Els Lloros was Catalan for The Parrots, and was another hotel owned by Tommy’s family. He’d told me a little more about them, what they actually had in their portfolio and how the family had been on the island for more than forty years, since it had started to become a party island. He’d been vague about some of the details, but then, so was I when it came to talking about Livi’s marriage and past.
“That guy is Tommy. His family owns the place we’re going to.” I opted not to list where else, otherwise she’d hound him to be put on the guest lists.
“I heard Marcus saying his family are part of the Mob.” She checked her make-up in the mirror, pouting lips that were far too painted for Ibiza at brunch o’clock.
“They’re not part of the Mob.”
“Organised crime then.”
I laughed, but that part of me that twitched uncomfortably from time to time did so now. I’d asked Tommy about his family a couple of times, usually when we were in bed and it was those post-sex highs that made you talk about things you’d usually leave alone.
He’d been open about how they controlled the drugs on the island, and the people that sold them. He’d explained why – it meant they controlled the price and the quality, stopping some bad shit going wrong and stopping the island becoming attractive to people who were after a cheap party holiday. I got it, I’d watched it from the other side for years, but something still didn’t feel right, only I’d never probed any deeper.
My summer didn’t need deep and meaningfuls. Tommy and I were on a need-to-know basis because there was an expiry date on what we had.
“You make him sound like a gangster. And when did you see Marcus? I thought he’d gone back to London.”
Daisy sighed, the long drawn-out sigh that only a bored teenager can muster. “He was round the other day. Ash was with him.”
I caught the half-dreamy look on her face. “Ash?”
“Marcus’ kind of friend. They were having an argument about something.”
“What?” Ash was who Marcus had mentioned on the phone. I’d only heard about him, rather than seen him. Tommy had said he was working elsewhere, managing a club or a bar. He’d been vague and I hadn’t challenged it.
“What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“What were they arguing about?”
“Oh, sorry. Some boring shit.” She shrugged and checked her phone. “Lavender wants to know if she can come out for a week. Do you think Livi will let her?”
“Just rewind a minute.” Livi would not let Daisy’s friend Lavender stay; she’d spent most of the last year in school bullying Daisy. “What were Ash and Marcus rowing about?”
There was a shrug from my little sister. “Something to do with money. Someone owed something and Ash, I think, was saying he couldn’t pay. I don’t know. Ash is hot though, isn’t he?” Now she came awake.
“He’s too old for you.”
“Tommy’s too old for you then.”
I let that one go. Maybe he was too old for me, only no one here had mentioned it. I had thought about it though – eight years was nothing when you were past a certain age, but now, as old as I sometimes felt, it was a gap.
Not that it mattered when something was just for a few weeks, a moment in time that I could look back on and be glad it happened.
“You’re seventeen. Everyone more than two years older than you is too old.”
“You sound like Dad.”
“Dad said the same thing to me when I was your age, and you know what? He was right.” I parked the car and my little sister got out with a huff. “Find a boy to have a summer romance with, Daisy. One who won’t make a fool of you or leave you hurt.”
She tipped her chin up, her eyes blaring because she hated hearing something that she knew was right, just like Lala.
We headed into Els Lloros, a table reserved in the gardens that was private enough for me to relax, even if Daisy came out with something completely atrocious.
“Dad said he was flying out tomorrow or the day after.”
“Really? He didn’t tell me.” Gav had been threatening to make an appearance for the last couple of weeks, but he’d gotten entrenched with a new band he was championing, and a couple of tracks he was writing for them. When he was swamped in his music, time and place disappeared. It was one of the reasons I figured him and Livi burned out: he became more serious about his work, and she needed him to be more in her present.
Gav’s days as a rock and roll star had been replaced with him being a legend now, and legends didn’t make regular appearances in nightclubs and house parties at stately homes and have the police called. Livi had only just passed that phase, and there was nothing to say she wasn’t going to revert back to it.
