Chapter 1
‘I’m not sure about that hat,’ Oxana says.
‘It’s not a hat,’ Eve murmurs, turning her head this way and that in front of the mirror. ‘It’s a fascinator.’
‘You look as if you’re under attack from a swarm of bees.’
‘That’s exactly the look I’m going for. What are you wearing, anyway?’
‘Not sure.’ Oxana, naked and bed-haired, stares vaguely out of the bedroom window. ‘What do you think Balice and Bili will be wearing?’
Eve selects a lipstick. ‘Balice will look feminine and expensive. Pink or oyster or taupe, something in that register.’
‘She’s not getting married in white, I’m guessing.’
Eve looks at her sideways.
‘And Bili?’
‘I have literally no idea.’ She starts to apply her lipstick. ‘Angel, put some clothes on. We’re going to be late.’
‘I was hoping to go for a run. I’ve only done twenty miles this week, and Maxim cancelled our last Systema session. I’m feeling stale.’
‘You can go for a run this evening. Right now, you need to get dressed.’
‘I won’t be able to move this evening. I’ll be stuffed with wedding food.’
‘You shouldn’t be so greedy. Can’t you control yourself?’
Oxana doesn’t respond. She pads over to the wardrobe. ‘What do you think about the matador jacket? I look amazing in that.’
‘No,’ Eve says. ‘Too much. It isn’t a competition to outshine the bride. Or brides.’ She presses her lips together carefully, and pouts into the mirror. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Mmm.’
‘If Balice had asked you to marry her when you two were…’ She blots her lips with a tissue. ‘What would you have said?’
‘I’d have said no. Obviously.’ Oxana stares vacantly into the wardrobe. ‘I wish you’d let all that go, babe. It was just sex. And it was just, like, twice.’
‘Sex is never just sex.’
‘Sometimes it is. And Balice and Bili are our friends. Pretty much our only friends, actually. Tell me what to wear.’
Eve smiles. ‘You’ve never asked me that in all the time I’ve known you.’
‘I’m saying it now. I want to strike the right note.’
‘Then think pretty, simple and summery. And get a move on. The car’ll be here any minute.’
‘So where’s the wedding?’ Oxana asks, stretching her arms languorously above her head.
Eve ignores her.
‘Where? Tell me.’
‘It’s in Hampshire somewhere. Apparently, Bili wanted Westminster Abbey, but Balice put her foot down.’
Oxana walks across the room and presses herself suggestively against Eve’s back. ‘You actually look very cute in that fascinator.’
‘Get off me. And get dressed.’
The drive from Eve and Oxana’s flat to the Hampshire village of Lychfield takes a couple of hours.
It’s a blue-skied June day, and Oxana’s glad to be wearing a light cotton sundress, resplendent though the matador outfit is.
She and Eve sit at opposite ends of the back seat, their fingers loosely intertwined.
Oxana watches Eve covertly. She’s sitting upright, dark-eyed and unblinking, with the glossy black feathers dancing in front of her face.
In that moment, she is so heart-rendingly beautiful that Oxana has to blink and look away.
She leans back against the seat and closes her eyes.
Imagine us getting married. I know that Eve’s thinking about it, especially today.
How could she not be? But we’re not Balice and Bili.
Our lives are dangerous, and barely our own.
We can’t plan, we go where life takes us.
And there’s so much unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, stuff between us.
Most of it, I admit, caused by me. I lie to her constantly, and it’s always the same lie.
That I’m as human as she is. That I have a warm, beating heart, like she does.
That I want the things that she wants. Us just to be us, forever together.
Of course I want that too, in theory, but I can’t picture it.
She can see years and decades ahead, but I’m locked into the here and now.
Into the present moment, with all its dangers and temptations.
Balice is like that too. She lives inside her elaborate plots and deceptions with such spiderish intensity that she’s blind to what’s happening outside them.
MI6 presumably realise this and see her both as an inspired strategist and a massive potential liability.
I found her very easy to manipulate. A warm evening in France, a lingering glance or two, and she was mine.
The night that followed was more intimate and emotional than I’ve ever admitted to Eve, which is why I treated Balice so viciously thereafter.
Her response was to try and hurt me by ordering an ‘E’ Squadron sniper to shoot Eve, and instead, unknowingly, I took the bullet.
The truth about that night never came out, or Balice’s career would have ended right there.
I don’t know much about MI6’s Special Forces increment, but I’m pretty sure it’s not meant for settling girly sex tiffs.
