. Money.’

Don’t react,
the testimony coach had said.
Whatever the prosecutor says in his opening statement, don’t react. Above all, don’t look angry. Keep your face as calm and
impassive as you can. Remember, you’re innocent.

Well, Lola had got one thing right. She was definitely saddened. As Joshua Greene had pronounced the words ‘beloved daughter’ with such sarcasm, such contempt, she had felt a tear
begin to roll down her cheek.

Don’t look down if you can help it,
the coach had said. Lola realised that she was staring down at the table and jerked her head up again. God, it was so hard to remember everything
she had said, not to be natural for a moment, in order to present an image of yourself that the jury would read as innocent.

And she was already all too familiar with the courtroom. The waist-high wooden panelling, the faded old oil paintings of nautical scenes, the gilded inlaid words carved and painted into the
marble slab behind the judge’s bench, reading ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’. The judge was different, though, a wizened little woman with a heavily lined smoker’s face and bright beady
eyes, looking like a wise little dwarf in her black robe with its white collar.

The judge intimidated Lola; she looked over at the jury instead. That was OK, apparently.
Don’t be afraid of turning to look at the jury on occasion,
Juliet had said.
If you do,
always meet their eyes otherwise you’ll seem shifty. But don’t be defiant, or angry. Remember, you’re in mourning.

‘You will hear, ’ Joshua Greene was saying, ‘that the defendant made sure to ask the nurse, Mr Scutellaro, all the questions she needed to ensure that she injected her father
with enough insulin to kill him. You will hear that she then sent him away on an errand that even at the time seemed meaningless to him, in order to make sure she had enough time to carry out the
act. You will hear—’

Do they believe him?
Lola wondered, looking at the jury. Selection of these twelve people (well, fifteen if you counted the alternates) had taken days. Joshua Greene had wanted to get as
many women as possible on the jury, respectable middle-aged ones who would disapprove of everything that Lola stood for. Simon Poluck, naturally, had pushed for men, men who would find Lola so
attractive that they wouldn’t be able to entertain for a moment the thought that this pretty, fragile blonde could have done something so heinous – as Joshua Greene, who seemed to have
swallowed a dictionary that morning, would put it – as murder her own father for money.

Lola didn’t see condemnation in the expressions of the jurors. Apart, perhaps, from one thin, rather drawn-looking woman in a baggy beige sweater, whose eyes narrowed ominously when they
met Lola’s. They looked avid instead. Greedy for the inside scoop. Hugely curious about the window this trial would open for them onto the lives of the rich and famous. A girl in the front
row was staring at Lola voraciously, assessing her black Marc Jacobs dress with its wide, Peter Pan collar, her yellow diamond earrings, her hair, which was smoothed down and drawn back into a coil
at the back of her head.

Don’t try to look poorer than you are
, the jury consultant had advised.
They’ll spot that straight away and they’ll be insulted. Dress well, and soberly. But no big
statement handbags – nothing that cost upwards of four figures. Or you’ll see yourself on the front of the
Post
the next day with a big tag hanging off your handbag, with the
price printed on it. For some reason, expensive handbags drive them nuts. I don’t know why, but they do.

Further down the defendant’s table, Simon Poluck stirred, pushing his papers together in one neat stack. Joshua Greene must be reaching the end of his speech.

‘She’s guilty!’ he was declaiming. ‘I am sure of that, and by the end of this trial, you will be too. The evidence against her is overwhelming, ladies and gentlemen. Once
you have heard it, you will be as convinced by it as the State of New York is. Once you have heard the evidence, you will have no choice but to convict Lola Fitzgerald of the worst crime there is.
Patricide.’