Page 136 of The Island of Lost Girls

56 | Robin

Robin feels a hundred years old. Worn out by sleeplessness, pressed down by gravity until the strength has left her body. I want to die, she thinks. I do. At least if I were a hundred years old, I would know that death was coming soon.

I’ll never find her. This was my last chance, and I’ll never find her now. My little girl. Wherever she is, she is gone from me. I’ve got what I deserved.

It’s worse than a death, she thinks, this not-knowing. A life sentence. No more than I deserve. No more than we deserve. Me and Patrick, tied together forever by a child we didn’t love enough. I shall go back to London and tell him that we’ve lost her, and he’ll look at me as though he doesn’t understand. But I do. I understand. We were so bound up in ourselves and our petty resentments that we forgot all about her. And now she’s gone, and I will never be able to say how sorry I am.

The crowds are thick coming off the ferry, but the queue to board is short. Not many people wanting to leave the island today, with the ducal celebrations spreading all the way down to the town tonight. Another set of firework frames, larger even than the ones for St James’s Day, have risen in record time on the top of the harbour wall, and the dock is lined with trestle tables so the peasants can feast.

Robin shows her ticket and her passport at the kiosk and gets in line to board. Another glorious day. Sea smooth as satin, sky high and blue and free of blemish. She looks back at Kastellana Town. I think you were probably a nice place once, she thinks. Somewhere where life was simple and people looked after each other. A community. I think I’d have been happy if Gemma had come here then.

They shuffle forward. She bends to pick up her bag, turns round to look back one more time and finds herself face to face with Laurence Viner. He recognises her, and his usually bland expression changes. Shock, she thinks. He wasn’t expecting to see me.

‘You’re not leaving?’ he asks. ‘Surely?’

Robin nods. ‘Sort of have to,’ she says.

‘No!’ He seems genuinely upset. ‘No! Robin, you can’t!’

Why’s he so bothered? she wonders. I’ve not seen him since that day at the Heliogabalus Hotel. He can’t be that bothered.

‘I don’t really have a choice,’ she tells him. ‘The police have basically told me to fuck off.’

He frowns. Steps out of the queue and beckons her to follow. She hesitates. The prospect of having to start again right from the back is unappealing. But she follows anyway. He looks so concerned that she can’t resist. He knows something. She can’t let her daughter down for the sake of a queue.

‘Robin … ’ He speaks urgently. But quietly, as though he’s afraid of being overheard. ‘You can’t leave. I can’t tell you any detail. I shouldn’t be telling you anything at all. But you need to trust me on this.’

Robin’s brain whirls. ‘But you’re leaving?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I need to be as far away as possible tonight. I’m sorry. I can’t … look … ’

He reaches into an inside pocket and produces a business card. Thick, stiff cardboard, discreet lettering that declares only the name of his company, his name, his telephone and email. The luxurious simplicity of the very expensive. He pulls a small retractable pencil from the same pocket and starts to scribble on the back. Robin waits. The queue shortens.

He looks up and hands her the card. She looks at the scribble, but it’s in Kastellani. But she sees the words Sra Hanson and filja perdida and understands that it’s about her.

‘You see that restaurant, over there?’ he says.

‘The Re del Pesce?’

He nods. ‘Yes. Take this to the lady there. Larissa Delia.’ He registers her doubt, pushes on. ‘She’s a good egg,’ he says. ‘Her English is pretty pants, but she’ll understand well enough. Just … trust me on this, Mrs Hanson. There will be news. Soon. She’ll give you somewhere to stay. Just wait.’

She searches his face for more, but there is none. The earnest expression drops away, the bland comes back. ‘You’ll have a marvellous time.’ He raises his voice so that it rings out across the queue. For the benefit of someone, though she’s not sure who. ‘You won’t regret it. So worth waiting for. I only wish I could stay myself.’

And he walks back to the last stub of the queue and boards the boat without a backward glance.

She fugues for a few moments, in the blazing sun with her bags around her feet. Then she sees the ticket collector gesticulating, eyebrows raised, and realises that the queue has gone.

She throws him an apologetic smile and a shake of the head, picks up her bags and marches smartly across the dock before a member of the duke’s constabulary turns up and asks why she’s still there.

Her funds have been too short for eating out, so she’s not been into the Re del Pesce, but she noticed when she handed her flyer in on the festa night that it looked sweet. Far more welcoming than the big-face eateries on the hill. Staff, all women, bustle between tables in the shade and the food smells good enough that her mouth waters. She waits politely by the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign, and a woman, hair streaked with grey and an air of melancholy that makes Robin want to hug her, approaches with a pleasant smile.

‘For how many, sinjora?’ she asks.

‘I … I was looking for Larissa Delia?’ she says.

The woman nods, gravely. ‘This is me.’

‘Ah. Ah, good. I was talking to Laurence,’ she says. ‘Laurence Viner?’