There was a knock at the door. A beaming Bibi stuck her head round.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Sure.’ Stevie smiled back. Her smile was one of the best things about her, the sort of smile she gave her whole face to. In repose she could appear quite solemn: it was more concentration than anything else, but all the same it made the contrast a dazzling surprise.
Bibi, dressed in faded dungarees and an eighties-style bandana, bustled in with two mugs of coffee. She laid them down and flopped backwards on to the bed.
‘I need a boyfriend!’ she announced dramatically.
Stevie snapped shut her laptop. ‘You don’t
need
a boyfriend; you
want
a boyfriend. There’s a difference.’
‘Are you a feminist?’
‘Aren’t you?’
Bibi shrugged and looked at the ceiling. She covered one eye, then the other, and did this a few times. ‘I can see better out my left.’
‘Maybe you need glasses.’
‘Maybe. Wanna go out?’
Stevie sat up. ‘I can’t afford it, B.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘I need to find a job.’
‘You
need
to?’
‘Yes. Otherwise what am I going to pay you with at the end of the month?’
‘Come
on
,’ said Bibi, not listening. She yawned in her usual theatrical way, stretching her arms wide. She’d assured Stevie that the apartment belonged to some distant aunt and she was getting a ‘ridiculously sweet’ deal, but Stevie saw no reason why she should take advantage of this, and anyway she disliked not having work, it made her feel like a waster.
‘Oh my God!’
Stevie was alarmed. ‘What?’
‘My friend’s having a party tonight!’ She sprang up. ‘I just remembered! We should go!’
Stevie stared balefully at her laptop.
‘Let’s go now!’ And she bounced off the bed.
‘It’s three o’clock.’
‘So? We’ll go shopping on the way.’ At Stevie’s expression, she added slyly, ‘There’ll be
guys
there. And you know what guys mean? Flirting. And you know what flirting means?’
‘Waking up in someone’s bed the next day without a clue what their name is?’
Bibi looked innocent. ‘I was going to say a bit of banter, but if you—’
Stevie threw a cushion at her.
‘Come on—’ Bibi checked her reflection in the mirror and adjusted the bandana above her ears ‘—they’re actors, it’ll be fun!’
This was a further disincentive. Stevie loved Bibi and had no doubt that one day she’d be a famous and very talented actress—it was all she had ever wanted to do, Bibi vowed, her whole entire life—but she had, apart from where Bibi was concerned, a slight phobia of that world. Take the Aurora Nash scandal, for instance. Stevie felt sorry for the girl, she was only fifteen or something, and her mug shot had been all over the papers. Last month she’d crashed the car Daddy had bought her and ended up getting arrested. She’d had enough drugs in her system to tranquillise a horse. In fact one of the drugs
was
for tranquillising horses. It was a spoiled, desperate scene. All that mindless excess, it wasn’t her thing.
Stevie’s last job had been working as PA to the director of a firm dealing in high-profile celebrity court cases: divorces,
injunctions, political scandals, they’d handled it all. As part of that she’d been obliged to attend the occasional industry bash and had found each one unbearable. Cash made these people invincible, or so they thought. Stevie recalled him working flat out on a case shortly after she joined involving a married news anchor who’d been filmed dressing up four twenty-something Russian prostitutes as characters from
The Wizard of Oz
—it was their job to keep the press off the scent. She resisted the memory. That had been the case that started it. The late nights … the way he’d stand at the window loosening his tie, the spires of London behind, silhouetted in gold … the invitation of a drink, and then.
‘You do
like
men, don’t you?’ Bibi interrupted her train of thought. ‘Because this one time I kissed my best friend, who’s a girl, at holiday camp when I was, like, sixteen.’
Stevie shook her head. ‘So …?’
‘So are you gay?’
‘No.’
‘Just checking. Cos there are plenty of girls I could set you up with.’
‘Who says I want to get set up?’ Stevie removed her glasses and went to clean one of the lenses on her T-shirt. ‘Believe it or not, I
like
being by myself.’
Bibi bit her thumbnail. ‘Can you see without those on?’
‘Pretty much. I just can’t see things far away.’
‘You should get contacts.’
