Sophie Weston - The Latin Affair

But in the end she had to leave the friendly landlord and his wife and go up to the pretty chintz hung bedroom alone. After getting ready for bed Nicky went to the window and looked out. In this country village you could see the stars. They were more brilliant than they were in London but even so they did not compare with the jewelled coverlet of the Caribbean.

Nicky closed her eyes in anguish. No, she was not going to banish the memory tonight She knew what that meant. No sleep until she faced it.

She sank into an armchair and tipped her head back. She let memory do its work…

IT WAS one of the worst times on the ramshackle Piper boat.

Oh, they were always short of money, of course, but Margaret Piper usually kept a small secret store for emergencies. This time, when she went to it, there was nothing there. Leon had found it and spent the contents. He did not even know where it had gone. Money, as he said charmingly when she challenged him, just trickled through his fingers. Money, he added, was not important.

It was one of the few times Nicky remembered seeing her mother angry with him. Not only angry but hopeless.

‘I was saving that to buy Nicky a birthday present,’ she heard her mother shout. ‘She’s sixteen next month and she hasn’t even got a skirt.’

There was not enough money to pay the mooring fee in the small island harbour, of course. They had to drop anchor off an isolated beach, out of town, and forage for food and water. Margaret tore her arm on an acacia bush and began to cry. When Leon put his arm round her, she twitched him away, turning her shoulder so that Ben and Nicky should not see her tears.

Ben did not. But Nicky, maturing fast and increasingly aware of the strains that their itinerant life imposed on her mother, saw all too clearly. It was then that she decided to go to town.

She ignored the scratches on her bare brown legs. She ignored the fact that her old shorts and shirt had shrunk as well as faded in the wash. If, as her very own Nemesis later accused, she looked like a voluptuous Cleopatra in urchin’s clothing, Nicky did not know it. All she knew was that she must do something to take that look of despair off her mother’s face. Anything.

There would be work at one of the cafés on the main drag or the marina, Nicky thought. She had grown experienced in the finding of casual work on the islands. Even if they did not pay her until the end of the week—which was all too likely—she should be able to beg some food from them at the end of the evening.

Well, she got the food all right. And a lot more than she had bargained for. Or than she was equipped to deal with.

There was no work at any of the cafés. But a harassed woman laden with gaping grocery bags stopped her as she came out of the Golden Lobster.

‘You looking for a job, kid?’

Nicky nodded.

‘I’m cooking for a party on the Calico Jane. I could do with another pair of hands. Just for tonight. Fifty dollars in your hand.’

To Nicky it was a fortune. More than that, it was a lifeline. But she was clear-headed enough to remember that casual labour didn’t have guaranteed hours. By the time she got off work tonight the shops could all be shut

‘Fifty dollars and the left-overs,’ she said firmly.

The woman laughed. ‘No way. This lot are on vintage champagne. You’re not waltzing off with two-hundred-dollar bottles of wine.’

Nicky lifted her chin. ‘No alcohol. Food. I want bread and salad and meat. Oh, and some milk.’

Her prospective employer stared. Then she shrugged, to the imminent danger of her grocery purchases.

‘If that’s what you want. Now take this damned bag and let’s get going.’

Nicky did.

The Calico Jane was in the luxury class. Anyone who chartered her had to be well off. Nicky was used to that. There were plenty of the seriously rich who moored yachts on one Caribbean island or another. She and Ben had crewed for several of them.

But she had never seen anything like the party that greeted her as she climbed aboard Calico Jane

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