Page 81 of The Island of Lost Girls

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Even Donatella assumes it must be her fault.

‘So what did you do?’ she asks when she comes up to bed, smelling of cooking oil and work. She pulls off the little black dress that Sergio has instituted as uniform for the restaurant staff since he noticed the domestics on the yachts.

Mercedes starts up, outraged. ‘What?’

Donatella drops the dress into the laundry basket. ‘You must’ve done something. They didn’t even send you in the car.’

I’m too tired, she thinks. She’s been alone in their bedroom since she got in from her two-hour walk, thirsty and dusty, the blisters from her stupid formal shoes burst and leaking. Everyone too busy downstairs to pay her much mind. Waiting for Donatella, for she knew that at least Donatella would be on her side.

‘So you assume it’s something I did?’ she asks, and before she can stop herself, she starts to cry.

Larissa brings her a bowl of sausages and lentils, her childhood favourite, and gives her a hug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I was afraid something like this would happen.’

Well, why didn’t you stop it? thinks Mercedes. And cries, and eats. Cries some more and eats some more. She hadn’t noticed how hungry she was until the food was in her lap.

‘I’m not going back there,’ she says.

‘No,’ says Larissa, and strokes her dusty hair. ‘Jala, Mercedes, you need a shower.’

‘It was … horrible,’ she says, and another gust of weeping overwhelms her.

Larissa’s dark eyes darken. ‘Oh, my baby,’ she says, ‘My poor baby.’

Sergio hadn’t reacted at all when she turned up on the doorstep. For all the acknowledgement he gave her, she might have been invisible. And when she gets up in the morning, puts on the apron that has hung unused from the back of her door since July and goes back to work in the restaurant, he doesn’t acknowledge her presence. Just stares balefully from a distance and goes indoors.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ says Donatella. ‘He’s just worried about the money.’

‘Silly sod,’ adds Larissa.

‘He doesn’t believe me,’ she says mournfully.

‘When’s he ever believed anything that didn’t suit him?’ asks Larissa. ‘Don’t worry, my baby, we believe you.’

It’s not the first time that Mercedes has suspected that Larissa regrets the father she chose for her children.

The dock remains quiet all day. When lunch service is finished, the castle car pulls up outside the restaurant and the chauffeur gets out. Goes to the boot, and brings out Mercedes’ laundry bag of belongings. He walks over to the entrance and holds them out, as though they were actual laundry, dirty.

No indulgent smiles now. No cute little bottles of water and more-where-that-came-froms.

Larissa accepts them without a word. And Sergio gazes out at the space where the Princess Tatiana should be, and blanks his daughter.

Three o’clock, and she’s clearing away the last of the lunch service when Felix Marino swaggers onto the square from the Calle Rosita, the quintessential boulevardier in khaki shorts and a striped T-shirt. He waves to his father over by the boats and keeps on coming to the Re del Pesce.

Mercedes gets a sinking feeling. The news has got round and he’s coming to laugh at her. She knows what he thinks. What they all think, about her. She’s seen the look on his face as he watched her follow Tatiana around like a whipped puppy. She’s such a fool. Such a fool.

She looks to her mother, pleads with her eyes for her to intervene. But Larissa is suddenly fascinated by a customer’s account of their visit to the temple and her back remains resolutely turned.

He comes to the edge of the terasa.

‘’Riggio,’ he says, in his annoying, belligerent-boy voice. He’s carrying a rusty old anchor and a length of bright blue mooring rope. She eyes them suspiciously.

Felix kicks at the leg of the planter that stands between her and the street. He looks self-conscious. As if what he’s doing is costing him in discomfort.

‘Jolà,’ she says, eventually.

‘So I saw your sister.’