‘Hmm.’ She slipped them back on, returning to her computer.
‘You’re really not coming, then?’ Bibi folded her arms.
‘I’m really not coming.’
‘OK.’ One of the nice things about Bibi was that she’d
try for her own way, but was quick to identify defeat and get over it without a struggle. ‘I guess you need to save yourself for Linus Posen’s party, anyway.’
‘Who?’
Bibi had made to leave, and turned now, feigning surprise. ‘Oh! Didn’t I mention it?’
Stevie raised an eyebrow. ‘No.’
‘You must have heard of Linus Posen.’
She hazarded a guess based on Bibi’s usual array of friends—and the more the name settled, the more she thought she recognised it. ‘Director? Producer?’
‘The first. My rep’s going, she’ll get us in. Honest, it’s the party of the season. And Linus is a
very
big deal.’ She clapped her hands together excitedly. ‘If I play this right, he could really make things happen! So you will come, won’t you? For moral support?’
Stevie cringed.
‘For me?’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘You’re in New York City, now, sugar, you’ve got to live a little.’ Bibi winked as she closed the door behind her. ‘Stick with me and you’ll be just fine.’
7
Lori
Tony Garcia folded his copy of
La Opinión
and slid it quietly on to the table. Lori noticed the stack of unopened envelopes gathered there, the red-stamped final warnings just visible in the windows. Dark circles shadowed her father’s eyes.
‘The shame!’ Angélica, at her husband’s wilted shoulder, had her thin arms folded and her black hair secured in a tight bun. Her lips were a bloody shade.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Lori replied coldly. She still had her bag slung over one shoulder, had scarcely returned from
Tres Hermanas
before Angélica embarked on her tirade. Anita and Rosa—those bitches, those
putas
—had grassed her up.
The tiny kitchen was the scene of their dispute. The house had barely been big enough for three when her mother was alive, but they had loved each other so it hadn’t mattered. Now, Lori felt the walls closing in on her, unbearably
close. Dirty plates piled up in the sink, awaiting her attention; laundry heaped in a corner, a pair of Anita’s knickers thrown carelessly over the top; grime and squalor on every surface, tasks the women deemed beneath them.
‘Rico loves me,’ she attested, lifting her chin. ‘He takes care of me.’
‘Enrique Marquez is
not
one of us,’ spat Angélica, as if this closed the matter. ‘You are a disgrace to this family, Loriana.’
‘What family? You’re not my family. You’ll never be.’
Angélica’s eyes blazed. ‘Tony, tell your daughter to show me some respect!’
Tony was an echo. ‘You heard her, Lori. Show some respect.’
She wanted to hit him.
Come on
, she willed her father,
stand up for yourself!
Grief changed a man—but how much longer till she got him back?
‘His people are dangerous,’ blasted Angélica.
‘You know nothing about Rico and his family.’
‘I know about the dead baby!’ she rasped triumphantly. ‘Don’t think for a second we don’t know about her.’ Rico’s mother had given birth to a stillborn daughter the previous year: everyone knew it was the drugs.
‘His brother will go the same way, you can be sure of that,’ Angélica raged on. ‘They are dirty, Loriana. They are
immigrants.’
‘And what does that make us?’
‘Tony!’
Angélica put a hand out to steady herself, appalled by the mere suggestion that she and her daughters should be classed in the same way.
Lori knew Anita and Rosa were behind her in the hallway, listening in. She pictured their rapt expressions and
experienced a fresh surge of injustice. Nothing they did was ever wrong; everything she did was. She was an outcast in this house.
‘You want to complain about people who don’t work to support themselves? Fine. Ask your daughters. They’re lazy; they do nothing.
Nada
. The work falls to me—just as it does here.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Mama would be so disappointed.’
There was a flicker in Tony’s expression, but as soon as it appeared it was gone. Fury reignited Angélica, who was unable to tolerate reference to her predecessor.
‘You ungrateful
puta
!’ she spat. ‘Do you think you would fare better on your own? Go ahead, then—try! You’re living under our roof, remember—’
‘I don’t recall this house being yours,’ interrupted Lori. ‘And anyway, if you’d had your way I wouldn’t even be here, I’d never have been born. So why don’t you
let
me go out with a
dangerous
boy? See if
I
might wind up dead sometime. You never know, you might get lucky!’
