someone I love, or might once have loved, is going to get hurt. It’s a certainty.
From behind me, a man bawls, ‘What are you doing?’
I turn with difficulty, so disorientated that I can barely remember who I’m supposed to be today, how I got out here in the rain.
‘Irina!’ the man roars again from the opposite side of the street, and runs at me, soaked and scowling. He grabs me by the arm, and in the time it takes for him to drag me across the road towards a gleaming black limo with one back door open, I remember that his name is Vladimir, he’s part of my security detail, and today? I’m supposed to be one of the most beautiful and desirable women on the planet.
I’m still laughing hysterically as we reach the waiting car. Vladimir forces my head down and shoves me inside, nothing courteous or gentlemanly about him now. ‘Drive!’ he snarls into Felipe’s astonished face, before slamming the door on us and ducking through the pelting rain towards his own limo.
Immediately, my laughter dies. And I don’t feel cold, but I can’t stop shaking. Felipe hands me a snowy- white hand towel across the front seats, then releases the handbrake and accelerates into the road.
The rain pounding down on the closed fibreglass sunroof of the car sounds like falling gravel. As I fumble out of the heavy wet overcoat and take off the cloche hat, rubbing at Irina’s wet face and hair with the hopelessly inadequate towel, Felipe depresses a button on his dashboard. It engages a mechanical ceiling panel that slides shut soundlessly, hiding the sunroof from view. The noise lessens a little but it still sounds like the world is ending outside. We’re forced to move slowly because visibility is down to a few feet in every direction.
It’s dark as night as we make a bewildering number of turns down narrow one-way streets — high beams on. For a moment, I see the dim, hulking shape of the Duomo reappear in the rear window of the limo before we do a sharp left and the cathedral is lost to sight.
There are few cars on the road and no people. Milan could be a rain-slicked ghost town at the end of time. The rain surges beneath the wheels of the car as if we have become seaborne.
I see Felipe’s eyes rest on me momentarily in the driver’s mirror before they flick back to the road ahead. ‘You look like the drowned cat,’ he says, an edge to his voice. ‘We are alone at last, querida. As we planned.’
Planned? Is Irina involved with him in some way?
I lean forward, flipping Irina’s long, wet hair over my head, towelling it vigorously to forestall any immediate need for conversation. I pretend I don’t notice Felipe’s impatient exhalation, the gear change he executes with a little too much force. Through the damp and obscuring strands of Irina’s hair I feverishly scan the interior of the car for clues that might assist with the conversation we are supposed to be having.
It’s unlike any other car I’ve seen before. There are lights in shiny chrome fittings near each of the headrests, and a mini-bar built into one of the doors. Two bench seats face each other, upholstered in a full-grain tan leather and offering more leg room between them than most people would actually need. Each seat is bisected by a wide, space-age-looking armrest that extends down to the floor. The limo is filled with the heady smell of white flowers and there’s gleaming chrome and wood inlay everywhere I look. There’s also a small silver serving tray on the armrest opposite mine, and on it, a faceted crystal carafe that’s three-quarters full. Beside it stands a tall, matching drinking glass filled to the brim with a colourless liquid. No ice. No condensation.
The whole thing is about a million miles away from Ryan Daley’s four-wheel drive and its smells of diesel fuel and mud-encrusted guy stuff. I suddenly wish so badly I was there with him — eating candy bars all over the front passenger seat, our breath fogging up the windows — that I have to close my eyes and take a deep and shaky breath.
I sit up and tuck Irina’s damp, unbound hair back behind her shoulders, place the wet towel on the seat beside mine. I lean forward and pick up the faceted crystal tumbler and study its contents, lift it to my nose. It looks like water, but it smells like some kind of spirit … vodka maybe? That’s all I’m getting.
I place the glass back on the tray. Only a teenage Russian supermodel would contemplate drinking vodka before 8 am during the worst storm of all time. And K’el thinks that we’re alike? I must have been some kind of major prima donna back in the day.
Felipe catches my movements in the driver’s mirror. ‘For you,’ he says. Any trace of the coldness I imagined in his eyes before has vanished. Now, he seems almost excited. ‘It is exactly as we planned. Drink. It will … relax you.’
