Page 53 of The Island of Lost Girls

So funny, the assumptions people make, Mercedes thinks, when all they see is sea and sunshine.

‘It must get pretty small, though. Do you never want to see the world?’

Mercedes shrugs. She’s not had a holiday in thirty years. ‘I see quite a lot of the outside world here,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure how much more I need to see.’

Paulo laughs. ‘They’re not all like the people you see here. Not even the rich ones.’

She pulls a doubtful face.

‘Truly. Your duke, he’s been encouraging a certain type of people. The ones who buy yachts. And the ones who want to be around the ones who buy yachts. And helicopters. And private planes. And private islands. There’s plenty of rich people who don’t have ’em. Seriously: someone wants these things, they’re making a statement.’

‘A statement?’

‘Sure. They’re not just saying they can afford it. They’re putting walls around themselves, aren’t they?’

She glances at the girls. Nuno has brought out a tray of fruity cocktails – strawberry daiquiris from the slushy, crushed-ice look of them – and they rush gleefully towards him the way the kids in town swarm the xelado man when he appears on the beach. Tatiana, elegant with a silk pareo tied around her waist and a huge-brimmed hat preserving her complexion, smiles indulgently and raises her phone up to point at them. Filming. She’ll be sending that on to someone, thinks Mercedes. Like a shopping catalogue.

‘So people can’t see in,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ says Paulo. Pauses. ‘And, once they’re in, they can’t get out.’

She glances at him sharply. Yes, she thinks, you may be affable, but you’re still an essential part of it all. I must never forget that. You’re not a helpless serf, devoid of choices.

Tatiana says something to the girls and they all stop drinking. Put their glasses down, half-drunk, and rush together for the door, like a flock of starlings. Ignore her as they go past. Always they ignore her, the guests here. They deal with the discomfort of not really knowing how to speak to her by pretending she’s not there at all.

She hears their laughter recede up the back stairs. Feels sad for a second.

‘I must get on,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ he replies.

‘Mercy!’

Tatiana is still on her sun lounger. She can’t avoid her any longer.

‘Oh, hi!’ she says, all warmth and smiles. ‘Are you not getting changed?’

‘Oh, God, not for a bit. One of the advantages of ageing is you’ve got all that stuff down pat. It takes those girls an hour just to do their make-up. And the rest. I swear they’re blind, though. That Gemma had actual pubes coming round the edge of her bikini bottoms! I had to send her up to sort it out. Can you imagine?’

Mercedes keeps her counsel. She doesn’t understand this obsession with body hair. All these grown women stripping every one away to make themselves look like eight-year-olds. Plenty of time to be bald when I’m old, she thinks.

Tatiana has had every hair below her nose killed by laser, to streamline her self-maintenance. ‘I’m as bald as an egg,’ she said once, proudly. Another intimacy that Mercedes could have done without hearing. And now that they’re all bald like porcelain dolls, their men, of course, are bound to develop a taste for hairy women, sooner or later. Just because they can. And the women trapped in the hairless generation will be hunting out merkins on the internet.

‘Honestly,’ says Tatiana, ‘I just wanted a few moments to myself. They’re exhausting! God, darling, were we that bad?’

You were, thinks Mercedes. I was just dumb.

She collects a couple of glasses, puts them on her tray and smiles. Cleaning up after teenagers, cleaning up after the rich: same-same. Rich people are just like children. They drop things when they’re done with them and leave them for the magic pixies to pick up.

‘I’d kill for a nice clean vodka, lime and soda,’ says Tatiana.

Mercedes goes to the bell discreetly attached to the rear of a pillar, presses it, and carries on towards the other glasses. Nuno can take them when he comes.

‘Nuno’ll come,’ she says.

‘Oh, and can you tell your underling – what’s her name? – to lay out the Versace?’ asks Tatiana. ‘The one with the snakes?’

‘Ursula,’ she says. ‘Of course.’