The Charmers: A Novel(6)

Sorry, I slipped into French, not exactly my second language but a language I use badly, for effect, sometimes. When necessary. Or when I feel like bitching. I find French a good language for bitching, trés expressive while sounding sweet at the same time. The perfect language in fact; you can do whatever you want with it, unlike English, which always says precisely what it means even if you don’t exactly mean what you said.

I watch her open the composition book and carefully smooth down a clean page. I notice there’s no writing on the previous pages. She begins to write—smooth, firm, precise strokes, a pretty looped cursive. Violet ink! Haven’t seen that in forever either. I’m trying to read it upside down, dying to know what’s so important she has to write it now, immediately. Her eyes flick up and meet my guilty gaze.

“Oh, sorry,” I manage to mumble, feeling the blush heat my cheeks, something I haven’t felt in many a moon. Blushing was from my innocent era, a few lifetimes ago. Not that I’m old, a mere twenty-two—well, twenty-five to be honest and if I can’t be honest now, when can I? Anyhow, lying about one’s age when you are only in your twenties can lead to disaster later when you start totting up the years. Dumb, in fact. Besides, she’s older, certainly not the same age as me. She probably would have written, “the same age as I.” Or is that not correct grammar? I know I learned it at that smart boarding school I attended, though I’m not sure I learned much else except how babies were conceived. Not by me, I hasten to add, but you know how that young girly conversation goes, somebody always knew somebody who’d actually done it, though never themselves, of course. It went down well with the passed-around bottle of Stoli sugared with pineapple juice that tasted vile but we all pretended to love. Sooo sophisticated.

She smiled at my blush and to my surprise leaned across and offered her hand.

“I’m Mirabella Matthews.”

The crochet glove was crisp, her hand cold.

“Oh my God, of course you are,” I said, coming to my senses. “The writer. Oh my God, I just love your books.”

She leaned back in her seat, still holding the pen over the empty page of the notebook. “Indeed. And which one did you particularly enjoy?”

Christ, she had me. I knew she was a bitch, just looking at her, so calm and friggin’ collected, and full of herself, meaning her “self-importance.” Now I really was being bitchy; she had not even so much as looked at me, not given me any cause for complaint, all she’d done was ask which book I’d read and of course I had not read a single one.

“You’ve got me there,” I said, deciding honesty was the best policy, surprised when she laughed.

She put the pen carefully in the fold of the notebook, then ran a hand through that dense red mass of hair, a nimbus, an aureole.… I was getting poetic about a complete stranger who was looking at me with that quizzical expression that suggested perhaps I might be mad. Which I am, in a way. At least today I am. The runaway wife, the rich-bitch lonely girl, the envied one who has it all.

“I don’t, you know,” I said, answering some unspoken question. “Have it all, I mean.”

She nodded. “Few of us do.”

“I mean … well, I just walked out on my husband. Ran, actually.…”

“Running’s much better, once you’ve made up your mind. I wish I’d done that, I should have run away from all three of my husbands. You’d have had a way to go to catch up, if you see what I mean.”

“Ohh, ohh. I do. I so admire you.”

“I can’t imagine why. Meanwhile, where exactly are you running to?”

I gestured to the small bag nestled between my feet. Obviously there wasn’t enough in it for proper runaway stuff, not “long-term,” so to speak. “But now I want it to be forever,” I said, fat tears running unexpectedly down my unmade-up face. “I can’t ever go back to him.”

She stared thoughtfully at me, assessing me, head to toe, exactly the way I had done her earlier. “I don’t think it’s safe to run away and not know where you are heading. Dangerous, in fact. Especially in your state of mind.”

“But I couldn’t stand him anymore.” I blurted out the whole sordid story, my betrayal by the cheating husband. “I believed in him,” I said. “I loved him. He was handsome, so charming, I was proud to be the girl on his arm. He knew how to make me feel good, y’know what I mean?” I said, “I have no money in my pocket, he’s canceled all the credit cards. I have no jewelry to sell because I’d stupidly left it all behind in a gesture of defiance I’m now regretting.”

She said, “What’s your name?”

I told her, Verity. I saw something in her eyes, a warm woman-to-woman understanding.

Still I was surprised when she said, “Well, Verity, why not come stay with me? ’Til we can get you settled,” she added with a slight smile to make sure I understood she was not offering me charity or taking me to the cops or the lost wives’ home.

“I’ll be alone this weekend, as it happens, and my villa will feel empty with only myself to rattle around in it.”

Rattle around? Didn’t that imply “large”? But that word, “alone,” was scary, I mean did she have “designs” on me, or what?

“Think about it,” she said. “Take your time, we won’t be there for another half hour.” And she took up her pen again and began to write.