Sailing to Capri (13 page)

It wasn’t a bad apartment. In fact, anyone but Diane would have found it charming. Granted, the ceilings were a little low but the narrow French windows reached all the way to the top and were fronted with small iron balconies, onto which she crammed ferny plants to prevent her neighbors across the way from peeking in. The plants also succeeded in cutting out whatever sunlight might have come into the apartment but Diane liked the subaqueous greenish glow filtering through the ferns. It was rather like living in an aquarium.

One room had been allocated to her clothes, a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling display of couture through the past fifteen
years, plus hundreds of pairs of designer shoes and as many handbags. As Sir Robert had scathingly told her, she would never need to go naked in this world. In fact she could still adorn any party and look like a million dollars, though now the eighteen-carat square-cut emerald surrounded by diamonds was a copy of the original Cartier that Bob had given her, as was most of her other jewelry.

A couple of items she’d hung on to, though, by hook or by crook, even when disaster befell her at the tables. These were what she called her everyday jewels, for the good enough reason that she wore them every day. They consisted of a pair of four-carat diamond earrings and the thin rope of diamonds she wore twined around her neck. They were her first real jewels and had been given to her long before Bob Hardwick appeared on her horizon. She was just seventeen when she donated her youth and beauty as well as her virginity to an older man in exchange for a couple of months of luxury at a Caribbean resort. In return he gave her the diamonds and a good time. It was, she thought, a fair exchange.

Her living room—or
salon,
as she called it in the French manner—was hung with a padded silvery scrolled brocade. Unable to bear the dull unevenly plastered walls that reminded her of a peasant hovel, she had hocked a bracelet and bought the expensive fabric. She had personally nailed up some four-by-twos, covered them in batting for padding, then stapled on the fabric. It looked sensational.

When it came down to it Diane could still fend for herself, still put on a show the way she’d had to in the beginning. Diane
was all about making a great impression. With the good Art Deco furniture salvaged from the sale of her old place in Monte Carlo, all mirrored surfaces and crystal lamps and white rugs on dark polished floorboards, the room was really quite beautiful. As was her bedroom, tiny though it was and almost filled with a giant bed covered in a white crochet spread, which, unlikely though it seemed, was made by Diane herself in her futile idle moments, every stitch hooked with anger.

The anger was directed at Bob Hardwick, the ex-husband who had left her in this sad state, down on her luck. “What? Again?” had been his withering comment when she’d descended on him at the Hôtel du Cap, where he’d been weekending with a redhead he said worked for him. She’d heard that one before. Only by then Diane was already divorced and could do nothing about the other woman, except plead poverty, which had gotten her exactly nowhere.

She had learned to crochet from her grandmother, though that was something she would never admit to. She would not even admit to
having
a grandmother except to claim aristocratic lineage. She never talked about her family or her past, because there was a lot about it she preferred to forget. She only ever talked about the time when she was the wife of the megatycoon Hardwick. And of course, still being Lady Hardwick meant she was invited places even though she could no longer reciprocate those invitations.

She could never invite people back to the poky apartment on Place Charles-Félix and admit to her reduced lifestyle. She was aware that people were beginning to comment on this, to
talk about her, speculating on her finances. She didn’t like it and she didn’t like Bob Hardwick, but now he was dead and as his ex—and only—wife she knew she stood to inherit his estate. After all, he had no other “family.”

She had been calling Bob’s lawyers from the minute she’d gotten the news of his death, wanting to know when she could receive an advance on the estate. And she’d shown up for the funeral, frozen and furious because the Italian mistress was also there, along with the few stuffed-shirt businessmen who, after shaking her hand and muttering a few words of condolence, ignored her. As did the “mistress.” And also Arnie Levin, the lawyer, who only when she’d confronted him had told her the will was to be read at a later date. What had he meant by that? How long was she supposed to wait anyway? The lawyers were keeping mum about it, and Diane suspected uneasily something had gone wrong and by now she was desperate for money.

It was ten-fifteen in the morning. The windows were open and she could hear the racket coming from the market. The smell of cooking drifted in. She was forced to leave the windows open though because the day was already hot and there was no air-conditioning. Frowning, she squirted her tuberose scent in the air to mask it.

Still in her lace-trimmed pale blue satin pajamas, she walked into the kitchen to prepare coffee. She had not changed a thing in the kitchen; it was the way it had been for decades: a drab, narrow brown-tiled room with tired gingham curtains stretched on wires across the cupboards under the sink and
next to the stove. A few plates and cups were stacked on open shelves and a small refrigerator gurgled in one corner. Kitchens were not Diane’s domain.

The coffee can was empty. Frustrated, she walked to the living room window, staring out through her leafy plants into the busy street. Children clattered past, yelling at the tops of their voices, dragging their schoolbags behind them. Diane had never wanted children. Didn’t understand them. Her own childhood was something she would rather forget and she’d never wanted to be any part of that world again.

Two doors down across the street the ballet school was in progress. The hunched old woman who played the piano was mercilessly grinding out a chunk of Tchaikovsky the composer would surely never have recognized, while little girls in pink tutus flitted across Diane’s line of vision, imagining themselves, she supposed, to be great ballerinas on a world-famous stage. Diane was not an optimist. She did not share their vision of themselves.

A large brown dog sauntered down the street. It stopped in the doorway opposite, sniffed, then nonchalantly lifted its leg. Pleased at having left its mark, it trotted on. Diane heaved a bitter sigh. Who would have thought she would ever live in a place where dogs peed in the doorways?

