I only turned away for a moment, to check that all the
guests were happy, their glasses full, and that the buffet held no empty trays. Even as I turned back to answer Evelyn's
latest witty remark with a light hearted bon mot of my own, I felt the ripples
of silence race across the function room.
Evelyn's face was before me, but no longer the centre point
of my vision. Evelyn's waiting smile
faltered and her gaze flickered from side to side as she began to register the
change in the conversational tone. The
mood had gone from exuberant to expectant in the blink of an eye.
I tried to smooth my own expression but it was too
late. She had noticed that my own focus
was no longer on her gorgeous face, but had shifted onto a line that passed
just over her left shoulder. For a
second or two she looked annoyed, then a brief look of confusion preceded one
of open-mouthed shock as her eyes focused on the mirror behind me, and she saw
what I had been staring at.
Genevieve D'Amoretto, my famously missing, presumed-dead-in-a-boating-explosion
fiancé Genevieve, was standing just within the main arch. Her eyes locked onto mine. She smiled, or, at least, the left side of
her face smiled – I could not tell what the right side was doing behind the
bejewelled mask that concealed it. The
gems in her green evening gown highlighted the flawless skin on her left
shoulder as well as the burn scars on her right.
Genevieve strode at me through the crowd like a shark
through herring as suited men spread out along the walls to either side of the
entry arch. Four such men flanked her
father, Armand D'Amoretto, as he prowled towards me in Genevieve's wake. He was not smiling, and I knew that
Genevieve's version of that fateful night had not matched the woeful tale of
loss I had offered the police and media after I'd been pulled from a sea full
of charred, floating wreckage. I
wondered if I would live long enough to find out how she had survived.
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