Page 147 of The Island of Lost Girls

62 | Tatiana

Tatiana’s dress is magnificent, but it’s so tight it’s giving her a headache. The stays dig into her ribs, cut off her breath, and it’s giddy torture. The night started in a spirit of il faut souffrir pour être belle, but as midnight approaches she realises that nothing, nothing is worth this level of pain.

Jason, when she came downstairs, had stared at her breasts for a moment, swallowing as though he were trying not to throw up. A couple of times at dinner, she saw him glance at her from the other end of the table, his head bent attentively to hear the thirty-year-old trophy wife of a German press baron (he’s not so implacably anti-media when it suits him). And when they got to the castle, he had vanished into the bal masqué without a backward look by the time she’d left the limo.

I must get my breasts done, she thinks. Something more to add to the list. She resents the relentless self-maintenance that comes with ageing. The awful knowledge that it is a battle that will inevitably be lost. But what can you do? Men despise women who let themselves go, and she’s not yet ready for a life of Palm Beach sundowners.

When the revellers stream out onto the plain below the castle to watch the fireworks – she’s heard that they alone have left Giancarlo little change from a quarter of a million – she slips out and finds her driver to take her home. A quick change into something more forgiving and a couple of tramadol, and she will be all charm again. Ready to dance until dawn.

She closes her eyes.

The roads are pleasantly empty, for anyone who matters is at the castle and the locals are gathered on their rooftops, like peasants watching an eclipse.

This dress is torture. Literal torture. She hasn’t taken a full breath since half-past six, and her ribs feel as though they’re going to snap under the pressure. I swear, she thinks, those women laced me in this tight out of spite.

The gate is locked from the inside. Its sensors register the car’s presence, and she can see them move slightly in their sockets, straining and failing, straining and failing to open.

‘What’s going on?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know, madam,’ he says.

‘Well, maybe get out and ring the bell, then?’ she says irritably.

She sees his eyes in the rear-view mirror for a moment, looking at her, and then he undoes his seatbelt and gets out of the car. Rings the bell and stands in the road, rising up and down on the balls of his feet as he waits.

Nobody comes.

He comes back, resumes his seat. ‘Nobody’s answering, madam,’ he says.

‘Thank you for that,’ she says sarcastically, ‘I’d never have worked that out.’ And again that little flash of eye in the mirror.

She gets her phone from her tiny bag, to call security. Realises she doesn’t know his name.

‘What’s the security guy’s name?’ she asks.

‘Paulo, madam.’

She looks through her contacts. Over five thousand, but not a single Paulo. Damn you, Nora Neibergall, she thinks. Can’t you do anything right?

‘Give me a hand,’ she says, ‘I’ll let myself in.’

It takes a full minute of heaving to get her out onto the road, and, by the time she’s free, she’s furious. She calls Mercedes to give her a mouthful, because she can’t think of anyone else to call. The phone rings out and Mercedes’ voice says something in Kastellani.

‘What the hell, Mercedes?’ she says. ‘I’m at the front gate, and there’s literally nobody here. Where is everybody? Where are you? You can’t just go swanning off. You know you need permission. And where the hell is Paulo? There’s literally nobody monitoring the gate? What if I was a kidnap gang or something? What the hell do we keep you here for?’

She hangs up, drops the phone back in the bag. And, rehearsing the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger speech with which she’s going to be dismissing the security man tomorrow, she punches in the code that opens the door in the gate and steps through.

Lights blazing, dead silence. Tatiana lifts her skirts and sweeps across the courtyard, goes into the house. Shouts.

‘Hello? Hello? Where the hell is everybody?’

No response.

What the hell? What the hell?

She glances up the corridor en route to the drawing room, and sees that the door to the safe room is wide open, its lights blazing. And she starts to feel uneasy, because there’s only one person who has the code, and he’s clearly not here.

Tatiana gets her phone from her bag and holds it in her hand, ready to dial. Steps cautiously into the sala, on her guard and ready to run.