Temptation Island

‘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.