Page 123 of The Island of Lost Girls

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Hindsight is 20/20. How do you know, at thirteen years old, that a farewell to you is a farewell to life?

‘Mercedes?’

She’s so close to sleep, she barely hears her the first time.

‘Mercedes?’

Mercedes rolls over, peers through the darkness at where her sister sits, knees drawn up in her white nightdress.

‘What is it?’

‘I need to tell you something.’

‘What?’

‘You need to promise not to tell.’

‘Tell what?’

‘Promise.’

Foggy with sleep, she pushes herself up against the pillows. ‘Okay. I promise. What is it?’

‘I can’t carry on like this,’ says Donatella. In the half-light, with the shadows on her face, she looks like a ghost already.

‘Donita,’ she says, ‘it won’t always be like this. It’ll pass. Everything passes eventually.’

‘Not this,’ says Donatella. ‘You know that. I’m marked for life. There’s nothing here for me now.’

‘There’s me, kerida. You know that. There will always be me. And Mama.’

She doesn’t mention their father. She knows as well as her sister does that he won’t be there for anyone.

Donatella raises a weary hand and rubs it on her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I have to go.’

Mercedes jumps.

‘No! No, Donita, please!’

‘Mersa,’ says Donatella, ‘I don’t have a choice. You know that. It’s all over. I have no future, now.’

Mercedes starts to cry. ‘But what will I do without you?’ she says. ‘Donita, what will I do?’

That big, cold, empty world. She thinks of her beautiful sister, stepping off the ferry in some unknown place. No one who knows her. No one who loves her, forever and ever. I can’t, she thinks. I can’t bear this. They’ve destroyed us.

‘I can’t live here without you,’ she says. ‘What will I do?’

Donatella gets off her bed and crawls in beside her.

‘You’re my brave sister,’ she says. ‘You’ll be fine, in the end. You’ll be sad for a while, but you’ll forget about me. You will. I’ll be gone, and life will go on, and one day you’ll be happy, I promise.’

‘I won’t. I won’t. How can I be, when you’re not here?’

Donatella is quiet. Holds her close and lets her breathe.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she says. ‘I will always miss you. You’ve been a good sister, Mersa. The best. Maybe we’ll see each other again some day. But I have to go. You must know that. I have to.’