Page 117 of The Island of Lost Girls

43 | Robin

Robin is lying on her bed, trying to summon the energy to go back out onto those hot, crowded streets and start again, when she hears footsteps coming up the stairs. Multiple footsteps. And then a rap on the door.

She sits up.

‘Sinjora?’ Sinjora Hernandez’s voice. ‘You have visitors.’

Her heart leaps. News? Has someone found her? Have they come to tell me? Is it over?

Gemma.

‘One moment,’ she calls. Hurriedly pulls on a pair of jeans beneath her cotton nightie. Pulls a cardigan over the top and opens the door.

Sinjora Hernandez glares at her as though she suspects her of shitting in the bathroom basin. To her right is the uniformed xandarm who was so unhelpful behind the station desk the other day. To her left, sweating and panting from the steep stairwell, the Chief of Police.

She’s dead, she thinks, and feels her knees start to give way.

The police chief breaks the silence.

‘A word, sinjora,’ he says, and walks into her bedroom without awaiting permission.

Robin grips the door to steady herself as they push past. The wave of dizziness that hit her when she first saw them is dissipating more slowly than it’s taken for reality to kick in. I’m in trouble, she thinks.

She can’t decide whether to close the door. She leaves it open.

The police chief drops his meaty thighs down on the mattress. The uniform goes over to the window, looks out at the street, then opens the wardrobe and starts raking methodically through her clothes.

‘Now, hang on a sec—’

The police chief raises a hand, commanding silence. Sinjora Hernandez folds her arms and watches, her mouth a straight line.

‘Mrs Hanson,’ says the COP, ‘we need to clarify your position, I think.’

Robin feels chilled inside. She waits, silently,

‘Last night,’ he says, ‘you went to the Temple, no? The nightclub?’

Robin nods. ‘I was—’

‘Our duqa’s representative has been in touch,’ he interrupts. ‘He is very angry. He doesn’t expect to be … ’ he thinks for a moment ‘ … accosted on his own property. Or have his toilets vandalised.’

‘I—’ she begins. The hand goes up again.

‘Sinjora, you need to understand. You are not in your own country now.’

I do. I so do.

‘Our duqa is a very important man,’ he says.

‘I know! That’s why I—’

The hand again.

The uniformed cop finds what he’s looking for. Pulls her remaining flyers from the chest of drawers and waves them at his boss.

‘Moy bjen!’ exclaims the boss. Rattles off a burst of Kastellani. His subordinate nods, solemnly, and starts to rip them up.

‘Hey!’