‘Champagne?’ she offers. ‘Campari? Oranchoos?’
Larissa helps herself to a flute of champagne, pulls the I-shouldn’t-really face and almost giggles at her daring. Slaps Donatella’s hand away as she reaches for the same. Donatella tosses her hair and glares. Larissa, wordless, gives her the matriarch stare.
That won’t work for much longer, thinks Mercedes. Donatella’s right on the edge. Something’s changed over this summer, and I think it has something to do with me. She despises our father because he’s a lackey, and she despises our mother because in the end she always gives in to him.
Donatella snatches a juice from the tray. Drinks it down in a single draught, staring her mother in the eye, and replaces it before the waitress can move on. Silently, she turns away and walks boldly through the crowd towards the garden.
Larissa watches her go for a moment, then her eye is caught by something more pressing. ‘L’ostia,’ she murmurs. ‘The duke is here.’
Donatella steps into the evening breeze and inhales in delight, for the air is full of scents and the spectacle is marvellous. She knows this piece of land. Used to know it. Knew it as rough terrain whose thin topsoil made it only fit for prickly pear and goats. Beyond the high yellow wall that encloses this garden, the land remains the same. Just golden stone and scrubby oleander, and the ever-changing sea.
But within, they have built an Eden. A pool runs from by her feet to the very edge of the cliff itself, where it seems to tip over like a waterfall. And it’s green. Green everywhere. Not the sparse, far-apart greens she’s grown up with – the near-black of the cypress, the yellowing rows of grape vines, the leathery creep of the caper bush, the hard, spiked leaves of the citrus groves, the melancholy silver of the olive – but green that looks like a great swath of cloth thrown across a marriage bed.
A lawn, she thinks. They have a lawn.
The lawn is surrounded by trees. Young, but fully grown. No saplings waiting to attain maturity. She saw them come in, wrapped in sackcloth, roots bound in protective plastic, on the ferry, but they look now as though they have always been here, their roots embedded in newly dug craters in the solid rock. Palms and oranges, plums and apples. A walnut, an almond, a quince. A colonnade of weathered golden stone, bougainvillea tumbling over its cross-stones, leads down to where an ancient carob hovers on the very edge of space.
The lawn calls out to her. She’s only ever seen them in the movies. Has often wondered how one would feel to walk on.
Donatella slips off her sandals and steps off the flagstones. The ground is springy and gives as she walks, and the grass is cool, and rough, and damp between her toes. Her dress floats about her as she walks, light as a whisper, light as gossamer. She feels like a fairy queen, ready for anything. But first, she’s going to find the fabled clifftop swing.
‘Mercy! There you are! What do you think of my house?’
Mercedes is caught off guard. She doesn’t have the words to hand. Or not the ones Tatiana would like to hear. Big and cold and self-regarding. Boastful. It’s ugly. Thank God hopefully this will be the first and last time I set foot in it.
‘Amazing,’ she says.
Tatiana smirks. She eyes Mercedes, calculatingly. ‘You’ve not seen the best bit,’ she says. ‘Come on.’
Mercedes hears her mother gasp. So eloquent, that sound. Don’t leave me alone. Your father’s gone already, and your sister. I don’t know anybody here. You can’t! On a normal day, she would find refuge with the wives, but this is not a normal day.
‘My mother,’ she protests.
Tatiana stops and looks puzzled. ‘What?’
Mercedes lowers her voice. She doesn’t want to humiliate Larissa in front of all these strangers. Mercedes feels protective towards her mother. She is such an innocent in this brave new world. ‘She doesn’t know anybody,’ she says.
‘Nonsense!’ cries Tatiana. ‘Of course she does!’ She takes two steps and plucks at the sleeve of the priest, who is drinking champagne and eating a canapé, talking to a woman in polished black just as though he were a real person. ‘Monsinjor!’
Mercedes is awestruck by her boldness, her confidence among the grandees, as though she were an adult herself.
‘You know Sinjora Delia, don’t you?’
The priest turns and eyes his parishioner. He doesn’t know her from Eve, really. The whole island, after all, is his parish, and Larissa is just one of a thousand mouths that open obediently to take the host from his lofty hands. But he puts on his pastoral smile and greets her. ‘Why, yes!’ he says. ‘And how are you, sinjora?’
‘Right,’ says Tatiana, and leads Mercedes away.
She’s so intent on finding the swing that she doesn’t notice them until she’s right on top of them and it’s too late to back out. There’s an area of sunken seating by the carob, and the low wall behind hides their heads until she literally steps in front of them. Ten of them, a dozen: young people. Her own age, some a bit older, all dressed as she is, in summer finery. All glossy and gorgeous and drinking champagne and laughing and joking like it’s a real party, and she recognises immediately that they are from the yachts. And she skids to a halt, but it’s too late. They’ve seen her, and they’ve all turned to look.
‘Hello!’ a beautiful blond man, maybe twenty. Dinner jacket, no tie, top button undone. ‘A new face! Who are you?’
Donatella feels herself redden, but she’s not going to show her embarrassment. She’s been longing for adventure for years now. For something different. She screws her courage to the sticking post and gives a confident smile. ‘I’m Donatella Delia,’ she says, as though everyone should know her name.
The corridor ends in a blank wall, but Tatiana keeps walking towards it after she’s passed the last door. And just before they get there, something beeps and the wall slides back, and a great dark space opens up in front of them. Tatiana grins, and waggles some small electronic gadget in the air.
‘There are only three of these,’ she says. ‘Mine, Daddy’s and the security dude’s. If we all go down on the same plane, it’ll stay sealed until some archaeologist teleports inside in the year 5000.’
Mercedes peers into the interior. Wonders if she’s being tricked, if she’s about to find herself locked up alone again in the dark. But Tatiana presses another button on her gadget and dimmer lights dial up to reveal a room so different from the rest of the house that they might as well be in New York. It’s long and surprisingly narrow, a feast of cherrywood veneer and green leather armchairs. One entire wall seems to be made of televisions. A huge one, like the one on the yacht, protrudes a full metre out from the baby screens that surround it, its innards the size of the masculine desk that faces them all. At first, she thinks that there’s another on the desk’s surface, and then she realises what it is.