Page 137 of The Island of Lost Girls

Larissa smiles politely. ‘Ah, Mr Viner. A true friend of the Re del Pesce.’

‘He gave me this,’ Robin says, and hands her the card.

Larissa’s face drops. She reads the handwriting slowly. Not particularly literate, thinks Robin. They weren’t educating girls much here when she was school age. Then the smile returns. Inscrutable. ‘Come with me, sinjora.’

She snatches up Robin’s backpack as though it were made of feathers and walks off into the street, fishing a set of keys from her apron.

The entrance is perfunctory. A narrow corridor built to carve out a route to the stairs that doesn’t involve crossing the restaurant. A door leads through it to the left. Their footsteps echo off concrete walls and concrete stairs. It’s all very backstage.

‘Please,’ she says as she follows her host, ‘do you know what’s going on?’

Larissa doesn’t turn or pause. Just keeps walking. ‘I don’t know much. But you wait here. I think you will be glad. He send you to me because is safe.’

She stops, suddenly. Looks down at the keys in her hand. ‘Everybody knows I will keep them safe,’ she says. ‘If they come to me.’

So much unspoken. This woman is sad. She’s unbearably, unspeakably sad.

They climb on.

The upper storey is windowless and dark, a fan whirring on the landing ceiling. An oil painting of the Virgin Mary on one wall and, on the ledge over the stairs, a statue of the Botticelli Venus rising from a jungle of greenery that, given the lack of light, can only be artificial.

‘You stay in my daughter’s room,’ she says. ‘I bring you food, in a little while. Is comfortable there. Maybe you sleep some. I think maybe you not been sleeping?’

‘No,’ says Robin. ‘No, I haven’t.’

‘You rest now,’ says the woman kindly. ‘We keep you safe here. And when there is news, you will know straight away. I promise.’

She smiles once again, and for a moment her eyes fill with tears. Then she pulls her shawl tighter – some ancient self-comforting, inherited through generations – and goes to a closed door of heavy mahogany. Incongruous in this world of stippled concrete and plastic ferns, it looks as though it’s come from another house altogether.

She gives Robin a watery smile and opens the door.

The light is dim. The room is identical in size and layout to the one she’s been in all week, but this one has single beds, either side of the window. Unnecessary pink curtains inside the shutters, for decoration rather than function. Candlewick bedspreads in matching pink. A mirrored dressing table, an open cupboard in which hangs a waterfall of brightly coloured cloth. Five pairs of spike-heeled shoes that only someone young could wear on these cobbles. A mug tree from which dangles a small but gaudy collection of cheap jewellery.

Two framed photos: a pair of girls, photographed some years apart but each time enveloped in a hug, arms round necks, smiling broadly at the camera. The elder is one of those shining beauties you see from time to time in these Latin streets: all black hair and almond eyes and lips with a touch of attitude. The sort of girl who turns your head, just with astonishment that such beauty can exist. The younger is more ordinary. Her black hair lacks that mysterious gloss, her bone structure is less well defined. But she glows in her sister’s company. There is love there. So much love.

Daughters, she thinks. She meant daughters’ room, plural. Where are they now? She’s too old to still have teens. I think the younger one was the one I spoke to on St James’s night. She must be in her forties now. But I’ve not seen the beauty anywhere. Probably gone to richer pastures, the way beauties so often do.

‘Thank you,’ she says. She still doesn’t understand what’s going on, but she trusts this woman. No one this sad can carry ill intent. ‘You’re very kind.’

Larissa nods. Steps out onto the landing and pulls the door to behind her.