“Maybe. Why don’t you ask him?”
I shook my head. “I’ll leave that to you. Is Lottie Dewalt coming?” Livi wasn’t the only one who knew how to change a subject.
“She is. I’m sorry. I know you and Lala don’t really like her. But she found out about it, and there was no reason for me not to invite her.” Livi sighed and closed her book. “She wants to stay for a couple of weeks. The annex will be free, so I’ve said yes. I’m sorry, and it’s just for two weeks. You don’t have to babysit her…”
“Is it when Daisy and Alfie will be here?”
Livi nodded. “They arrive after the party weekend. Lottie gets here just before. I have made it clear that both of you have arrangements and won’t be that available, and there are a few other people staying here who she can hang out with.”
We got into a discussion about the guest list and who was coming when and how long they were staying. This was a usual Ibizan summer; people dropping by and stopping for a few days or weeks. We’d once had an artist who’d stayed six months.
“Don’t be surprised if Lala has a full-on fit about her, if she starts getting clingy.” I finished the rest of my drink. “She did last time she was here.”
Livi shrugged. ‘Then your sister needs to learn how to implement boundaries better. She’ll be spending half her time with Carl, anyway. And the rest of her time trying to piss him off.”
“Truth.”
“How are you spending your day? My yoga teacher is coming by this afternoon if you want to join us.” Livi had picked her book back up again.
I’d already considered the rest of the day. “I’m meeting Lala and Monty in Santa Gertrudis. I thought I’d get a lift there and we could taxi back.”
“Is that who Lala’s been with the last day or so?”
Lala had spent last night at The Pines with Monty catching up, and then they were both involved in a shoot this morning for a jewellery brand. When I met them later, I knew they’d be like a pair of rabid lions that had just been released back into the wild.
“Monty and a couple of others. Not sure who.” Although Lala had told me. I’d just not paid much attention.
“Enjoy yourself.” She gave me that smile and returned her attention to her book.
I didn’t move. Not just yet. “Livi,” I began slowly. “Do you still love Lawrie?”
She looked up, her hand almost caressing the new paper of the book. “Do I still love Lawrie? I don’t have a simple answer for that, Jay Jay. Maybe one day you’ll understand.” She looked at me. “But I hope you don’t. I hope you have the simple sort of love, the type that young girls should dream of.”
I stood up, a maelstrom of sadness and worry swirling through me, clashing with the still heat of the day. “I hope you find that too, Amma.”
She said nothing, just that sweet smile.
When I leftto head to Santa Gertrudis half an hour later, she was still at the table, sipping her iced water and reading her book, looking serene and calm. I didn’t know if I would ever truly know who my mother was.
The town was filledwith music. Laid back tunes seemed to drift from every little bar and restaurant, the market quiet given that it was the hottest point of the day.
That saying that only mad dogs and English men went out in the midday sun - it forgot to include English girls in that, because I couldn’t remember a single time when Lala and I had ever retreated indoors to escape the strength of the sun.
We weren’t stupid. Livi had ingrained in us how to take care of our skin, and the shade would be our friend. We’d never had a day when we’d fried on a sun lounger on a beach, or sat at a bar in full sun, but those quiet afternoons in Ibiza’s small towns and villages, when everyone was sleeping off their hangovers, or taking a siesta were the best times to soak up the vibe of the island.
This place radiated something. For decades it had been the home to artists and hippies and those seeking somewhere they could be accepted. Es Vedrà, the uninhabited rock off the coast the other side of the peninsula from Es Cubells, was credited with the atmosphere of the island. It wasn’t the children of the sixties or nineties that had made it this way. The first people to inhabit the island were the Phoenicians, who worshipped the sun. Their main god was Baal, the sun-god, and his partner was Tanit, the goddess of the moon and of dance, fertility, creation and destruction – which pretty much summed up a night out in Sant Antoni or Ibiza Town. Once upon a time, the island’s economy was based on salt, fishing and farming, with the rich, profitable land passed down to only the men. Legend reported that the local women gathered one full moon and asked Tanit to help them with the inherent unfairness. Shortly after, the hippies and the tourists started to arrive, and the coastal towns that belonged to those women began to thrive.
I found my sister at a table outside Còctels, holding court with three men, one of them Monty. The other two were obviously models as well, lean muscle and sharp cheekbones giving them away immediately.
“Jay Jay! You’re here!” Lala stood up and raised her arms to greet me.
I knew from old that yesterday would’ve been a day of water and clean eating, if they ate at all. The model life wasn’t glamorous. It was hard work and dirty, cutthroat unless you already had a name that sold. Lara did, so did Monty. The other two men I recognised but wasn’t sure who they were. I’d stopped following that world a lifetime ago.
“Hey.” I sat down next to my sister. “Shift your fat arse up.” It was anything but fat.
She giggled and I wondered how much she’d had to drink, or whether a white line or two had been a late breakfast. Lala wasn’t averse to an odd pick-me-up, although it was rarer now.
Livi had introduced us to drugs when were in our mid-teens and it was inevitable that we’d come across them. She’d never told us not to take them – there was no way she could have said that credibly – but she had told us what happened with them, or what could happen, and she’d told us from experience. Heroin had been her downfall for a few months before she met Gav, and she told us what it was like when you crashed from it, how close she’d got to dying one day, how reliant it made her.
