The Moth

A gilded cocoon of champagne and orchid-scented soirées imprisons Lucy Gillam, a Manhattan sybarite whose laughter ricochets off marble staircases like careless silver coins. When fortune-hunter Adrian swans into her ballroom, the camera drinks in her pupils dilating—two black mirrors reflecting a hunger deeper than wealth. Their wedding is a cathedral of stained-glass lies; every vow fractures under the heft of his hidden debts. Post-partum, Lucy’s boudoir becomes a debtor’s court: silk swaddling clothes traded for IOUs, lullabies drowned by clinking ledgers. Adrian’s mistress—an ex-chorus girl with cigarette embers for eyes—waltzes into frame, trailing absinthe and ruin. The suicide lands like a muted trumpet blast: a body on damask, a lipstick smear on a farewell note. Gossip columns convulse; the widower inherits suspicion along with the widow’s remaining jewels. Through corridors of gaslight and grief, Lucy sheds chiffon illusions, stitching a new skin from the coarse wool of accountability.