The Charmers: A Novel(5)

Elegant, chatty, pretty, Aunt Jolly was a delight to be with. Not a proper “aunt,” more likely a second cousin of my late mother’s, a couple of times removed, but beloved in the family anyway.

Jolly had never married, though there were “gentlemen” as she demurely called them, and young though I was when I met her, I still remember that when I kissed her she smelled delightfully of some citrusy musky perfume that clung to her clothes and made me want to bury my head in her shoulder, simply to drink it in.

“Quite a girl” was how Aunt Jolly had described me, and I had alway believed that. Oh, and she was rich.

I’m writing a book about Aunt Jolly’s murder, though so far I have no ending since there seems no way to know the truth. Now, though, I am wondering if I might find something: a clue here and there, a word dropped in my ear, a conversation avoided, a meeting canceled. Normal enough day-to-day events, you might think, yet something had gone horribly wrong.

Verity

I’m on the same Paris-to-Nice train, looking at my opposite neighbor. She is wearing a brown jumper, a too-long and very crumpled linen skirt, sensible black shoes with a cross strap, and little white lace gloves. No, not lace, they are crochet, ending just above the wrist bone in a tiny ruffle. She’s not “made-up” but certainly powdered, and with a pale lipstick in entirely the wrong shade. Who wears that pastel pink anymore, unless they are from the 1960s, and this woman is not as old as that. She’s maybe forty; certainly old enough to know how to dress for travel: a white tee and black pants with a simple cashmere cardigan thrown over the shoulders would be better. And if she can’t afford pricey cashmere, well, then, a nice wool—you can get them anywhere now, even really cheap at the market in your local town. And her hair! Christ, the hair! Wild and red enough to be fake, though I guess it’s not, and shiny enough to have been just washed and slathered with too much conditioner.

Ah, now she throws a glance at me, covertly inspecting me too. And what does she see? A blonde with her hair pulled back so tight it makes angles out of the cheekbones and also shows that the forehead is too high—can’t help that, my dear, it’s the genes; Dad had that forehead. I got Mom’s legs though, long and with skinny thighs that look good in a tight skirt, such as I am wearing now; white Lycra, thoroughly unsuitable for a train journey, or any journey for that matter, but it was what came to hand this morning when I made my escape. From him. I wonder where he is, what happened when he saw I had finally bolted, made good on my threats. “Fuck her,” he probably said. The bastard.

I stare at the woman, wondering what she is thinking about me. Can she read my thoughts? Read me?

Mirabella

What I am thinking about her is that she should not pull her hair back like that; she has a lovely face but it loses its sweetness when the skin is so taut over cheekbones I would give a million to possess. And by the way, I have a million and more, so that’s no idle threat.

She looks like a runaway to me, clothes thrown together in a mad, anger-inflamed rush, fling all the rest into a bag, sweep out the underwear drawer, the sweater shelves, the jeans, which in fact I am surprised she is not wearing; she’s definitely a jeans kinda girl. Good hair stylist, color perfect, just that proper shade of cornsilk with a paler strand or so around the face. Couldn’t have been done better. No makeup. In too much of a hurry, as I thought before. Doesn’t need it, lucky bitch; I can’t set foot outside without my eyebrows carefully patted on with a brown dust then smoothed over with a wax pencil. See me without them and you’ll think you’re looking at a rabbit, or a mole perhaps. But my eyes are a nice blue, not deep, not pale, just, well, blue.

Now that Aunt Jolly has passed I’m the rich-bitch owner of a villa, and expected to behave like the discreet society woman I’m not, though I’ll never wear a hat to those dull luncheons where the aim is purportedly to raise funds for starving children in whatever country is fashionable at the moment, but whose real purpose is to show off the latest outfit from the newest hot designer, and if every woman doesn’t throw away those f*ckin’ red-soled shoes I swear to God I will kill them all. Same with that dreary handbag, y’know the one I mean. Copies gone rampant. I think they pick ’em up over the border in Italy for next to nothing.

And then of course, there are my gloves. Crochet, handmade by a local village woman who does beautiful work. I always wear them. It’s not a habit, or for fashion; it’s a necessity.





3

Verity

My name is Verity Real, though I’m changing that ASAP to Unreal. No, just joking.

I’m sneaking a look at Miss Frump again. This “chick”—I only call her that in jest, she is so far from being “a chick” it’s laughable—is sitting there, her crochet-gloved hands folded neatly in her lap, with, I notice, an enormous sapphire ring worn on the middle finger of the right hand. Now that bit of ostentation is a surprise. I should not have thought she could afford such a thing, but of course, like the handbags, fakes come “good” as well as cheap these days. Her eyes are closed, she’s not even looking out the window now, certainly not looking at me, though I know she is aware I am looking at her.

“So?” I finally say loudly. “What’s up?”

She makes no answer. It’s as though I’m talking to somebody not there. Without so much as a glance at me, she takes a notebook from her bag, the kind schoolchildren use, a composition book I suppose it’s known as, then shuffles through the bag, a soft black leather drawstring of the type I personally find so difficult to find anything in, because it always seems to have dropped into the muddle at the bottom. Still, she manages to bring out a pen. A proper pen, at that. What used to be called, and probably still is, a fountain pen, which I seem to remember long ago had to be filled from a bottle of ink. Who in the world has seen a bottle of ink in how many years? Certainement pas moi.