‘Stop!’
At last, Tony snapped. The kitchen plunged into silence. Lori knew she had gone too far, but she had wanted a reaction, any reaction. Now she had got one.
But it wasn’t the one she expected.
‘If that is the way you feel,’ said Tony evenly, ‘then we will not stop you leaving. In fact, we will encourage it.’ He rubbed his eyes, and when they met hers, red-rimmed with fatigue, she saw they were empty as a well.
‘If you insist on seeing this boy, we will have no choice but to send you to Corazón.’
She was appalled. ‘In
Spain
?’ Corazón was Lori’s elderly grandmother on Tony’s side. The woman lived in the
middle of nowhere in a remote mountainous part of the country.
Tony nodded. ‘Angélica and I believe it is for the best.’
It made sense. ‘That’s exactly the way you want it,’ she told her stepmother, almost admiring her nerve. ‘Get me out of the way, maybe I’ll never come back.’
‘We are giving you a choice,’ said Angélica, dripping mock-fairness. ‘If you continue to see Enrique Marquez, you will leave us with none.’
Lori pushed her way through to the hall. Anita and Rosa scurried out of sight; Rosa’s large behind waddling noisily up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with her sister.
She was blind with anger. It was unthinkable to split from Rico—he was her only refuge, the only thing in life that made her feel there was some escape, however, whenever. But equally she could not risk being sent to Spain. Her grandmother was about to die, she must be a hundred at least, and it would be like being sent to the graveyard herself.
‘Loriana, you come back here!’ screamed Angélica from inside the house, furious that she should be walked out on. ‘I haven’t finished with you!’
The beach drew her, the only place she could think of to go. She was desperate to call Rico but couldn’t bring herself to tell him what had been said. Angélica’s cruel words echoed, chaotic, in her memory, like a bird she had seen once, trapped in a room.
A truck horn sounded as she crossed Ocean Boulevard. A guy stuck his head out of the window and shouted something appreciative. In frayed denim shorts and a plain string vest, two thin hoops glinting in her wild black hair,
Lori was a siren without a clue how to use her beauty—and that was the best use of all.
The ocean was still. It wasn’t yet dark. Lori removed her shoes and padded across the golden sand. At the water’s edge, she stopped.
So this was the choice: quit seeing Rico or go to Spain. The irony was that if it were anywhere else she would have jumped at the chance—wasn’t it the breakout she’d been wishing for?—but if she felt now like her life was moving nowhere, it would be nothing compared with the situation at Corazón’s. Lori recalled the house in Spain only distantly, in the mists of her childhood, but the fragments she assembled created an image of quiet and loneliness and loss. What could there possibly be for her there? More waiting … waiting for her life to pass her by.
Mierda!
Frustration gave way to unhappiness. She refused to weep; she was stronger than that. Tears achieved nothing. She needed a plan.
In the distance, a boat edged slowly across the horizon. Lori closed her eyes. In the months following her mother’s death, she had pictured an island, somewhere remote and far away, the place she always went to when she needed to remember there was a wider world waiting to be found. She could picture it so clearly: its sweeping white shores and sparkling green waters, the chalky heat and the blazing sun. Now, at the ocean’s lip, sensing the great expanse at her feet, she could almost believe such a place existed. An island that was all hers, her fantasy alone, which nobody else could touch.
One day …
Hers was a different fate. Maybe she knew it because of her mother: she had to live a life that was big enough
for two. Maybe it was because she spent too much time poring over romance novels, gateways to those other glittering treasure-filled worlds. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because she was right. Her heart believed it and she trusted her heart.
Lori breathed the salty air deep into her lungs. One day she would visit her island, see it made real. See the destiny that awaited her there.
It was obvious what had to happen.
She and Rico had talked about it. Now they just had to do it.
They were going to run away.
8
Aurora
Tom Nash examined his reflection in the glass terrace doors. The record label was taking him out. Clad in tight leather slacks and an open white shirt, he teased the final element of his highlighted hairstyle into place. Aurora watched him.