embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’
Confucius
Prologue
Rose surveyed the darkening landscape and knew that coming here with Alfredo had been a mistake. He was still caught up in his deluded romantic dream, when she couldn’t care less. Clean breaks, Rose. Why was that so hard to learn?
She counted to ten, remembering that even on those first captivating afternoons this high mountain plateau could seem sinister. The uneven surface of rocks and shale. The dark gash of the crater behind her. In the valley, two lights had come on but the residence was entirely dark. On their previous climbs, it had been lit up like a beacon.
Even as the light faded around them, Alfredo kept on. ‘Rosa … this importante. You listen.’
She had no intention of listening. The idea was ridiculous and more so when they could barely understand one another.
‘You no … listen.’
He grabbed at her wrist and she pulled away, her feet slipping on the loose shale. Shale, she thought even in the process of falling, was as slippery as ice, and she landed painfully on knees and hands. Afterwards, she wasn’t sure whether it was fear or pain that set off the rage within her. She was terrifyingly close to the edge of the crater.
‘Rosa.’ Alfredo was bending over her, hauling her to her feet, dusting her off. ‘Perdon, Rosa … you pull.’
Alfredo’s grip on her wrist was like an iron band. ‘This is wrong, Alfredo. This has gone terribly wrong.’ Her words were clear and separate as she turned in a half-circle, away from the crater. Alfredo turned with her and his gaze was unwavering.
‘Si, Rosa.’ His grip tightened. She could see the glimmer of his eyes, the white flash of his teeth. ‘This wrong. You stay … me.’
Like hell she would. She jerked her wrist up and away and kicked out at him. For a moment he was solid, like a tree rooted into solid earth, and then his hold slackened and a small eternity passed before her in the blink of an eye.
Part 1
1
Rose Sinclair checked her appearance in the mirror, one eye on the time. Ten past seven. Despite the expense of last night’s hotel in Almería, she looked tired and her hair, damp still from the shampoo, was frizzy at the edges.
She was expected downstairs at half past to ‘meet and greet’ the other residents but hadn’t come halfway around the world to look a mess at the start. She unscrewed the lid of her postbox-red nail polish and, as if on cue, heard people arriving in the reception room below.
She could dispense with the nail polish, of course, but Silvia, the woman in charge, had given her a hurry-up speech when showing her to her room. She’d been friendly enough but there was steel behind the smile and Rose didn’t like being told what to do. Besides, twenty minutes on her appearance now would be time well spent. She applied the polish in long, deft strokes, pleased by the intensity of the colour and just how aptly it was named.
Silvia Verdasco regarded the new intake of artists with the jaundiced eye of long experience and a headache brought on by tension. She had just smoothed over a row in the kitchen about a burnt pan. Luz and Beatriz at their usual demarcation dispute.
As soon as her welcome speech was finished, the rules of the residency and the local geography explained, she’d leave everyone to it and get away. Luz had suggested she print the information out, which was superfluous because they sent every artist a comprehensive summary weeks before they arrived. Not that many of them seemed to bother reading it. In any event she still had to welcome them.
The January group were nearly all foreigners and capable of stupidity beyond measure and she had found it best to spell things out from the start, before they lost themselves in their work or other endeavours.
To the good there was a pleasant murmur of conversation going on without her and an almost palpable desire to make friends. To the bad it was twenty minutes to eight and Rose, the Australian artist, still hadn’t come down.
Damn the eternal problems with the guests. They would, she knew, fall into three main groups: princesses with their eternal self-importance; the needy ones who ran her ragged; the independent types who just got on with it. She had categorised Rose the moment she met her and her lateness now reinforced that impression. A princess who consulted no one’s convenience but her own.
If she postponed dinner it would annoy Luz all over again. Her only other choice was to go upstairs and haul the wretched woman out, and as she was considering doing just that she heard her footsteps on the stairs.
Rose was dressed in a low-cut top, jeans that clung like a second skin and high, strappy stilettos. Her lips and fingernails were a dark shining red and she smiled from the doorway as if she were the star attraction. Silvia’s headache intensified. It was going to be a long month.
Everyone turned to greet her and Rose took them in appraisingly. Two men and three women. Beyond them a fire burned in the grate, the table was set and the aroma from the kitchen made her mouth water and her spirits rise.
Silvia was near the fire and looked peeved, which pleased Rose inordinately. Payback for the lecture when she arrived. Not that she still cared. She was more interested in matching faces to the names on the list she had been sent before leaving home.
In every residency of six, there were usually two men and four women. One of the men was either married or gay, the other hopeless. This time, from her quick assessment, things could be looking up. But she had to turn her attention away from the man at the back of the room to the one stepping forward to greet her.
‘Mike Bailey. Pleased to meet you.’
Rose shook his hand to find it faintly moist, and downgraded her smile. Mike was the English writer, a thin man in his early thirties, who looked anxious and was hopelessness personified. No amount of information gleaned online could warn you about sweaty palms. He was dressed in jeans and a shapeless jumper that spoke of thrift shops and making do, and was she just imagining that whiff of poverty?
‘Marion Harris. Delighted.’ Marion’s accent was pure New York. This was the oil painter, a stout woman dressed in a brown and yellow floral print and a sky-blue knitted cardigan. Even online she hadn’t seemed worth taking much notice of, although her résumé was impressive.
‘Jane Goodman.’ The other Australian. A photographer from Maroubra, of all places. Maroubra was just past Coogee, at the other end of her favourite walk, but a world away from Bondi in terms of prestige and property values.
Jane, too, had a notable list of work to her name. With her short, mousy blonde hair and plain glasses she was far from glamorous, but a blue silk scarf set off the colour of her eyes.
‘Annette Porter.’
Annette was the installation artist, an attractive woman with streaked red hair, again from New York.
Rose nodded her greeting, the full smile reinstated. Striking or not, she sensed no competition here.
Annette’s left hand, wrapped around her wine glass, displayed an eye-catching set of rings that looked both worn and welded on. Her dress was an expensive pearl grey shift.
The
