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.
Ten minutes ticked by. Another ten. I still had my Cartier watch with the diamond bezel. I hadn’t been dumb enough to get rid of that because I always needed to know the time.
“So, alright,” I said, loftily. Then, realizing I was being rude, added more humbly, “Thank you, I’d like to accept your offer. In fact I don’t know what I would do otherwise, I didn’t plan…”
“I know how it is.” She smiled as she closed her book, put the pen back in her bag, tightened the black leather string around its top, and smoothed the crochet gloves she was remarkably still wearing. The sapphire ring glinted darkly in the sunlight. “I promise everything will be alright.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said, remembering my manners as a well-brought-up girl. “Young woman,” that is, though right now she made me feel like a child again. And somewhere deep inside that felt so good.
“My car is at the station,” she said. “We’ll be at the villa before you know it.”
I could not believe the car belonged to a woman who wore crochet gloves, no makeup and her hair in a red tangle: a gorgeous dark-blue Maserati GranTurismo convertible with cream leather seats hand-stitched to immaculate perfection. A chauffeur stood by, while a second man waited alongside a small white Citroen, ready to drive the chauffeur back while Mirabella drove herself.
“Thank you, Alfred,” she said as the chauffeur opened the door to the Maserati for her and she slid behind the wheel. “My friend will be accompanying me,” she added and he walked quickly around to the passenger side, took my bag, and held open the door.
She waved lightly to him, and he disappeared rapidly in the Citroen to wherever perfect servants disappear, into the ether perhaps, to be called on when required by Madame, though this “Madame” did not seem particularly demanding. I thought it nice of her to speak to him softly like that, and with a slight smile, though I guess he’d expected to leave her to go wherever she wanted in the gorgeous Maserati.
“Get in, Verity,” she said, hitching up her too-long linen skirt, a foot already on the pedal. This woman waited for no one. I was in that car so quickly I had no time even to consider what I was doing, who I might be with—a kidnapper trading in sex slaves, a serial killer preying on young women, or a madwoman who wore a ring outside her gloves. Her flaming red hair flew behind her in the wind as she drove far too fast when we got to the corniche road that wrapped itself around the base of the mountains on one side and fell into the canyon and the sea a hundred feet below on the other. Ohh, that blue-blue sea, the blue of her eyes.
I crouched lower, clinging to the cream leather door so as not to be catapulted to my doom. We were following a gray car, a flattened, close-to-the-earth shape that suggested a Porsche, and which was itself following a small green car. My eyes were fixed on the Porsche and the road ahead; I was practically driving for her, edging into that curve, heading for the next bend.
Our eyes met in the mirror. Her face was pale, her mouth set.
“Take a look behind you,” she said.
I looked. Nothing there. Wait. Yes, a motorcycle zapped around the bend. Black. My ex happened to be a motorcycle fan and I recognized the Ducati Monster by its exposed engine and frame, a classic, geared for speed and elegance, as was its rider, all black leathers and black steel helmet. There was no way to see his face, tell who he was, but he was certainly on our tail.