Page 112 of The Island of Lost Girls

And every day, because the boys are there, the girls come too. The Re del Pesce is quite the place with the teens of yacht world. All the little butterflies. The pretty things. Pretty daughters of beautiful mothers, all looking less like their fathers as their surgeons create the daughters they always wanted. Tatiana’s nose has halved in size over the winter. Mercedes wonders if they’ll ever be able to do the same for her jaw.

But whatever they can do to change the outside, the personality will always be there.

She comes every afternoon, little bag dangling from her crooked arm as she descends the gangplank from the Princess Tatiana. Sometimes she will be followed by a gaggle of blondes, but most of the time she comes by herself. Always looking for boys, the way the boys are looking for Donatella. And, when she sees people she knows, she simply sits down without asking. And the boys generally ignore her, but they don’t send her away. They’ve all known each other for always, the yacht people.

Mercedes wonders if Tatiana would be so tolerated if she had a father who didn’t have control of the marina berths.

One day, Mercedes tries an experiment. When she approaches the table to take Hugo-Sveta-Christophe-Alexa-Kristina-Sebastian’s orders, she puts on a wide smile and greets her.

‘Hello, Tatiana! How are you?’

Tatiana, halfway through an anecdote, stops for a second. Gives her a ‘you’re interrupting me’ look. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll have a Coke. None of that Diet stuff.’ And she turns back and resumes her anecdote with the very word at which she broke off. And Hugo-Sveta-Christophe-Alexa-Kristina-Sebastian look Mercedes up and down with a glance and she knows her place. She slinks away, tail between her legs.

Donatella comes out of the kitchen and her face falls.

‘What’s up with you?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ says Mercedes. She doesn’t really understand, herself. Why does it matter? I longed to be free of the cow. So why am I upset?

‘Oh. Princess Nut-Nut’s in, is she?’

Mercedes rolls her eyes.

‘Right,’ says Donatella. ‘We’ll see about that.’

‘No, don’t,’ says Mercedes. ‘Please.’

‘Bullshit,’ says Donatella.

Mercedes hovers on the edge of earshot. Please don’t, Donatella. You don’t know what she’s like when she thinks she’s been slighted.

But Donatella is a bit drunk on her own power lately. She’s forgotten who she is.

‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,’ she says.

The table looks up. The girls chorus a hello and the boys mumble, unable, when the Goddess is actually present, to meet her eye. They’re younger, this crowd, than the teens she met at the party, and easier to subjugate. Another couple of years and their bumptiousness will dominate, but by then they’ll be up at the Heliogabalus, and they won’t be Donatella’s problem.

‘So what’s everybody having?’ she asks, cheerfully. Gets out her notepad and waits.

‘We’ve ordered,’ says Tatiana.

‘Have you? What did you want?’

‘Coke.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Coke,’ says Tatiana, and adds a ‘you moron’ with her eyes.

Donatella shakes her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

Tatiana sighs. ‘I said I wanted a Coke. Coca-Cola? Capisce?’

A hush has descended over the table. The boys gaze in awe at Donatella’s magnificent balcon, and the look in the girls’ eyes is another level of awe altogether. Nobody’s ever stood up to Tatiana before, thinks Mercedes. It wasn’t just us. Even the yacht people are scared of her.

‘Ohhhh!’ says Donatella. ‘You wanted to order a Coke! You know there’s a word that goes with that, right?’

‘What?’ Tatiana sounds appalled, as though someone’s asked her to wipe their arse.