She went to her bedroom and sat at the vanity table with its beautiful Venetian mirror, a gift from Bob. “To reflect your beauty forever,” he’d said when he presented it to her at the beginning of their relationship. But what Diane was seeing reflected now was not beauty. It was not that first flush of youth, when she would wake up to face herself and her skin was rosy
and perfect and her eyes shone with the luster of the emerald on her finger, and she had a body she knew would never let her down. She could wear anything, strip naked without needing candlelight, do anything, be anyone. Until she discovered gambling, that is.

She glanced wearily at the tiny gold travel clock on the glass vanity. It said 10:30. Damn, she was late.

Hurriedly throwing a raincoat over her satin pajamas, she thrust her feet into a pair of canvas wedge espadrilles, lacing them around her narrow ankles. She pushed back her long red hair, dragged a straw hat low over her brow, and donned a pair of large Jackie O sunglasses. Then she ran down the narrow flight of stairs and out onto the cobbled street. The heavy wooden door slammed behind her as she hurried in the direction of the Cours Saleya and the market.

When she’d made the appointment, the man had said 10:30 prompt. He would not wait and because of what had happened she simply could not afford to be late or the past would catch up with her. Painful as it was going to be to let go, she needed the money.

Diane turned heads with her eccentric appearance but she shrugged off the glances and astonished smiles. She didn’t care how she looked. There was nobody there who knew her, nobody who mattered. Her sort of people did not go to markets. Nor did she, except like this morning, when driven equally by a desperate need for hot, strong coffee and by the appointment for which she was now late, she had to go for it.

She did not notice the tail, the nondescript man in T-shirt, shorts and sneakers following her. Her mind was on other things.

She took a seat at a terrace café on the shady side of the square, wiped off the table, ordered an espresso and glanced carefully around. The man she was supposed to meet was not there. Her heart gave a lurch of apprehension. Where was he? She was relying on him. He couldn’t do this to her. After all the long months of planning, she couldn’t lose now.

A thousand thoughts spun through her head, all of them bad. Nervous, she took off her hat, pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, downed the strong sugary espresso then ordered another. He would come, she was sure of it; he wouldn’t let her down now; he wouldn’t give away her secret. She shook her head. After all, how could he? He was part of it.

The tail sent by Montana to follow her was sitting a few tables away. He saw her shaking hand, the perpetual nervous swing of her crossed leg, the way her eyes tracked the passersby. He wondered if she was doing drugs.

A few minutes later he saw her rise from her seat, a look, half apprehension, half relief on her face as a man wound his way around the tables to where she was sitting. He was younger than Diane, not good-looking, not bad-looking: an ordinary young man in white shorts, a T-shirt, and dark glasses. He carried a small bag, the kind European men use to hold their essentials: wallet, keys, that sort of thing.

Taking his cell phone from his pocket, the watcher got them in his sights and took a quick series of photographs. The ordinary young man waved away the waiter. Obviously he was here
on business, and he meant it to be quick. A few minutes later, the tail saw Diane, her face tight with anger, take the diamonds from her ears and slide them across the table into the young man’s waiting hand. The young man looked carefully at them then said something that caused her to exclaim angrily, though she kept her voice too low for the watcher to hear.

The ordinary young man pushed back his chair and stood up. Diane scrambled to her feet too. She put back the sunglasses, hiding her eyes so the watcher could no longer read her expression. The young man said something, then turned and threaded his way back around the tables, into the throng coursing through the marketplace.

He had left his small handbag on the table. The watcher saw Diane pick it up, open it, take out the bundle of money and count it. Her body language expressing defeat, she flung some coins on the saucer for the waiter; then she too hurried away.

The watcher did not follow her. Instead he followed the young man.

There was a sound like a rifle shot as Diane hurried tearfully down Place Charles-Félix. Nerves frayed, she screamed and ducked quickly into a doorway. Peering out, she saw that it was only a motorbike messenger and that he had stopped outside her building and was pressing her bell. She ran the rest of the way.

“Are you looking for Lady Hardwick?” she asked, out of breath from the unaccustomed exercise.

“Is that you, madame?”

She nodded, taking out her key and opening the door to prove that indeed she lived there. “I am Lady Hardwick,” she said, just in case there was any doubt left. Besides, she always liked the way it sounded.

“Sign here, please.”

She signed his receipt book and he handed over the envelope. From its size and shape and the beautiful calligraphy, Diane guessed it was an invitation. She hurried upstairs, tearing open the envelope as she went and pulling out the engraved white card.

Diane clutched a hand to her throat. A
cruise?
Were they mad? Why was Daisy Keane asking her?

The RSVP line gave a phone number and Sir Robert’s business address in London.

One hundred thousand dollars. The zeros danced in front of Diane’s eyes like balloons at a kid’s birthday party.
A hundred thousand dollars!
Oh my God, she thought, I’m saved. And she wanted her earrings back!

She read it again and again. Then she read the last line: “Sir Robert’s will is to be read at the Villa Belkiss in Capri.” The first smile of the day lit up her lovely face. It had all worked out. She was to inherit after all.
That
was why they had invited her. At last she would get what was coming to her.

Of course, she would go. She was already planning her wardrobe. She picked up the phone and called Daisy Keane.

It was over. And fortunately, who and what she truly was and what she had done, would be her secret forever.