Giovanni’s, Juliana’s, Gudrun’s, Gia’s and Tommy’s faces are reflected there, too, crowded around Irina, all looking concerned.
And my own face is reflected there, though visible only to me and to Gudrun. She meets my eyes, knowingly, in the mirror and I wonder again why she always wears modest, high-necked, old lady’s blouses when she has such killer curves.
‘Say something,’ Tommy pleads in his light, silvery voice. ‘Don’t tell me you fractured that multimillion-dollar skull of yours when you went down.’
‘You say she has the trouble with her feet,’ Juliana murmurs to Gia. ‘Not the balance. Feet and balance together — that’s very bad. How can she walk?’
I see Gudrun — her skin faintly gleaming, but only to my eyes — wrap one of Giovanni’s arms in hers. She pats him on the hand reassuringly, her blood-red nails glistening.
‘It’s too late to change the banner now,’ Giovanni confides to her worriedly. ‘It must remain. But Orla will have her way. We must end with the silver gown.’
A woman with flaming red hair, dressed in a heavily beaded, blue-green bustier, blue jeans and bare feet, gives an excited little clap at the periphery of my sight.
‘Over my dead body,’ I say, refocusing the attention of everyone gathered around me. ‘And, clearly, I’m not dead.’
The redhead’s expression congeals as Tommy calls, ‘Let’s do this, people! In ten. From the top.’
I place my hands upon the padded armrests of my chair and hoist myself upright, then lift my arms resignedly as a phalanx of complete strangers rushes at me, shouting at me to take my clothes off and for heaven’s sake, be quick about it.
When we return to the hotel suite around midnight, I’m in no mood to talk.
‘Get some rest,’ Gia says at the door to my bedroom. ‘You were unbelievable today — I had shivers down my spine every time you appeared. And when Orla stepped on the hem of her silver dress and fell out of it and her shoes right before you came out in the fantasy bridal gown, I nearly died laughing.’
‘Just one more day … Mercy,’ she says my name hesitantly, ‘then maybe you’ll get to go … home.’
I don’t reply. I just lock myself inside the ensuite bathroom and stare at my reflection, at Irina’s, and shed her clothing as if it is contaminated.
Then I sit on the floor of the marble shower stall and just let the water pound down on me for a while.
When I fall asleep, it’s as if I slide into a black and formless pit.
It’s out of habit that I reach for Luc in my dreams, search for that slender thread that continues to bind us together, even though I still can’t reconcile the horrors I witnessed through his eyes, through the news footage, with the Luc I love and remember.
Instead, I find myself in a blank, black void, deprived of every sense. It’s never happened before, and I can’t even call out Luc’s name because nothing’s working.
I can’t feel him out there.
It’s as if I’ve been shut down, or shut out.
It’s as if the connection between us — that’s always been there, always — has been severed.
When I wake suddenly and turn my head to look at the clock on the bedside table, it’s already 10.05 in the morning. My cheeks are wet with tears. Because that feeling of absolute disconnect can only mean that Luc’s badly injured, even … dead.
I sit bolt upright and have to stop myself from letting loose a scream to shake this building to its foundations. Gia doesn’t need to see Irina, me, us, caving in.
He’s been my only true friend, my constant companion. How do I make you understand what this sense of absence … feels like?
There’s a roaring in my ears, darkness in my eyes. It feels as if I’ve lost my hold on the physical world. My mind is suddenly crowded with memories: of the two of us in our sacred garden, our perfect place; of Luc laughing, his golden head of hair thrown back, revealing the sinuous line of his throat; of Luc dazzling me, almost scaring me, with his feats of grand magic; of Luc placing my happiness first in all things, disregarding everyone and everything else around us.
He’d said he existed to amuse me. He’d said he existed to prove what love could be.
And he’d said:
You are the best and most loved thing in my life — let nothing ever be possible, or complete, if you are not with me. And may the elements witness my vow in all their silent glory.
I can’t help it, I let out a wail that has sharp edges to it — a sound of such terrible grief and loss and mourning, that Gia bursts through the door of my bedroom at a run.
From inside the cavernous, black limo, I stare up, numbly, at the hundred foot image of Irina that stands guard at the entryway to the Galleria.
I don’t even know if Luc’s alive.
I feel emptied out, incapable of feeling anything right now.
Maybe I don’t know who he is any more, and maybe I won’t like what he’s become since we’ve been physically apart, but I can’t imagine a life, any sort of life, without Luc.
It’s something that will take major adjusting to, and right now I have no time. I can feel it getting away from me again, reeling out of my hands like an angler’s line.
I just hope They do it properly this time when they shift me — so that I forget everything. It was almost simpler when I didn’t remember, because I had no concept of what it was possible to lose.
17
‘It’s just gone noon,’ Gia says gently, casting me her thousandth sideways glance of concern for the day, ‘and the parade’s set for four with cocktails at six, dinner for the chosen ones at eight then the afterparty from midnight onwards. As soon as the parade finishes, I’ll meet you backstage, but before then, you’re on your own. Juliana doesn’t want any extra bodies back there — it’s already a tight squeeze. She’s somehow managed to wangle a front-row seat for me beneath the dome. Just do what you did yesterday, okay? And you’ll be helping Giovanni, Irina and all those poor people …’
We look at each other sombrely, recalling how we’d watched the world burn from our six-star hotel room.
The limo’s door is opened from the outside and Vladimir hands me out onto the red carpet that’s already been laid from the Piazza straight into the Galleria’s arched entryway. There’s the usual wall of noise and faces and camera flashes, but it’s all being kept at one remove by the golden ropes cordoning off the red carpet. I look neither left nor right as I hurry towards the entrance, Vladimir’s unyielding hand at my back.
Gia gives my elbow a squeeze from behind as we walk under the giant arch. When I look back, she’s nowhere to be seen, but Giovanni’s pretty people are everywhere: counting chairs, consulting lists, consulting together, pointing, shifting name plates, placing a gift bound with signature red ribbon upon each seat. Black-clad technicians, wearing headphones and security cards strung on lanyards, are doing sound, mic and lighting checks all over the building.
The dome is already lit palely blue as Vladimir and I hurry beneath it towards the backstage area, and I shiver, recalling the sound that Luc’s sword made when it struck Nuriel’s, the way the blades crackled when they came together, the way Luc had casually turned the fire of his wrath upon the sleeping innocent. Or maybe I’d done that. I shake my head, unable to get those images of a burning world out of my mind, unable to suppress the terrible feeling that it was somehow all my fault.
Vladimir melts away as soon as I’m seated for hair and make-up.
‘This is it then,’ an Englishwoman I don’t recognise says cheerfully as she grabs my long hair and twists it into a rough topknot. She rubs something abrasive into my face and I have to close my eyes.
‘If only it were,’ I murmur in Irina’s thick accent, wishing They would take me now.