That’s all water under the bridge, of course, and we’re all the best of friends now.
Bili’s the best thing that ever happened to Balice.
They met when Balice was honey-trapped by the Twelve, with Bili as the bait.
It wasn’t the ideal first date, but somehow the two of them made it work.
And today here we are, dressed and scented for a summer wedding.
Me and Eve? Marriage is a vow of commitment before the world, but we’re not of the world.
We live outside its value systems. I was always a killer, always damned, and I always knew it.
Eve knew it too but still walked out of her life and her marriage to be with me.
What ceremony, what vow, could come close to a leap of faith like that?
‘Is today going to be weird?’ Oxana murmurs.
Eve smiles. ‘Probably. But this place is so lovely. Do you know it’s Midsummer Day?’
They’re in a country churchyard. Bees are humming amongst the centuries-old gravestones. Daisies and bluebells are growing wild, and the cow parsley is waist-high. ‘So let’s be pagans,’ Oxana says. ‘Let’s stay out here. It’s packed in the church. We’re probably too late to get a place.’
‘Angel, they’re our friends.’
‘I know. And here we are.’
‘Mmm.’ Eve lowers herself onto a white stone slab, its inscription long worn away. She regards Oxana warily. ‘Wouldn’t you like this peace and quiet for us?’
‘Mmm.’ Oxana seats herself beside her. ‘Maybe when we’re dead.’
‘What about when we’re older?’
‘I can’t imagine it.’
‘Really not?’
‘No.’ The tip of Oxana’s tongue reaches for the scar on her upper lip. ‘I mean… I literally can’t imagine it. My mind doesn’t work like that. I can’t fast forward like you can.’
Eve takes Oxana’s hand, folds her fingers one by one into her palm, and kisses them. ‘You really are the oddest person.’
‘I’m just different.’
‘If you’re so different,’ Eve says, as Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’, played on a wheezy pipe organ, issues from the open door of the church, ‘why did you choose to run off with conventional, boring, married me?’
‘You noticed me. You wanted to hunt me down. You were ready to kill me, if necessary. It’s very sexy, that level of interest.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Plus you were bored, and in my experience there’s almost nothing a bored woman won’t do.’
Eve smiles. ‘You’ve never asked why I fancied you.’
Oxana closes her eyes. ‘I’ve never needed to.’
The minutes pass. Swifts whirl and dip in the grass-scented air.
From inside the church comes the murmur of voices, smatters of laughter, and the sound of Anglican hymns rendered with gusto, if not expertise.
Finally, to the strains of ‘O Perfect Love’, Balice and Bili march from the church arm in arm, smiling radiantly.
Balice is dressed pretty much as Eve guessed she would be, in mid-length oyster-coloured silk.
Bili is dashing in a blue and white sailor’s uniform.
‘Wow,’ Oxana murmurs. ‘Strong look.’
When photographs have been taken at the church door, the guests are directed to a manor house.
A marquee stands on the front lawn, inside which a string quartet is playing.
There are gilt chairs, linen tablecloths and lavish arrangements of peonies and roses.
As they wait in line to greet the brides, Eve and Oxana survey their fellow guests.
‘Who’s that woman over there?’ Oxana asks. ‘The blonde one, looking at you like she knows you.’
‘That’s the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. We know each other by sight, although God knows what she thinks of me.’
‘She’s got pretty eyes. Like sea-glass.’
‘That’s probably why she got the job.’
They’ve reached Balice and Bili. Kisses and congratulations are bestowed, and outfits praised. ‘You both look fabulous,’ Eve says. She looks around her. ‘And all this is amazing.’
‘You next, maybe?’ Balice glances at her speculatively.
‘It’s certainly a thought.’ She smiles. ‘Right now, we’re doing up our flat. You must come round when we’ve finished.’
‘You look so cute,’ Oxana tells Bili. ‘Is that a real naval uniform?’
‘Yes, it’s mine. I’m in the Bulgarian Submarine Reserves.’
Due to the peculiar rules governing upper-crust English weddings, which ordain that unmarried couples must be split up, Oxana and Eve are directed to tables on opposite sides of the marquee.
Oxana is swiftly surrounded by an admiring swarm of older men, while twenty metres away, Eve finds herself seated next to the woman with the sea-glass eyes.
‘Mrs Polastri, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Eve forces a smile, realising that the woman’s name has completely escaped her. She looks for a name card, but it’s no longer there.
‘We knew each other a little, way back when,’ the woman says.