One Way or Another(80)

“Then you must never be alone there.”





57

Martha was finally in the place she wanted to be, in bed with Marco. She had shed her old sweatpants and T-shirt, soaked herself in a long, hot bath, which Marco had drawn for her, making sure the temperature was perfect by putting his finger in the too-hot water and scalding it.

“It’s okay, it’s not my painting hand,” he’d said with a grin though it hurt. Later Martha tenderly applied a pat of butter to the wound, her grandmother’s remedy, she remembered. Marco didn’t think much of it anyhow; he licked off the butter, said he needed toast to go with it, wrapped a grungy old paint rag around his finger and got back to the work he’d been doing, which was making love to the woman in his life. The love of his life.

“The thing is,” Martha said, finally unraveling herself from his arms and sitting up. A frown scrunched her brow as she thought about what she wanted to say.

“The fact is, Ahmet believes this ball will be his social validation. It’ll make him a member of a club he believes exists, but not for him. He hasn’t been able to penetrate that other world, as he thinks of it, because he does not belong, he is a foreigner, an unknown—apart from his good works, that is—and there are many of those, I can attest to that. Ahmet certainly puts his money where his heart is, if of course we believe he has a heart. But I can tell you a lot of money has gone to help young men in trouble, and in a quiet way, so it’s not self-seeking.”

“In a way it is self-seeking. It’s my belief Ahmet is making up for his own past, that once he was like them. Come on now, Martha, nobody could have such a squeaky clean background, emerging from obscurity the way Ahmet did. Have you—we, anyone we know, ever checked his background, that amazing life story of rich Greek Egyptian parents who lost it all in the crash and have never been heard of since? Though, according to him, they paid for a good education, got him on the road to success. Do you know who Ahmet’s mother is? Do we even know her name? Is Ghulbian his real name, or just made up to prevent anyone getting at the truth? I tell you, I’m painting that man, I see the secrets hidden in his eyes, the face he keeps impassive by sheer strength of will—and a lot of practice, I’d bet on that. Ahmet has trained himself never to react, never to give his game away, never to let anyone know exactly what he is thinking. ‘Spontaneous’ is not a word we might ever use to describe your friend. He allows us to see only what he wants us to see. Even I, concentrating on the man’s face, looking for his deepest emotions under the smile, the flat eyes, cannot find the truth about who he is.”

“But we know who he is, everybody does, it’s all been written about, we’ve seen him on TV, at events, at his wonderful party on the yacht.…”

“We saw what Ahmet wanted us to see. He’s not like us, Martha. That man is riddled with secrets. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘straightforward.’ Ask him a simple question, how was your day, how are you doing, I guarantee he’ll have three different answers ready.”

Martha slithered out of bed, wrapping the sheet around her, suddenly chilled. “Oh, I don’t know, I think he’s okay under all that…”

“All that what?”

She sighed; she understood what Marco meant. “Oh, all that … niceness, I suppose. The generosity.”

“Like, for instance, offering to buy Lucy a dress for the ball? When I say ‘offering,’ I get the feeling he was insisting. What kind of man does that, Martha?”

“A man in love?”

“A man obsessed. Lucy is on his mind and I wouldn’t be surprised if he intended to marry her.”

Martha jumped to her feet, the sheet still clutched around her nakedness. “Are you out of your mind? Lucy is underage, she still behaves like a child, for God’s sake, she wouldn’t even consider a man like that, my God, to her Ahmet is old. And that’s the cardinal sin when you are seventeen.”

Marco took her hand, drew her back onto the bed, waited for her to calm down. “Let’s put it this way, sweetheart, he’s not only old, he’s dangerous. He has secrets, he has a past, he’s ruthless and right now I get the feeling he’s hiding something. And Mehitabel—”

“That cow.”

“Mehitabel, the cow, is helping him. I’m willing to bet she knows everything that’s going on and right now I also get the feeling she is a woman scorned. She knows Ahmet has another female on his mind.”





58





ANGIE


There are times—sitting here on the hard little blue brocade sofa in my pretty little prison, a room I know inch by inch and could probably replicate in a drawing if I were asked to in a courtroom, though I understand of course there is no chance of that ever happening—still, there are times when I almost begin to like my small habitat, the way I imagine a snail must its shell. It fits snugly round me, eight feet by ten—I know the dimensions because I have paced it out, heel to toe, the old-fashioned way. It’s certainly better than my original squalid cell under the roof where either the sun beat down with stifling heat, or rain poured with a sound like a railroad engine, slamming down with the weight of the world from a leaden sky I could hardly see.

When I was first moved from the attic and saw the small round porthole window, I believed myself to be back on board the Lady Marina. I’d welcomed the idea, thinking of the clean wind, the rushing of the sea against the hull, perhaps the sudden end that awaited me, once again, beneath the crystal clear Aegean. There seemed no purpose in continuing to live. For what? For whom? Surely Ahmet had tortured me enough. Every man must reach a point of satiety, where there is no more satisfaction to be gained from inflicting pain and torture on a victim. And what must he do then? Finally kill me off, of course.