The limo weaves slowly out of the gathering crowd of emergency personnel and onlookers. Past Felipe, who is standing beside the wreckage of the black car gesturing wildly at a policeman. Only he and I know the truth, and he won’t be sharing it with anyone. Something he saw in my face scared him so much, he lost control of the car.
Gia nudges me and points out the back window and I see a helmeted man in a rain slicker, with camera equipment slung around his neck, following us doggedly through the rain on a navy blue scooter. A few moments later, a couple of men on a bright blue and white Kawasaki motorcycle swerve up alongside the windows, tapping on the tinted glass. ‘Irina!’ they call. ‘Irina! Any words for us?’
‘Just ignore them,’ Gia says disgustedly. ‘It’s Felipe’s fault everything’s gone to hell. No one will even be looking at Natasha in the decoy car. What a monumental waste of time and money.’
The hail’s getting heavier as we turn into a narrow one-way street lined with three-and four-storey stone buildings that stand shoulder to shoulder, some with balconies, some flying the Italian tricolour flag. There are parked cars, scooters and bicycles packed in tightly on both sides of the road, and one of the buildings bears a sign reading: Via Borgonuovo. We cruise up to the grand front entrance of a four-storey, honey-coloured building with iron grillework covering each of the tall, deep windows.
The already narrow street is pretty much impassable now that we’re here, because an armada of scooters, motorbikes, Fiats and Mini Coopers is following us. Further up the road, Vladimir’s car is already double-parked and blocking traffic with more scooters and motorbikes and cars banked up behind it. A sea of onlookers under umbrellas is lining the footpath on both sides of the street, despite the hail.
It’s pandemonium as the limo comes to a stop. People seem to surge forward from everywhere, surrounding the car. None of the car doors are open, but already flashes are going off and it’s suddenly as bright as noon outside the car’s tinted windows. We could be trapped in a field of falling stars, of fireflies.
Gia sees the expression on my face and laughs softly. ‘It’s not as if you’ve never seen this before!’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Get ready to hustle. Just make for that portico with the sliding glass doors — Vladimir and our guys will try to clear a path and flank you. Don’t stop, don’t turn around. Once you reach the sliding doors, you’re home free. I’ll see you on the inside.’
Jurgen and Carlo exchange glances, then Jurgen opens his door, battering the milling group of men and women with his black umbrella. People are screaming in his face, tearing at his clothes, pushing him aside, trying to get their hand-held mics and camera equipment, video-enabled mobile phones and camcorders, in around the half-open limo door. They indiscriminately fire off shot after shot as Gia tries to shield me with her body.
‘Is bad, today, very bad,’ Carlo mutters before launching himself after Jurgen and slamming the door closed. Outside the car, he signals frantically over his head for help.
People fall back in surprise for an instant, before coming forward again like a wave with their questions, their cameras. The air is filled with voices shrieking, ‘Irina! Irina!’
Abruptly, the hail ceases. People look up, then at each other for a moment, then the questions begin again.
‘What do you have to say about today’s hair-raising near miss?’ I hear a female voice shout through the tinted glass.
‘Is it true that your absence from the Palliardi show last year was due to involuntary admission to the Abbey for psychiatric and addiction disorders?’ a man bellows.
‘Who are you seeing, now that you’ve very publicly dumped Felix de Haviland and Will Reyne in close succession?’ roars a third voice, also male.
‘Don’t listen to them,’ Gia says forcefully. ‘Just take a deep breath, and when the guys say go, you go. Head up, chin held high. It’s all bullshit and lies, okay?’
I turn in shock as a stocky young man with wet ginger hair pulls open the door on our side of the car and thrusts a micro recorder in Gia’s face, in mine. ‘What do you have to say about the fact that you’re cursed?’ he yells. ‘That you leave a trail of broken hearts and property damage wherever you go?’
