Chapter 42 Margot
Chapter 42
Margot
I wait inside my car, twisting my neck and glancing nervously through each of the windows until I’m assured I’ve not been spotted by anyone familiar. Now that I know Liv uses this road to drive home, I need to be more careful. And that’s not the only reason my vigilance detector is on full alert.
I give the road outside my car one last look before I exit and make my way into the Turkish restaurant. It’s only just opened for the night and, aside from the staff, I’m alone. I order a vodka and orange from the bar and flick through my phone as I wait. Nicu is currently in Stockport on his tour and the kids are doing their homework at friends’ houses.
I check the calendar on my phone and realise filming starts soon for the Help! I’m In The House From Hell! series. My jaw tightens at the prospect, but the money will give me more financial independence from my husband.
My company is late. I don’t care that it’s only by five minutes. I despise tardiness. Unless I’m the one who’s running behind. I’d have checked my watch if I’d been able to find the damn thing when I searched for it earlier. I’m misplacing more and more things lately, which I’m reluctant to admit is becoming less of an irritation and more of a worry. I pass the time by using my phone to go online and search for the symptoms of early-onset dementia. I stop reading when I find symptoms I share with victims of that disease. But what if ... no, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I’d rather be dead. I put the device face down on the bar.
Another seven minutes pass and a handful of diners are being shown to their seats by a waitress. One of the customers catches my eye. Large, hooped gold earrings, hand and neck tattoos, stripper stilettos, and a midi dress that’s a size too small for someone with the arms of a mariner. Somewhere out there is a street corner waiting patiently for its hooker to return. She has the same gaudy dress sense as Nicu’s ex-partner. I whisper the name, ‘ Ioana .’
If there has ever been a person put on this earth for me to despise more than Ioana, I have yet to find them. Later this month it’ll be the eleventh anniversary of her fifteen-storey plunge from her apartment balcony.
And all these years later, I remain the only person in the world who knows I was there that night.
I’d taken my cue from the movies and waited in the street outside her building until someone else exited the key-coded doors. Then I slipped in unnoticed before they shut, and in my large coat, hair tied up and tucked into a baseball cap with the brim lowered, I made my way into the lobby, sure my face wouldn’t be caught by CCTV. The last thing I needed was Ioana selling stills to a newspaper alongside a made-up story of how I turned up at her flat uninvited and threatened her. Because that wasn’t what I planned to do. Quite the opposite, in fact.
‘What the hell do you want?’ she snapped as she opened her door to me.
Her Romanian accent was stronger than Nicu’s. His was more melodic, but hers was always sharper, the words exiting her mouth like rapid-fire bullets being spat out from a machine gun.
She flicked ash from the cigarette in her hand on to the bare wood floor. Behind her, the room was thick with smoke, which explained why Nicu changed their kids into fresh clothing every time he picked them up from there.
‘I’d like to talk to you,’ I replied nervously.
‘Haven’t you got better things to do, like stealing husbands from their wives?’
‘You and Nicu were never married.’
‘We were as good as.’
‘Look Ioana, I’d rather not do this in the corridor. Can I come in?’
‘What for?’
‘I want to listen to you.’
Her surprise was evident by her short, sharp snort. Then she turned and made her way inside, leaving the door open for me to follow. I closed it behind me.
The rental apartment she’d once shared with Nicu was in disarray. Empty food wrappers, dirty clothes and children’s toys were strewn across the floor or piled on to two sofas. One bedroom door was open, and the other, where I assumed a toddler Frankie and baby Tommy were sleeping, was closed.
Ioana and I were standing opposite one another like boxers eyeing each other up and down at a press conference. Only I wasn’t there to fight.
‘Whether you like it or not, Nicu and I are getting married tomorrow,’ I began calmly. ‘And I am genuinely sorry for the hurt it’s caused you.’
‘Oh please. You are only marrying him for public rehabilitation.’
It wasn’t far from the truth. But I was also in love with Nicu.
‘We’re getting married because I want to spend the rest of my life with him,’ I said. ‘And that means you and I are going to be in one another’s lives for a long time to come. So I need you to tell me what I can do to make things easier for us all to coexist. Doesn’t this negative energy exhaust you? Because I know it’s draining me.’
‘It’s fuelling me,’ she snorted.
I balled my fists. What had Nicu ever seen in this witch? She must have been an Olympic champion in the bedroom.
‘It can’t fuel you forever,’ I replied. ‘Can’t we find a compromise?’
‘Like what? We share him? I have him weekdays, you have him weekends? Here’s a better idea: why don’t I drive up to your little party tomorrow and we can both marry him?’
‘You know what it would mean to him to have his kids at the wedding. Would you be willing to reconsider?’
She threw her head back and laughed.
‘So that’s why you’re here. To beg me to let his kids watch him promise to throw his life away on a curvǎ .’
I didn’t know what a curvǎ was, but I assumed it didn’t translate into ‘beautiful bride’.
‘No,’ I said, but once again, she’d assumed correctly.
Of course it would sadden him not to have his children with him on his big day, which is why, without his knowledge, I’d taken a black cab across London to beg Ioana to change her mind. Personally, I wasn’t fussed if the kids were going to be there or not. But I did want to make my husband-to-be happy.
‘What can I do to make your life easier?’ I asked.
‘Die.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Apart from die.’
‘There is no apart from die,’ she smirked. ‘That’s it. That’s all I wish from you.’
‘How can you hate me that much?’
She walked towards a Juliet balcony and flicked her cigarette over the side, and immediately lit another.
‘Actually, hating you is the easy part,’ she said as I followed her. ‘It takes a lot less effort than you might imagine.’
I hadn’t smoked in nine years, but a few minutes in her company was enough to reactivate the craving. I took one from the packet without asking and lit it.
‘Tell me what else you think of me,’ I said.
‘What are you, a fucking psychiatrist?’
She laughed, but there was no humour in her tone.
‘I told you I was here to listen, so now’s your chance. Get it off your chest, woman to woman.’
‘You are no woman,’ she jibed. ‘Someone like you could never understand what you’ve done.’
‘And who exactly do you think I am?’
‘You’re a moroaic? ,’ she replied.
Another word lost on me.
She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a ghost, a type of vampire in Romanian folklore. They use their charms to steal the milk from cattle, leaving them empty. You do the same to people. You take what is not yours because you can and because you’re greedy. Nicu was, and still is, the love of my life. And then you, the moroaic? , appear and steal him away from me and drain him of all he felt for me. I bet you thought I’d have faded into the background by now until eventually I disappeared. Well, Margot, that is not going to happen. Ever. Because I am a vindictive bitch and I will spend the rest of my life making sure you two can never be happy together. I’m going to make it hard for Nicu to see his children, I am going to sell every story I can about you, I will publicly criticise all you do and I will ensure people never forget what you did to my family. I am going to be your worst nightmare until I destroy any love that might remain between you and my Nicu. And then you will know how it feels to be me. To be left with nothing.’
I took one last deep drag from my cigarette as her words sank in, then stubbed it out on the floor.
And in the split second it took for Ioana to look away, I moved like lightning.
A voice comes from behind, snapping me back to the present.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he says.
‘You’re late,’ I snip as he approaches me and apologises again.
I finish my vodka and orange in two gulps and set an alarm on my phone. I need to be home in an hour and a half with no one any the wiser as to where I have been.
Or who I have been with.