Chapter 11
AMBER
‘What are you doing here?’ I demand thickly.
‘Dropped my phone,’ Willow says with an insolent shrug, bending down to scoop up her iPhone, which is lying face down on the travertine tiles between us.
I duck around her, almost tripping over my own feet in my haste to get away. She makes a noise, somewhere between a snort and a giggle, and mutters something under her breath.
I stop and turn. ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’ The sullen look is back, the shutters down.
Shaking my head, I scurry down the stairs and let myself out of the front door.
I pause outside the villa, welcoming the feeling of the cool night air on my flushed skin.
Voices drift over from the terrace, low and rolling, like the ebb and flow of the sea.
The easy chatter of old friends. The occasional burst of laughter.
Are they laughing at me? Rationally, I know it’s unlikely.
I’m barely a blip on their radar. But my encounter with Willow has made me paranoid.
I stomp down the gravel drive, my hands in my pockets, half expecting Dom to come after me, full of apologies.
‘You’re right, I should have told you about Simone, but she means nothing to me now.
Nothing. You’re the one I love.’ But it’s wishful thinking.
When I reach Villa Paradiso’s imposing wooden gates I’m still alone.
I take out my phone and wave the torch at the pillars.
On the left-hand side is a brushed steel casing the size of an electric socket, with a button in the middle that says ‘Exit’. I press it and the gates swing open.
I turn left, retracing the steps Dominic and I took just a couple of hours ago, a full moon guiding my way.
The sea shifts and sighs in the distance, a magnetic force, pulling me closer.
I will sit on the beach until my head is clear, then I’ll walk back to the villa and apologise to Dom for overreacting.
Apologising is what I’m best at. I’ve been perfecting the art since I was a kid.
A memory I buried years ago resurfaces. I’m eight, sitting on a scratchy blue chair opposite Mrs Weatherall, the school counsellor, picking a hole in the cuff of my jumper so I can poke my thumb through.
Mrs Weatherall is telling me it’s common for the children of addicts to be people pleasers. That they often feel responsible for keeping the peace, for making everything better. That they believe being ‘good’ is how you earn love.
My legs swing back and forth, my heels kicking the worn grey carpet tiles, my eyes pricking with tears. I swallow hard and stare at my scuffed shoes until they go blurry.
‘It’s not your job to keep everyone happy, Amber. You mustn’t feel like you have to make everything better all the time.’
I shuffle forwards in the chair till I’m almost crouching, like a sprinter at the starting blocks. ‘Can I go now, please, miss? Only it’s library hour after lunch and I’ve promised Mrs Dunning I’ll help her set up.’
Mrs Weatherall sighs, and the sound merges with Dominic’s weary exhalation and the sough of the waves.
The huffs of disappointment Mum used to give if I hadn’t emptied the bin or remembered to buy milk.
The sense of failure that’s dogged me all my life.
At home I was a disappointment. At school I was picked on for being a teacher’s pet. At work…
No, don’t think about work.
I stumble over a loose rock and, fleetingly, lose my balance, my arms flailing in an attempt to stop myself faceplanting on the baked ground. What’s the matter with me? I can’t even walk without almost falling over.
I ride the wave of self-pity all the way down to the jetty.
The wooden slats creak under my weight as I walk to the end and sit, legs dangling.
The moon has dusted the sea with silver and when I look up it is to discover a canopy of stars, brighter and more thickly scattered than you ever see in London’s light-polluted skies.
Far across the water, the lights on Thalassia sparkle in the darkness.
Almost as tiny as the stars, and just as far out of reach.
I feel as small and exposed as I did that day in Mrs Weatherall’s office. Dominic’s duplicity has blindsided me. That, and the possessive way Simone talks about him, never mind the smirk on Willow’s face as she loitered outside our room, eavesdropping.
This place could be paradise, so why do I wish I was at home in my shabby shared house in London with a Netflix romcom on the telly and a box of Maltesers on my lap?
I don’t belong here with Dominic’s rich, privileged friends.
People with mud-splattered Range Rovers and second homes, plummy voices and investment portfolios.
People who have staff and swimming pools, and think nothing of flying wine over from wherever the hell Navarra is.
Their pampered, protected lives are a world away from mine. These people are not my people.
But if that’s true, what does it mean for me and Dom?