Gia’s trying with all her might to shoulder the young man out again, and screaming at me to help her, but I’m paralysed with shock. K’el’s standing across the street between two parked cars, just beyond the wall of faces and bodies crowded around the limo. He makes no move to join the throng, to push in amongst them. He’s just there, in his hyper-ordinary clothes, hands in the pockets of his broken-in blue jeans, watching me with his steady, unblinking gaze. Just watching. Because he has to. Because he can’t help himself.
Vladimir’s face suddenly comes between us for a moment, his burly, wise-guy hands pulling the ginger- haired journo out of the way while Angelo grabs hold of the car door and kicks out at the people still holding it open.
The circus around the car suddenly seems to be happening in slow motion, to somebody else. I don’t hear the sounds of scuffling, of shouting, because my eyes are fixed on K’el’s face.
It’s unmistakeably him, although he’s like a scaled-down version of his usual self. And I realise that others can see him, too, because people are pushing past him saying ‘prego, prego,’ the way Italians ask a fellow human being to make way. Except that he’s not human, he’s faking it.
I hadn’t imagined it before: when he’d walked away from me, he subtly shifted the way he looks. His eyes and hair seem darker, his skin paler, almost matte, like human skin. That light that usually accompanies our kind, that comes from within, is no longer visible to ordinary eyes, although I still see a faint glimmer of it in the skin of his face and hands.
And I wonder what the trick is to blending in, to making yourself look like a pitch-perfect human being. I wonder if I could do it — if I ever get free of Irina. Could I shift the way I look? Shift the way people perceive me?
What do you have to say about the fact that you’re cursed? That you leave a trail of broken hearts and property damage wherever you go?
I shudder. The questions could have come from K’el’s own lips.
Without realising I’m speaking out loud, I say, ‘I am cursed. And you were right: it’s all my fault. But how could I have known that it would lead to this?’
‘I’ll quote you on that!’ a young woman crows triumphantly as she whips a recording device out of my face and pushes her way back through the baying crowd.
Gia lets out a loud ‘Oooooh!’ and kicks out with her booted feet, scrambling to pull shut the door from the inside as Angelo pushes on it from the outside. The central locking slams into place.
She turns to me. ‘What did you say that for?’ she wails. ‘It’ll go viral in ten minutes: World-famous Russian beauty admits she’s cursed. God, you have no sense. Don’t give them stuff they can use against you.’
Through the tinted car windows, I can still see K’el. His eyes never leave mine, even though by rights he shouldn’t be able to see me through the dark glass. I hear his voice in my head: Don’t try to leave Milan before the six get here, because I’ll find you.
Vladimir reappears at one of the windows and knocks on it with his scarred knuckles. There’s some kind of cordon forming out there now: two rows of men in black suits, each built like a gorilla, pushing back at the crowd on both sides to form a clear area. People are shrieking and slipping over in the slush, and going down like skittles, as a path is cleared for the bitch queen from hell.
‘Finally,’ Gia snaps. ‘Leave your coat and the bag — they’re ruined anyway. I’ll bring them. Oh, and give me that stupid hat.’
She twists it in her hands, punching at the crown, before she places it carefully back on top of my head. Almost tenderly, she arranges the ends of my hair upon my shoulders and grabs a small, gleaming gold cylinder from her capacious backpack. ‘Trout pout,’ she says, making a silly face at me, her lips pushed forward like a fish. I mirror her expression and she slicks the fiery red lipstick on me. Grabs a pencil with a brush on the end of it out of her bag and marks my eyebrows with quick, confident strokes. ‘Strong brows, strong lips and you’re good to go. It’ll reproduce nicely, whatever the medium. Now remember what I said: Don’t stop, don’t turn around. Head held high. Just get inside. You’re golden. You’re a superstar.’
The limo driver releases the central locking on a signal from Vladimir and Gia pushes me out the door. I do as she says. Step out of the car as gracefully as I can manage in the teetering heels. With Vladimir on my right and Carlo on my left, I keep moving, chin up, head held high, letting the questions about my love life, whether I’m a binger or a purger, whether I wear any underwear to sleep, wash over me.
Though I keep moving as ordered, towards the grand portico, the sliding glass doors etched discreetly with
