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Her eyes are wide, her stare searching me for clues. How does a man who feels the weight of his testimony notappearguilty?
Gwen clears her throat, smooths her hair. “Dottie mentioned there’d been a bit of a rift. I’m going to let the two of you work this out.” Gwen turns to leave, but Lolly grabs her back.
“Don’t go, Mum. I can barely think straight. I need support.”
“Have you called her?” I see my phone is in her pocket.
“No.” When she shakes her head, tendrils of her hair come loose from her braid and stick to her tear-stained cheek. I wish to draw my finger along that cheek, to free the hair from it. But I do not dare touch her.
“You should. Tell her what you saw. About the picture. Ask Juliette what happened…”
“Juliette? Juliette Parkinson? My friend, Juliette?”
Yes! Yes! This is how you prove the negative! At last, the world breaks in my favor: Juliette called Gwen when we were on the penthouse roof. It was she who secured me this job.
“You know her?” Lolly’s voice has returned to the mouse sound she was making before, her eyes darting back and forth between me and her mother.
“Sweetie, she’s the absolute bomb! I adore her! She couldn’t say enough good things about Mariano. She’s the reason I hired him. And, of course, she was right. He’s the star around whom all contracts rotate. The eye candy that has them eating out of my hand! I just got another massive order from Harrods. They’re going to carry my summer line!”
A battle rages across Lolly’s face. She doesn’t want to accuse me of sleeping with Juliette in front of her mother, but I need to clear my name, and Gwen speaking on my behalf might do that for me. This is perfect. She will give an account of what didn’t happen on that roof. An impartial observer— Oh, no. She’s not impartial. She’s just said as much. I must remain silent and allow Lolly to take this wherever she needs to take it.
“I hate the fact that we have to pimp him out. Especially withthatstuff.” Lolly’s fingers rake through Mr. Wiggin’s fur.
“I think that’s one for him to decide, don’t you?” Gwen turns to me, wreathed in smiles. She expects me to take her side because she has—as the English have it—buttered my bread. But I have made a silent vow to only speak the truth from now until Lolly is eternally mine.
“I have some misgivings about the materials.” It’s not that I want to side with Lolly. It’s that I too have principles, morals. “I agree that using pangolin and emu is unethical.”
Gwen frowns. “I think you’ve both missed a crucial part of the campaign.”
I have no idea what she means.
“The materials are all synthetic. Lab made. They feel real, look real. Hell, for all I know they smell real, but I’m not going to hound some animal to extinction. Who do you think I am?”
Lolly’s mouth drops open. “They’re allimitation?”
“Of course!” Gwen acts as though this should have been obvious from the outset. “I guess I should be pleased you couldn’t tell. Though I prefer we usefaux, if we must say anything at all.”
Lolly bursts into a fresh round of tears and throws her free arm around her mother’s neck. “Thank you, Mummy! Thank you!”
Gwen steers her daughter down the corridor, crooning at her while she sobs. Taking her where, I do not know.
Which still leaves the matter of me being a liar in the mix, but there was no way I would infringe on that moment.
I have faith. Lolly will see me. The truth will come out. I know it.
ONE CALL TO END IT ALL
Mariano Arias. The Great House. The Cotswolds, England.
The great hall is, once again, packed with guests, though this time I’m dressed in a subdued vampire costume, albeit one without the false teeth—I need to be able to speak this evening. Pippa has charged me with “one last push to make this deal happen,” which is a challenge given that my brain is on fire for Lolly, who is nowhere to be seen. I cannot blame her, but if she does not make an appearance tonight—
I try to steady myself. But love is a kind of madness, a fact to which poets and musicians have long attested. Still, nothing I have read or heard begins to scratch the surface of this fizzing, popping, jumbled wildness that fills my veins. To be away from her is an agony of a thousand scorpions; to think I may never make this right is to enter a ring of hell dedicated only to me. But now that I know what drives her fear—what’s at the heart of her hatred for all dissembling—my next steps are simple, as Mamá said they would be. I have what it takes to right this wrong. I have time. I can be patient. My passion is the kind that can simmer and only become more clarified, more intense.
The crowd ebbs and flows around me—conversations about nothing, and laughter that could never ignite my soul. Even The Trunchbull’s outfit—a gray 1972 Olympics shirt, cinched together with a huge, leather belt—which pokes fun at the nickname we didn’t know she knew—cannot lift my mood.
“Mariano!” Pippa adjusts the quiver of arrows on her shoulder and smooths the feather in her cap. I may be wrong, but I believe my aristocratic friend has come to the feast dressed as Robin Hood, which is its own kind of brilliant comedy. “Ready to pave the way?”
Why does she need me for this? I never thought to ask. Alan wants to make the deal every bit as much asthe foreigner.It’s not like they require me to be their eye candy the way Gwen does.
