Page 11 of The Island of Lost Girls

5 | Mercedes

Felix is far from pleased. He throws the rope he’s been winding down and curses.

‘Fucksake, Mercedes.’

Oh, don’t. Please don’t.

‘Seriously. She treats you like a slave.’

She bites her lip.

‘Sorry,’ he says, and picks up the rope again, fatalistic.

‘It’s okay,’ she says. The Meade family’s expectations have cast a shadow over the whole of their marriage. At the very least he deserves to sound off a bit every now and then.

‘But you’ve got to tell her. Even if she kicks off. You don’t owe her anything.’

‘We hope.’

That contract. That bloody contract. Compound interest: the gift that keeps on giving.

‘You need to face up to her. I can’t live like this much longer.’

She looks at him stiffly. ‘Is that a threat?’

Felix sighs. ‘No. But it’s a shitty way to live, Mercedes.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Always apologising. It feels as if her entire life has been an apology.

‘There are a lot of jobs where people have to live in,’ she says. ‘You know that.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ he says. ‘And I still think it’s shitty. I just want you to come home.’

‘And I want to come home too,’ she says. She misses their little bedroom more every day. Misses waking up with him in the dark, the quiet shuffle as they make their coffee and drink it in the garden as the sun colours the horizon.

I miss everything, she thinks. All of it. I miss having children. I miss … just the ease of talking through the day, or not. Of being able to ask his opinion without having to make an appointment. The little bits of news we miss because they’ve been and gone before we see each other. Sex on a whim. Holding hands. Not having to lock the door when I have a shower. Working side-by-side and joking our way through the tiredness. I miss my husband.

He goes back onto the boat and starts hefting the creels. Holds out a basket of shiny sea bass. ‘Take these, can you? Dad’s coming down in a minute. Might as well have it ready for him.’

She takes the basket, lays it down on the dock, turns back for the next. ‘So, she wants lobsters.’

‘Of course she does,’ he says. ‘When for?’

‘Friday.’

‘Right.’

‘We could go out Thursday morning, maybe? Together?’

‘Oh, good. So you’re still coming down Wednesday night, then?’

She nods. Takes a wide, flat basket of plaice and sole and flounder. The boats are doing well this year, the restaurants up the hill paying top dollar since the Source Local movement caught on. The yacht people have taken to asking, signalling their environmental credentials as they sail their diesel palaces around the world at fifty knots an hour, and what the yacht people want, the yacht people get.

‘I’ve got to go, darling,’ she says. ‘I need to beg the florist for roses.’

Felix pauses and puts his hands on his hips. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’

‘Always,’ she says, and gives him a smile.

He steps over to the edge of the boat, leans down and gives her a kiss on the lips. In public, for all the world to see. Even after twenty years, she can never get over the thrill of that.