Victoria Fox - Temptation Island

Working life hadn’t been as glamorous or as productive as Stevie had imagined, however she’d found a niche that paid well and played to her skills. She’d been a PA now, in varying degrees of responsibility, for nearly ten years. She was efficient, organised and unflustered. Or, she had been, up until a year ago. But that depended on who you were working for.

There was a knock at the door. A beaming Bibi stuck her head round.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Sure.’ Stevie smiled back. Her smile was one of the best things about her, the sort of smile she gave her whole face to. In repose she could appear quite solemn: it was more concentration than anything else, but all the same it made the contrast a dazzling surprise.

Bibi, dressed in faded dungarees and an eighties-style bandana, bustled in with two mugs of coffee. She laid them down and flopped backwards on to the bed.

‘I need a boyfriend!’ she announced dramatically.

Stevie snapped shut her laptop. ‘You don’t need a boyfriend; you want a boyfriend. There’s a difference.’

‘Are you a feminist?’

‘Aren’t you?’

Bibi shrugged and looked at the ceiling. She covered one eye, then the other, and did this a few times. ‘I can see better out my left.’

‘Maybe you need glasses.’

‘Maybe. Wanna go out?’

Stevie sat up. ‘I can’t afford it, B.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘I need to find a job.’

‘You need to?’

‘Yes. Otherwise what am I going to pay you with at the end of the month?’

‘Come on ,’ said Bibi, not listening. She yawned in her usual theatrical way, stretching her arms wide. She’d assured Stevie that the apartment belonged to some distant aunt and she was getting a ‘ridiculously sweet’ deal, but Stevie saw no reason why she should take advantage of this, and anyway she disliked not having work, it made her feel like a waster.

‘Oh my God!’

Stevie was alarmed. ‘What?’

‘My friend’s having a party tonight!’ She sprang up. ‘I just remembered! We should go!’

Stevie stared balefully at her laptop.

‘Let’s go now!’ And she bounced off the bed.

‘It’s three o’clock.’

‘So? We’ll go shopping on the way.’ At Stevie’s expression, she added slyly, ‘There’ll be guys there. And you know what guys mean? Flirting. And you know what flirting means?’

‘Waking up in someone’s bed the next day without a clue what their name is?’

Bibi looked innocent. ‘I was going to say a bit of banter, but if you—’

Stevie threw a cushion at her.

‘Come on—’ Bibi checked her reflection in the mirror and adjusted the bandana above her ears ‘—they’re actors, it’ll be fun!’

This was a further disincentive. Stevie loved Bibi and had no doubt that one day she’d be a famous and very talented actress—it was all she had ever wanted to do, Bibi vowed, her whole entire life—but she had, apart from where Bibi was concerned, a slight phobia of that world. Take the Aurora Nash scandal, for instance. Stevie felt sorry for the girl, she was only fifteen or something, and her mug shot had been all over the papers. Last month she’d crashed the car Daddy had bought her and ended up getting arrested. She’d had enough drugs in her system to tranquillise a horse. In fact one of the drugs was for tranquillising horses. It was a spoiled, desperate scene. All that mindless excess, it wasn’t her thing.

Stevie’s last job had been working as PA to the director of a firm dealing in high-profile celebrity court cases: divorces, injunctions, political scandals, they’d handled it all. As part of that she’d been obliged to attend the occasional industry bash and had found each one unbearable. Cash made these people invincible, or so they thought. Stevie recalled him working flat out on a case shortly after she joined involving a married news anchor who’d been filmed dressing up four twenty-something Russian prostitutes as characters from The Wizard of Oz —it was their job to keep the press off the scent. She resisted the memory. That had been the case that started it. The late nights … the way he’d stand at the window loosening his tie, the spires of London behind, silhouetted in gold … the invitation of a drink, and then.

‘You do like men, don’t you?’ Bibi interrupted her train of thought. ‘Because this one time I kissed my best friend, who’s a girl, at holiday camp when I was, like, sixteen.’

Stevie shook her head. ‘So …?’

‘So are you gay?’

‘No.’

‘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.’

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.’