53 | Mercedes
Seven a.m., and Paulo is back on duty at the gate. Staff are clattering in the kitchen while more go into the house with bin liners to survey the damage.
The sala stinks of party.
Mercedes looks around. There’s a bottle-sized red wine stain; a pool of the stuff on the floor leaking from a bottle that has rolled beneath the sofa has steadily wicked its way into the fibres.
‘Oh, Jesus.’
She thinks through the contents of the store cupboard. There’s a spare.
The scatter cushions are scattered again, of course. Horrible, useless things, nine of them, covered in pastel marabou feathers.
Mercedes hates these cushions with every grain of her being. She’s plumped them every day for two years. Spent more hours than she can bear to think of slowly, slowly unpicking tangles. This is the last time I shall have to do this, she thinks. No more portraits. No more viscous bedsheets, no more suntan lotion greasing the sandstone paving round the pool. I’ve got so numbed over the years that I’ve lost sight of how much I hate this life. Hate these things. Hate their owners who’ve kept me trapped here through all my best years.
Something, caught in feathers and released by movement, clatters to the floor. She looks down, sees Gemma’s little bag, with its rattling sequins and the tiny diamante cat on a keychain.
Funny, she thinks, as she picks it up. You’d have thought after yesterday she’d be more careful. She checks inside. Same contents: passport, Ventolin inhaler, pearly brown lipstick, a couple of gold-wrapped condoms.
She’ll be wanting this, she thinks. But time is racing and they have a job ahead of them before the house wakes up.
She puts it in an obvious place, on a little mirrored table that hugs the bottom of the stairs, and goes back to rescuing the sofa.
They drift down late morning, one by one. Tatiana in a floor-length robe, the men rusty and stubbled and ill-kempt. All but the prince, who sports his blazer-and-trews uniform as though he’s simply put himself away in a box overnight. Having unpacked for him, Mercedes knows that he has eight identical outfits hanging in his wardrobe, and sixteen perfectly ironed shirts wrapped in tissue paper. But he’s only changed his underpants once since he arrived. A walking metaphor: shiny on the surface, filthy beneath.
Matthew lumbers to the table by the pool and kisses his daughter on the temple. He’s in boxer shorts and a towelling dressing gown, his stomach hanging round and hairy over his waistband.
‘Eggs,’ he says, ‘and toast. And coffee.’
‘How do you want your eggs, sir?’ asks Mercedes.
‘Christ, I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Surprise me. Aren’t you eating?’ he asks Tatiana.
‘Have you seen my dress?’ she replies.
‘She’s put on a bit of weight since the fitting,’ says Jason Pettit, and smirks.
‘Oh, piss off, Jason,’ she snaps.
He smirks again. His eye bags are like ball sacks this morning. He’ll be needing that haemorrhoid cream he’s got lying by the bathroom basin before he meets the photographers from Hello! magazine.
‘All okay?’ asks Matthew.
‘Yes, fine. All loaded and on board,’ replies Tatiana.
‘Would you like anything to eat, Mr Pettit?’ asks Mercedes.
‘Black coffee,’ says Jason Pettit. ‘Egg-white omelette, gluten-free toast.’
He throws Tatiana a you see? look that clearly infuriates her. ‘I’ll have toast,’ she says. ‘With gluten in. And butter. And some prosciutto, and a fig.’
Jason Pettit raises his eyebrows. He picks up his ever-present iPhone and starts scrolling.
‘What time’s kick-off tonight?’ asks the prince.
‘Which cabin?’ asks Matthew Meade.
‘Mine,’ says Tatiana, and turns to her royal guest. ‘Ten. We’ve got a nice big terrace table at Mediterraneo at eight.’