walk? You’re asking Simone Geddes to walk?’
The men exchanged something else, and laughed.
‘May I ask what’s funny?’ Simone got out and slammed the door. She removed her headscarf and held it over her mouth: she had never been anywhere so dusty! Dust was rolling across the landscape; you could see it churning like tumbleweeds. ‘I am perfectly capable of walking, thank you very much—is it far?’
José pointed to a shack in the distance.
‘Right.’ Simone began to pick her way delicately across the rocks. ‘Let’s go.’
It was dusk by the time they made it to the house. Simone’s feet ached and she was so thirsty it was as if someone had spent the entire afternoon sandpapering the inside of her mouth. At Michelle’s insistence she had been persuaded on to the horse, which she found horrifying, because all there was to hold on to was a knotted leather rein. The gaucho had to heave her into the saddle, if a lump of rags and sheep wool merited that description, pushing her backside as she attempted to get a leg over, and, as Simone hung there, close to tears, she thought it was just about the most undignified position she had ever been in. The horse smelled. The reins made her hands black.
She longed for the Kensington mansion. For once, she longed for Brian!
‘We are here,’ said José at last.
‘And where exactly are we meant to be?’ Michelle demanded through gritted teeth. José talked to the stranger before replying:
‘He say this place we need to go is other side of mountain.’
‘We have to cross a mountain?’
‘Sí. I take wrong highway.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know. You’re fired.’
‘I sorry.’
‘Just get me inside and to a goddamn telephone.’ Michelle turned to her client. ‘I’m getting straight on to the agency and they’ll send someone out here ASAP—in a fucking helicopter if they have to.’
The gaucho helped Simone off the horse. This way was slightly less unseemly, but only just. He sort of caught her arse in both his hands, and her legs churned air like a first-time swimmer without armbands. She thanked him in English, only afterwards realising she should have done it in his language, and he grinned and didn’t reply. God only knew what he was thinking.
Simone was being led inside when something happened. She was alert at first to the sound: a sweetly hummed tune, sung by an angel she couldn’t yet see. And then the vision appeared—a girl of about fifteen materialised around the side of the house with the languid, cat-like indifference that was the hallmark of adolescence.
Simone gasped. The girl was hands-down the most ravishing creature she had ever encountered. Her hair was long and sleek, her limbs slender and brown. Her eyes were huge and inky, the lashes impossibly thick. Her mouth was a rose bud.
The girl stopped singing.
‘Hello,’ said Simone.
Another child, nowhere near as appealing though clearly related, came in her wake. She, too, was brought up short at the sight of the uninvited guests.
The gaucho said something to them. Simone held a hand out to the prettiest and tried not to let the other one’s glower put her off. The other one looked feral.
‘Hola,’ she stumbled, ‘me llamo Simone. Soy de Inglaterra. Cómo se llama?’
There was a long silence. Gently does it, thought Simone, unwilling to blow the chance now it had arrived so conveniently in her lap. To imagine they were never even supposed to have come to this godforsaken place! But this was it. Here. Now. The One. And she saw it all clearly. She understood what was meant to happen, starting with securing this girl’s trust. Like coaxing a fox in from the cold.
‘Teresa,’ the girl replied, at last.
Simone inhaled and exhaled deeply. ‘That’s a pretty name.’
She turned to Michelle. ‘She’s it,’ she said.
Michelle attempted discretion even though it was doubtful their company understood. ‘One thing at a time, Simone,’ she hissed. ‘Let’s not get carried away.’
But Simone had never felt less carried away. She felt totally level headed, as if all she had done was to walk into a fate that had already been mapped for her. Teresa was the one. She was it! The beauty would be returning with her to London, even if Simone had to swim across the Atlantic with the child on her back, like a giant turtle.
The gaucho led them inside. The kitchen was painfully basic, with a single wooden table, an iron stove, and a collection of battered pots and pans that hung from a rafter in the ceiling. Heavens! How did people live like this? Simone thought of her own kitchen, with her diamond-granite worktops and Sub-Zero Pro fridge freezer.
A woman—their mother?—emerged from the hall. She was dressed in a tatty robe, her hair limp, and her eyes sunken. She and Simone appraised each other, across time, across continents; in another universe, the woman the other might have been.
José addressed her. ‘Disculpa, señora, perdóname, pero puedo usar su fono?’The woman listened to the gaucho for a moment before pointing hesitantly into the back. Michelle followed, accompanied by José, until Simone pulled him to her. ‘You stay here,’ she commanded. ‘I need you to help me talk.’
The woman, who would once have been beautiful but whose embittered expression robbed her of any lingering shred, eyed her suspiciously.
‘I have a proposition for you,’ said Simone, after introductions had been made. The air in that hot, Patagonian kitchen, glowing amber from the melting sun, seemed to vibrate with anticipation. ‘One that could change your life.’
Over supper that night, Julia was in an unusually good mood.
‘What a wonderful person Simone Geddes was,’ she kept saying. ‘And such good fortune that they should stumble across our lowly abode! I’m only glad that we were able to help—those poor women, breaking down in the middle of nowhere …’
Calida ate quietly, while Teresita quizzed her. ‘Is she rich?’
‘Beyond our wildest dreams.’
‘Is she famous?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Julia said. ‘Simone’s an actress. She lives in a mansion in England.’ Their mother lifted her fork precisely to her mouth and chewed carefully. ‘We’re going to stay in touch and then I might have some exciting news to share with you.’
Teresita danced up and down in her seat. ‘What news?’ she pressed, while Calida stayed quiet. Their visitor had unnerved her. It was as if the woman had deposited a trick in her wake, a sting in the tail, a nasty surprise, the nature of which would not be apparent immediately but would soon reveal itself in a horrible, startling