I glance back at the tray. That’s the plan? A clandestine tipple before the day begins? I hadn’t known I was tense, but I feel the line of Irina’s shoulders relax. Something as simple as one lousy drink, I can handle. When I was Carmen, I’d chugged eight bourbon and Cokes in one sitting and they’d done nothing to me, nothing. Oh, I’d pretended to be unconscious afterwards, but Ryan had known all along that it was an act. To me, alcohol is like accelerant poured on a bonfire: easily consumed, leaving no aftertaste, no ill effects. I could drink and drink and never fall down, never pass out. I know it with a certainty that defies logic. Beer, spirits, whatever — bring them on.
‘?Bebe!’ Felipe says eagerly. Drink.
Gia hadn’t mentioned Irina having any problem with alcohol. Drugs, men, decision-making, modesty, notoriety — yes. But not booze. So, what the hell?
I raise the glass high enough for Felipe to see in the driver’s mirror. Then I place it to my lips and scull its contents in one smooth motion, without pausing for breath.
I sit back, and seem to see — from a long way away — the crystal glass fall from my suddenly nerveless fingers. Immediately, I know that I’ve made a bad mistake.
Felipe winks at me in the driver’s mirror and I know that I’m missing something. There’s some kind of coded meaning in all this that Irina would understand, but I’m having trouble interpreting. I’m suddenly having trouble breathing, too; I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.
The realisation hits me — way, way too late — that it hadn’t just been 100 proof rocket fuel in that glass. There’d been something else in it, something chemical, synthetic, a world away from wine, beer or vodka. A foreign substance I can’t identify that’s carving a coruscating path through Irina’s bird-boned body like acid.
I imagine I can feel the stuff actually hitting Irina’s bloodstream like a toxic bomb blast. Poison? Has he poisoned me?
‘What — have — you — done — to — me?’ I gag, clawing at my neck and chest.
I feel my pupils dilate, the blood vessels in my face and body explode with heat beneath my pale, fine skin. I’m sweating and shaking now, and a muscle above my right eye begins to twitch uncontrollably. It feels as if my heart is going to burst. That I’m literally speeding up, or burning up.
The car hits an unexpected pothole and water sprays up in front like a wave hitting a ship. Even after the car rights itself, I still imagine the world is falling away beneath me. Felipe switches the windscreen wipers to maximum and the harsh, rhythmic sound makes me cringe. He gives me a sharp glance in the mirror.
‘You’re not … pleased?’ he says, dark brows furrowing. ‘You don’t like it? It’s A-grade. De la mejor calidad. I had to put in more, because when you take it like this, the high it is not so high.’
There’s a pain in the centre of my forehead now as if I’ve been hit with an axe. Even the limo’s soft interior lights are searing my eyes. I can’t seem to control my head, and fall back against the seat.
‘Ge …’ I gargle. ‘He …’
What I’m trying to say is: Get help. But I can’t get the words out; it’s as if Irina’s turning to stone. I’d felt a similar sensation of paralysis when I was Carmen in that hospital bed, flooded with sedatives, on the verge of leaving Ryan for the first time. That awful gulf between thought and action, mind and body, that I thought I’d never again experience — it’s returned. When I try to raise one of Irina’s hands, it’s become something separate from her body. I can’t lift it off my knees.
More than ever, I’m trapped in here. And I remember that terrible feeling as Lela lay dying — of being mired in her body, entombed alive, while one by one her five senses slowly faded to black.
And yet … everything seems curiously magnified — the sound of the rain, the terrible scraping noise the windscreen wipers are making, even the vibrations coming up from the uneven road through the limo’s four tyres, the slight fishtailing of the back wheels as we drive over a slick manhole cover. I can make out every individual sound and movement, as if the car has no walls, or I am the car.
‘I have done exactly what we agree,’ Felipe says loudly. ‘You send me text, remember? Before your plane has landed. Have my usual drink waiting, you say. I’m desperate for pick-me-up. It’s been too long, kiss, kiss, ciao, ciao. And I know Gianfranco he is always searching for the tablets, for the needles. So I make sure a bottle is in the minibar, ready. I mix it myself. Gianfranco does not think to search the car. There is no reason for him to know
