Page 70 of The Island of Lost Girls

Felix glances over and she hears him heave the sigh she’s suppressing.

‘Not right now,’ she says.

‘Tonight, though?’

She feels unspeakably weary. ‘Can it wait till tomorrow?’

He hesitates. ‘No. No, I’m sorry, Mercedes. It can’t. I need to talk to you tonight.’

‘Laurence,’ she says, ‘we’re exhausted.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘But it’s urgent. Really urgent.’

She slaps her spatula down by the grill, starts to untie her apron. Felix and Maria side-eye her as they cook. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she says. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘Not here,’ he says. ‘In private. Can you come to my hotel?’

Really?

Her husband rolls his eyes. He does, Larissa’s right: he does have the patience of a saint. ‘It’s okay, Mersa,’ he says. ‘We’ve got this.’

‘Thank you, Felix,’ says Laurence. ‘I wouldn’t, you know. If it weren’t … ’

‘Whatever,’ says Felix, grouchily.

As Robin approaches the entrance, a bouncer steps across her path.

‘Sorry, madam,’ he says, in estuary English. ‘Private party.’

‘I don’t want to go in,’ she protests. ‘I just wanted a word with—’

‘Sorry,’ he says.

His colleague steps in front of the door. They haven’t even asked if she has an invitation. It’s that obvious that she doesn’t belong.

‘No, but look,’ she says, ‘I just wanted to ask that man—’

‘Sorry,’ he says again. His tone says he’s anything but.

She persists. ‘—if he could maybe help me find my daughter.’

Silence. The man’s expression is blank. She knows the exchange is already over, but desperation drives her on.

‘She’s missing. My daughter. Gemma. She’s only seventeen. Look … ’ She gets out a flyer and holds it out.

He doesn’t look.

‘She’s just a kid,’ she says. ‘I’ve been beside myself for almost a year, looking for her. Could you at least give this to him? The man at the desk? So he could see?’

No response.

‘It has my phone number on,’ she says, barely managing to finish the sentence before she gives up. Hopelessly, she drops her hand to her side and turns away.

She cries as she descends the hill. The tears just won’t stop coming. In a minute she’ll pull herself together, but, right now, all she has is despair. I’m a terrible mother, she thinks for the millionth time, like picking a scab. You could never hate me as much as I hate myself, Gem. Please, please, God, give me a chance to apologise. To see that she’s okay. I just want my baby back.

On the waterfront, the sirena is finishing her triumphal progress. Same age as her daughter, carried, in some parody of the Saint, on a makeshift float borne on the shoulders of eight young men dressed as matelots, a whole crowd of drunks dancing around them, shouting what she can only assume is crudities as she wobbles on their weary shoulders. It really is awful, her costume: her legs hobbled by a silicone tail, a push-up bra shaped like a pair of cockle shells, three-foot hair extensions rat’s-tailing down her back and getting in her eyes and mouth so she’s constantly forced to brush them away.

She’s not enjoying that, thinks Robin. She’ll be very relieved once her night of glory is over. Oh, those moments of triumph. All those things we wished for so fervently when we were young. How many of them has Gemma found? And have they made her happy?

She’s glad she doesn’t have to be a teenager again. Glad all those disappointments are behind her now. She takes a final glance at the sirena’s queasy face and pushes on up the harbour. She’ll hand out her flyers until the fireworks start, and, if she has any left, she’ll fix them to every vertical surface she can find. It will be good to have something to do while the fireworks are going on. Gemma loves fireworks, and watching them would probably make her cry again.