Temptation Island

‘Carrie will be in touch as soon as they are.’ She hailed a cab. ‘Keep your knickers crossed for me!’

‘My knickers?’

‘Sorry,’ said Bibi, in a much better mood than this morning. ‘On the contrary! I forgot you were with Will.’

‘That’s gross. And anyway, I’m not “with” Will. I’m not with anyone.’

Bibi narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re a commitment-phobe,’ she said. ‘That’s what it is.’

Stevie laughed. ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Fine, maybe I am, but just for the time being.’

‘Ah, but love’s the best thing in the world.’ Bibi pressed her palms exaggeratedly to her chest as a cab pulled up. ‘Love richly and love well. Isn’t that a saying?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Bibi pulled open the door. ‘You know what I’m getting at.’

She did. Only she’d been the one loving. He hadn’t said he loved her at all. Not even when she got rid of the baby.

‘Thanks for coming today, Steve.’

‘Any time,’ she replied, with a faint smile. ‘It was kind of fun.’

As she was climbing in, a young woman with a scruffy blonde ponytail emerged from the building, glanced once up and down the avenue then waved in their direction. Stevie recognised her as the casting agent from their audition. She had to nudge Bibi to get her attention.

‘B, that woman’s waving at you—look!’

Bibi followed her gaze. She covered her mouth with her hands. ‘My God, Steve! Do you think she wants to offer me the part? What if she offers me the part? What do I do?’

Stevie giggled. ‘You say yes.’

The woman strode over. ‘Are you able to come back inside?’ she asked, eyebrow arched. ‘We’d like to hear you read again.’

‘Of course.’ Bibi flushed with pleasure.

The woman’s gaze flicked over Bibi, as if she’d only just noticed her. ‘Not you,’ she said dismissively, turning back to Stevie. ‘We’d like to hear you read again, for Lauren this time. We’ve been looking for someone like you for a very, very long time. We think you’re absolutely right for the part.’ She grinned, exposing a row of small neat teeth. ‘What do you say?’

13 Lori

When Tony and Angélica found out about Rico’s involvement in the gang homicide, they resolved to send Lori to Spain without further delay.

‘It’s the only place we can be sure you’ll stay out of trouble,’ her father said.

The last Lori had heard from her boyfriend was a rushed phone call shortly after he was arrested. She had asked him if the reports were true. They were. It broke her heart. She didn’t know him any more. Rico, the gentle Rico with the kind eyes and the tender promises, was gone. He was a killer, capable of taking another person’s life.

Things moved fast. Her flight was tomorrow. When she arrived, she would take a taxi out of Murcia and travel south, to the outskirts of a remote town where her grandmother resided in the same rural house Tony had grown up in. It was falling apart, too sprawling and dilapidated for one person to look after. Ancient, tired out, like its sole occupant.

Tony was dropping her off at Tres Hermanas for the last time.

‘Please don’t send me away,’ she begged. ‘Can’t you see I’ve been punished enough?’

Angrily, Tony changed lanes. ‘I’ve done everything to make things right, Loriana—I’ve tried my best with that business, I’ve tried to secure you the future your mama wanted. I found us another family—’

‘I never said I wanted another family. I had you.’

‘And who did I have?’

Her voice was small. ‘Me.’

‘You were a child. I had to look after you.’

Lori tried to reach him. ‘Mama always said it didn’t matter how small you were, you could always make a difference.’

Tony pulled over amid an explosion of sounding horns. ‘Will you stop?’

‘Stop what?’

‘Accept that she’s dead.’ His voice was bitter. ‘I’ve been trying for ten years to find a different happiness, while you dream only of the past—’

‘Moving on isn’t the same as forgetting.’

‘Do you think I can forget? Do you? How can I, when I look at you and all I see is her?’

‘Is that why you want me gone?’ Lori wept then, proper tears she had been keeping in check for too long. For a second she thought Tony might comfort her, but the embrace she had been hoping for didn’t come. Instead he signalled and rejoined the stream of downtown traffic.

‘You are going to Corazón because it is the right thing,’ Tony said evenly, ‘and because I hope it will put an end to this pointless rebellion. That boy and his family are dangerous. I cannot lose you as well.’

The working day began like any other. There was no reason to suspect what was to come, the event that would change Lori’s life irrevocably and for ever. Her sisters had spent all morning doing zero work, gloating about how miserable she would be bundled away in Europe with a rotting old crone, while Lori answered the phones, sorted the orders, prepped the treatments and cleaned up after them. Her head was numb and her heart was numb, going through the motions and that was all: a living doll, with a face and hair and arms and legs, but when you unscrew its neck and turn it upside down and shake it around, nothing inside, just empty.

It was a little after two o’clock and she was alone, unpacking a delivery on the salon floor. Anita and Rosa had slipped cash from the register, informing her they were ‘heading out’, which meant they were down on the beach sipping coladas, examining their nails, bitching about her, and would be till half an hour before close.

The boxes were heavy, filled with stuff they didn’t need and could not afford, but the girls had to spend their time somehow and it would be Lori who made the returns. A guy in a van had dumped them by the door and told her to sign. Afterwards, she would remember scribbling her name in the space he indicated, and would that night, and in the nights to come, think back to how it was a different girl signing from the one she was now: that the Lori Garcia she’d been before had given her very last autograph and was finally checking out.

She was bent, her back to the door, when she heard someone come in.

Preparing to apologise for her sisters’ absence, since this was no doubt a forgotten appointment, she turned—and came face to face with a man. He was dark, short and stockily built, with a hard, low brow and a nose beaten out of shape. He possessed deep-set, unblinking eyes, and wore a black vest that exposed meaty, painted flesh at the neck and shoulders. His arms were sketched with tattoos, a cobra winding up one arm, its head emerging beneath his thick jaw, cut from a bad shave, where the serpent’s thin forked tongue escaped.

Diego Marquez. Rico’s brother.

‘What do you want?’ Lori asked coldly.

Diego’s mouth moved into a thin, satisfied smile. ‘A word, chica. That is all.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘So am I.’ He kicked the door shut with one foot. ‘Which is why you’re going to give me what I need and you’re going to make it quick.’

She backed off. ‘Don’t come any closer.’