One Way or Another(75)

Stung, Martha took a deep breath. “You will have everything you paid for, and probably more, exactly the way you did on the yacht.” She got to her feet in one smooth move, snapped her bag shut, picked up the sketches, the metal ring with the fabric samples. She flung her green Burberry jacket over her shoulders and was walking out the door when he caught up to her.

He reached out and grabbed her arm. “I didn’t mean to upset you, it’s just that the young man who was here is saying my house is haunted, he heard things. None of this is true, but rumors are starting. It does my reputation no good. This place is my home, Martha, and I want it to feel that way. I want you to make it into exactly that. A home.”

Ahmet’s expression was so earnest, he was so deeply concerned, Martha felt sorry for him, a man alone, a lonely man, rattling around in this too-big house in the middle of nowhere, with that unlit black hole of a space at the top of the steps where no one was allowed to set foot, and the fire always blazing in the library, the half-empty bottle of tequila, and the terrible silence all around them. Even the birds had stopped their cawing.

But looking into Ahmet’s eyes, Martha felt nervous; she told herself there was no reason, he was her client, she knew him well by now; everybody knew his reputation as a businessman, a giver to charities. Yet no one wanted to really know him.

She thought about Lucy, of how she had been here, alone with Ahmet, and of Morrie racing out of the place, claiming it to be haunted. Unknown fear sent her own heart racing.

“I must get going.” She headed for the door.

Ahmet was there before her, his back against the door, an expression on his face she had never seen before; eyes cold, mouth tight. An inner tension kept his body rigid.

“Not yet, Martha.”

She glanced anxiously over her shoulder, thinking surely there must be a servant, a helper, somebody who took care of this rambling place, though she’d noticed there was no dust, the house was impeccable, cleaner than clean, with no people, no children, no animals, no jacket tossed casually over the back of the sofa, no umbrella in the hall stand, no collection of silly hats on the pegs by the kitchen door.

A sudden high-pitched wailing sound shattered the silence. Martha stared, shocked, at Ahmet, who took her arm and quickly walked her to the door. He led her out, closed it behind them, saw her into her car, shut her door, the polite gentleman to the end.

“I’ll call you about the ball” were his final words as Martha sped away, the remains of the gravel spurting as it always did from her tires.

“Jesus,” she said aloud, her heart still in her mouth, fear sending adrenaline pounding through her pulses. “I’ll never come back here alone. In fact I’m not coming back until that bloody ball, and then it will be with Marco.”

The crackle of Ahmet’s helicopter overhead broke the silence, sending the big white birds into a frenzy. They winged so low over the car, Martha had to stop and allow them to regroup, then fly back to their nests. She thought if she were one of those birds she would be telling the others to get out while the going was good; there were better places to live than Marshmallows, whose frivolous name belied its dark secretiveness.

She noticed again, as she drove away, a light on upstairs. She wondered who might be up there, a maid perhaps, or Ahmet’s valet? A human being, for God’s sake. The house surely needed one.





54

The small Italian family restaurant Martha and Marco had been going to for dinner at least once a month ever since they’d met offered exactly what you would expect, which made it easier for their customers who had other things on their minds than to decide whether to try the new sauce, or order the same “old faithful” Alfredo, or even the “spag bol” as Lucy called the spaghetti Bolognese, which was spicier than most and left you with a small gasp and a need for another glass of red wine. You knew exactly what you were getting, down to the underdressed green salad and the “grandmother’s recipe” chocolate mousse, which Marco could never resist.

“I swear you come here only for that,” Martha said. She was sitting beside him at the small table, rather than across, because she was still freaked from the experience earlier at Marshmallows, and needed to be close.

“I come here to be with you,” he said, scooping a spoonful of her untouched mousse, having already finished his own.

“Thank God,” she said, with more feeling than usual.

Marco stopped eating to look at her. He put down his spoon. “So what’s up?”

Martha wondered whether to tell him or not. Deciding that she should, anyway, she said, “It’s that house. I feel there’s something wrong there; it gives me the creeps. And today I heard this strange sound, oh, I can’t explain it exactly except when I thought about it later … well, maybe it was a scream.”

Marco saw traces of fear in her eyes. “Are you afraid of Ahmet?”

“Right then, I was afraid of him. It was something I caught, an expression.… I still can’t say exactly what, just that I’ve never seen a look like that in anyone’s eyes. It was as though he had switched off all feeling. God, Marco, right then I felt he was capable of anything. And that cry, a sort of … scream. He got me out of there fast, and believe me, I was glad to go, I would have run if I could.”

Marco had not told her about the call he’d received from Morris, about the upstairs room with the discarded food and clothing. It was, Morris had said, as though somebody had been imprisoned there and had departed in a hurry. It was so bad Morrie would never go back, though he would also never tell Martha about it because he knew Ghulbian’s was an important commission for her, and he would do nothing to jeopardize that.