Page 90 of The Island of Lost Girls

‘Really?’ He gives her a slow look. ‘It’s just love, Mercedes,’ he says. ‘That’s all.’

He takes it from her and holds down a button hidden beneath the bright orange waterproof cover.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

He goes back to pulling in the pot. ‘So now I can just go back to worrying.’

‘I promise I’ll turn it on if I need you,’ she says. ‘And, that way, you’ll know I need you, because suddenly you’ll see me.’

The pot breaks surface. Two fine red cock lobsters inside, pincers locked in mortal combat.

‘I know you’re at home in the water,’ he says. ‘I know. But think what it would do to me if I lost you.’

‘And my mother,’ she says. And her loss hits her again like a wave breaking over her head. Same feeling, over and over, all her adulthood. I’m stuck, she thinks. I can’t get past it. My sister is dead and we will never really recover.

He sees her expression. ‘Oh, Mersa. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’

She puts a hand up. ‘No. No. You’re a good man. I don’t know why you put up with me.’

He hooks the rope over a rowlock, covers the length of the boat in four steps, avoiding the nets like a gymnast. Puts a rough fisherman’s finger under her chin to lift it and kisses her lips. ‘Because I love you,’ he says. ‘Because I always have.’

Crazy, she knows, but being out on a boat in the middle of the ocean always feels to her like having a cloak of invisibility. It’s where they talk, properly. It’s illusory, she knows. There’s no real privacy anywhere.

Felix fires up the engine to move to the next pot. ‘So are you going to tell me, then? What Laurence wanted?’ he calls.

The world comes crashing back. ‘Yeah,’ she says.

He glances at her, sees her change of mood. Cuts the engine and sits down.

‘Something’s happened,’ she tells him. ‘In New York.’

*

‘It’s not just money, Felix,’ she says. ‘It’s not just money stuff they’re doing.’

He’s quiet now, his cheerful mood gone.

‘Casa Amarilla is the centre of operations,’ she says.

‘How can it be?’ he asks. ‘They’re hardly ever here.’

‘Oh, Felix,’ she says. ‘They’re always here, with the internet. You know those cameras? All over the house?’

He nods. ‘The security.’

She shakes her head. ‘Blackmail. Old-fashioned blackmail. He’s got scores of them now, paying him money. All those girls. All those little girls. The worse they are to them, the more money they have to pay him later.’

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Lord. But how much money does one person need?’

‘All the money in the world,’ she says. ‘And power. Imagine the power. He gets off on power, I think. It’s his thrill.’

Felix puffs out his cheeks, releases the air slowly while he takes it in.

‘But it’s worse,’ she says. The weight of her knowledge comes crashing down on her shoulders. I’m tired, she thinks. I’m so tired. I can’t do this. I’m just a housekeeper.

‘Go on?’

‘Those trips. Those “Stags”. They’re … God, I knew they were bad people. You have to have something missing, inside you. To get that rich. To trample over other people’s lives, to take it all for yourself. But … they – the richer they get, the more bored they get. They can have anything. And then they want more. And when they’ve had everything, they still want more, and they … ’

Four went on, three came off.

That woman at the funeral. His wife, Tatiana’s mother. She wonders if she knew. Was that why she killed herself?

‘And then he films it all. And they go along. He gives them the films as souvenirs and they’re so … mad with their own power they never realise what that actually means. That if they have a copy, then he has a copy too, and they’re sitting income forever.’

‘I don’t … ’

‘Felix, they kill them,’ she says. ‘They take girls onto that boat and they kill them.’