Page 127 of The Island of Lost Girls

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He waits until the day after the official mourning period is done before he releases the hounds. His lust for payback must corrode his very soul, but even the duke knows how it would look to send in the attack dogs while the women are still in black.

And it gives him a month in which to plan.

When Luna Micaleff arrives in the castle limousine, you can feel the fear. Everyone feels it. Nothing good ever comes of a visit from Luna Micaleff. People are used to seeing the car by the Princess Tatiana, but, when it enters the dock and draws up outside the Re del Pesce, a strange silence falls over the area. The clatter of the men unloading the boats, the rattle of goods carts crossing the cobbles, the bangs and thunder from the old warehouse that’s converting to a new customs outpost/ police station combined, the to-and-fro of shouted greeting and response: everything stops. It’s so quiet, they can hear the buildings rise up along the cliffs.

Mercedes grinds to a halt halfway across the terasa, plates in hand, as the duke’s secretary gets out of the limo, briefcase in hand, spectacles already on the bridge of his nose to show his serious intent. The women who have gathered every day at the family table, offering hands when hands are needed, fall quiet as well. And Larissa, halfway through her three o’clock lunch, stands up, takes off her apron and walks, stroking her hair as if to tidy it, to the entrance to greet him.

‘Do you need me to come in with you?’ calls Paulina Marino.

Larissa shakes her head and they go up the street, to the house entrance.

Paulina picks up the apron and takes Larissa’s place on the floor. Rubs a hand between Mercedes’ shoulderblades as she passes her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘You mother’s a strong woman. Whatever it is, she’ll handle it.’

Mercedes doesn’t reply. She feels as though the earth is about to swallow them up.

There can’t be worse, she thinks. It’s not possible. I’ve lost a sister and a father.

‘We just keep our heads down and we carry on,’ says Paulina. ‘There are going to be changes, Mercedes. Trust me, it will get better.’

It doesn’t. It gets worse.

Everyone knows what happens when a leaseholder dies. But there hasn’t been a divorce on La Kastellana in anyone’s memory. Wives disappear. They don’t just hang about. Wives disappear and the husbands keep their leases, and the grandparents take the children and life carries on. A divorce? Nobody knows. And in the end the duke decides.

Best not to humiliate a landowner in a public place. It will never end well.

‘He can only keep one lease,’ says Larissa. ‘This one’s reverting in a month.’

They gasp.

‘Can’t you take it over?’ asks Paulina.

‘Sure,’ she says.

‘Well, that’s okay, then, no?’

‘It’s a hundred thousand American dollars,’ she says.

Shawls tighten round shoulders, lips clamp.

‘In a month?’

Larissa nods.

‘But how will you make a living?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Restaurant is all I know.’

‘What about Sergio?’

Larissa pulls a face. ‘What about him?’

Mercedes’ head buzzes. The cemetery? Could we build a café there? But where would we live? And nobody just passes through the cemetery. There’s no natural footfall. We will die. There is no way out of this.

Sergio appears in the evening. Stands in the entrance, looking smug. He’s had his hair cut at the new salon in the Heliogabalus Hotel, and he’s grown a moustache that looks just perfect with the turquoise satin shirt he’s bought.

‘You can still come to Mediterraneo,’ he says. ‘I haven’t closed the door.’