Sergio has a tiny moment of panic and looks again. But no – the Re del Pesce is still there on the harbour front, its canopy painstakingly reproduced by some unknown hand. And once he’s assured himself that life as he knows it is still included in the grand scheme, the panic is replaced by a surge of excitement. My God! he thinks. The opportunities!
‘I am lost for words,’ he says. On the far side of the table, the harbourmaster watches enviously.
The duke laughs. ‘Well, I hope the words will be good when they come,’ he says. ‘I’m hoping that this is the start of a whole new era of prosperity for us all.’
Too many names, too much champagne. She struggles to remember them – Hugo-Sveta-Christophe-Alexa-Kristina-Sebastian-Dmitri-Serena-Caspar-Jamaldarling-Harry-Conrad – and the face attached to each, when all the girls are blonde apart from Sveta who is from somewhere south of the equator. Eventually, she gives up and just calls everybody kara, which they seem to like. And as the bottles empty and someone passes round a cannabis cigarette – the first she’s ever seen, let alone tasted – her confidence grows and the fact that they all know each other (school – in England – or their parents being ‘old business partners’ or just ‘I don’t know, from around and about the place’) matters less and less and the fun she’s having matters more and more. Squeezed onto the curved leather sofa between two boys, she listens to their jokes and their references and their in-talk, and she understands not a word of it.
But she doesn’t care. Welcome to the world, little girl. Welcome to the great big out-there, expansive, exciting, not-Kastellana world. She feels as though life might finally be starting.
There’s mysterious music playing from somewhere, and it takes her ages to realise that it’s coming from the big black boulders that form the ends of the sofas and that they are actually speakers, and they laugh at her amazement. How sweet, says someone. Where’ve you been? says someone else. On La Kastellana, she says. All my life. An island girl! How intriguing! And who’s your father, that you’re at this party? A restaurateur, she says, grandly. A restauraTEUR! How marvellous! Not really, she says. It gets quite boring. Oh, says Sebastian-Conrad-Jamaldarling, we can’t have you being bored, and he turns up the music. It’s disco from America, stuff she’s really only encountered on Tatiana’s television, and they all jump to their feet and start to dance. And somebody’s hand brushes her buttock, but it’s just carelessness, and anyway, the solteronas aren’t looking, and for the first time ever she’s having fun.
Tatiana roars with laughter. Mercedes wrings her hands.
‘Oh, my God, oh, my God!’ she cries. And silently thanks St James that it’s not a member of her own family.
And they film in the bathrooms, another part of her brain is thinking. They actually film people in the bathrooms.
The horror of Sinjora Bocelli’s predicament drives that from her mind. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks. ‘My God, what are you going to do?’ Her skin crawls at the shaming ahead. The Meades confronting her in front of the yacht people. The constable having to put her in handcuffs. She covers her face with her hands.
Tatiana clicks the remote and the screen fills with a bedroom. Napoleonic sleigh bed, net curtains billowing in the evening breeze by an open window. Through a door to the side of the bed, she sees a shadowy Sinjora Bocelli inspecting her lipstick in the bathroom mirror.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she says, breezily. ‘For now, anyway. Oh, this is priceless, though! We’ve got them now, don’t you see? If that little lawyer man tries to cause problems – boom! The solution’s all backed up in here for whenever we need it! I can’t wait to tell Daddy!’
She rattles the keyboard again, hits enter. Something whirs in one of the boxes and a videotape pops out. ‘There, I’ll just pop that in here.’ She opens a drawer in the panel below the screens. It’s full of tapes. Full of them. And she adds her new one to it. Opens another drawer, and gets out a fresh one. Offers it to the slot in the box, which grabs hold and swallows it as though it were alive.
Mercedes is panicking. Did I ever do anything? This summer? If they’re filming here, they’ll have been filming on the Princess Tatiana too. All that stuff she gave me … is that all on film? Those dresses. I mean, it wasn’t just her own, was it? And those dresses of her mother’s that she gave me for my family. How do I know you can see in each recording that she’s giving them? That I’m not just helping myself?
‘Oh, my giddy aunt, lighten up, Mercedes,’ says Tatiana. ‘It’s hilarious. Now, look, sit down. I want to show you … ’
Mercedes lowers herself suspiciously into a chair. ‘Show me what?’
Sergio is high on life and possibility. Accosting his fellow guests, he passes out the business cards he had printed especially for the occasion, a rush job from the mainland. He’s rather pleased with the little picture of a fish with a tray and a waiter’s apron in the top right-hand corner.
‘With this card,’ he tells them, full of bonhomie and champagne, ‘is ten per cent off. A gift from me to you!’
The yacht people thank him politely and tuck the cards into the pockets of their handmade suits.
He’s been working his way back towards the duke. He could barely believe their friendly exchange earlier, the way the duke had spoken to him as though he were a neighbour rather than a tenant. But a couple more glasses of champagne and he’s beginning to see it as a sign from God. This was meant to be. The duke wants prosperity for all of them. Of course he’ll want Sergio’s aid in that.
A little Arab man chews on a cigar and points at the restaurant building. ‘And this?’
The duke pours out a stream of English. For Sergio, only the odd word – seafood, high-end, function – means anything much. But he sees his chance. Takes a breath and waits for his moment.
‘Sinjor!’ he calls across the table.
The duke looks up.
‘If I may be so bold,’ he says, ‘I have been running the best restaurant on the island for twenty years.’
‘There’s more than one?’ someone mutters, and a little wave of laughter passes behind him.
The duke stares at him long and hard. I’ve made a terrible mistake, Sergio thinks. He doesn’t like being interrupted. But the mistake is made now, so he holds his ground.
‘You’ve eaten my food many times,’ he reminds him.
Someone behind him mutters spaghetti vongole and he hears another responding titter. It takes all the self-control he has not to turn and glare.
He holds the duke’s eye for as long as he can bear. But eventually the silence between them is too heavy, and he drops his gaze.