Eighteen
Bianka
Bianka opens her eyes. In this moment, everything is perfect, and so that is where she will train her focus. Right here, right now.
It’s still dark outside, though a faint pink has appeared in the sky to the east. She’s in the master bedroom and as soon as it starts getting properly light, she’ll quietly slip across the hallway into her own bedroom.
She thinks about how she must be lying in the exact place Andreas usually sleeps, how she is seeing the room and the world outside and his wife from his exact vantage point. The mother of his children is curled into Bianka’s arms like a warm little animal, breathing softly and rhythmically, calm in sleep in a way energetic Charlotte never appears to be when awake.
The first rays of the sun reach across the eastern sky and Bianka shifts a little, readying herself to untangle herself from Charlotte, who releases a long, shuddering breath.
‘No,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t go.’ So Bianka doesn’t, not for a long while. She closes her eyes again and dozes to the feeling of Charlotte’s gentle fingertips drawing light circles on her skin.
*
Anette is reclining on the vast white structured designer sofa in the main living space, her injured foot dramatically bandaged and elevated by a stack of pillows. She’s scrolling on her phone and doesn’t glance up when Bianka enters the room. Bianka pretends not to notice Anette’s obviously frosty demeanour.
‘Hi, Anette,’ she says intentionally chirpily. She flops down onto the identical sofa opposite, separated by a low jade marble table, the only coloured piece of furniture in the huge room. ‘Oh, you poor thing. That looks so painful.’
‘Yes, well it is, not gonna lie. Total disaster. I mean, I might as well go home.’
‘Oh, no, don’t say that. We can do relaxed stuff around here. And take the car when we head out for dinner.’
‘Not sure I feel like going out to Ibiza’s fancy restaurants with one foot completely bandaged. Besides, I wanted to swim in the sea and now I can’t.’ Bianka watches as Anette’s bottom lip trembles, marvelling at the kind of life where you never experience not being able to do what you want all the time. Bianka carefully arranges her face to one of utmost sympathy and nods.
‘I totally understand that. Maybe we could get those hot guys from Carlo’s Catering to come back and cook for us?’
‘I guess that’s a pretty good idea.’
‘Where’s Linda?’
‘She helped me downstairs earlier but went back to bed. The hormones she’s on give her really bad headaches.’
‘Oh, poor thing. Gosh, it’s one thing after another.’
‘Indeed. So you and Charlotte have carte blanche to go do your own thing today.’ Anette’s expression is clearly confrontational and Bianka knows she wants her to say Oh, what do you mean? or Oh, no. I’m so sad you guys can’t join us.
‘Okay great,’ she says instead, looking Anette square on and smiling brightly, as though she didn’t pick up on Anette’s snarky undertone. Bianka isn’t going to waste a single second on a judgmental, narrow-minded woman like Anette – that much was obvious within moments of meeting her – but Bianka understands the necessity of being friendly with her, otherwise her relationship with Charlotte will suffer. And behind the scenes she can subtly divide and conquer.
*
Charlotte rides confidently and quite fast, heading south from Can Xara. Bianka closes her arms around her small, firm waist and feels her hair stream out from underneath the helmet, jostled by the wind. When they round the bend and she catches a glimpse of the sea, she can see that it’s even windier out there, white-crested rolling waves surging dramatically at the cliffs.
‘I want to show you somewhere,’ Charlotte said before they set off, instructing Bianka to bring a diving mask and snorkel. Bianka was happy to come along anywhere at all, away from the house and moody Anette and alone with Charlotte. They leave the paved country road they’d been on and head down toward the sea on a dusty narrow track. It grows narrower still until it peters out into a barely discernible path. Charlotte parks the Vespa and they climb down, pulling helmets from their heads and shaking their hair loose, laughing.
‘So, care to tell me where we are?’
‘You’ll see in a sec,’ says Charlotte, and after a quick glance up and down the deserted path, leans in and kisses Bianka hard on the mouth. ‘I hope we will have this place all to ourselves.’ They walk slowly down the path which has been worn into the remote hillsides. Bianka thought Can Xara was unspoiled, but this place is next-level. There isn’t a single sign of human presence or activity with the exception of the paths that crisscross the hills and cliffs that stretch as far as they can see. As they approach the sea, Bianka wonders if they’re going to have to climb – they are walking along the edge of a cliff high above a tiny, sheltered cove, its iridescent turquoise waters the clearest Bianka has ever seen, even in pictures. The coastline toward the south is broken by huge caves and limestone arches and Bianka feels stunned by its beauty in a way she’s never felt anywhere else.
Bianka hasn’t travelled extensively like the other women have; at least it seems from the stories they tell that they’ve spent their lives up until this point in one exotic location after another. Winter breaks in Megève, summers in Cannes and Ibiza, fall break in the Maldives or Tulum, punctuated by endless weekends in London and Paris and New York with ‘the girls’.
When all the bad things happened in Bianka’s life many years ago, she did fight the impulse to just walk away, to get on a plane somewhere random and never, ever look back. But then, perhaps as a result of never having had a real family to speak of, the urge to have that was stronger and Bianka directed the urge to escape into her new family instead, ploughing all her energy into it. Bianka had focused on simply placing one foot in front of the other, both in her marriage and her role as stepmother to Storm. She just hadn’t anticipated it would leave her feeling so dissatisfied. But what could she expect, really, after what happened to Mia? Bianka began to fear that she really was empty inside and not even the unexpected love of a little boy and his kind, devoted father could fix her.
‘Look,’ says Charlotte, shouting to be heard above the wind tearing across the headlands. ‘Down there.’
Bianka follows the trajectory of Charlotte’s pointed finger to a vaulted cave with a narrow slash of an opening in the crook of the tiny bay. They reach the end of the path and climb down onto the beach by carefully stepping from one boulder to the next. When they finally reach the patch of fine white sand interspersed with pebbled rocky parts, the wind disappears completely, screaming overhead but never reaching the cove.
The water, too, is as still as a mirror, a strange contrast to the crashing waves beyond the cape. They walk in comfortable silence to the mouth of the cave. Charlotte places her beach bag on the rocks and pulls her emerald green kaftan off, folding it neatly and placing it on a smooth, flat rock. Underneath she is wearing a white string bikini with coloured beads fastened to the strings. She pulls at the string at the nape of her neck, then the one behind her back, and the bikini top drops to the ground. She fixes Bianka with her gaze, as deep and irresistible as the calm waters of the cove. She pulls at the strings tied into bows on either side of her hips too and lets the bottoms fall from her body. Then she turns around and runs into the water, leaving Bianka stunned and wanting on the beach.
Bianka swiftly pulls off her black T-shirt and steps out of her denim cut-offs. She struggles with the clasp of her bikini top, watching Charlotte swim far out into the bay, frequently disappearing beneath the surface like a big fish. When she’s free of her bikini, Bianka leaps into the deliciously cool sea after her. She loves discovering this carefree, playful side of Charlotte; she suspects it doesn’t come out very often in her ordered, controlled life at home where the currencies seem to be success, achievement, and appearance.
*
Later, they lie side by side on the beach, right on the warm sand, holding hands loosely and watching wispy clouds sweep fast across the sky.
‘How are we ever going to return to real life?’ asks Bianka, turning to face Charlotte, whose expression instantly darkens.
‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t even think about it.’
‘Like, obviously we have to go back, but can we? Really? It’s not like we can ever unknow this.’ Charlotte ponders this for a while and when Bianka glances at her again, she realizes tears are streaming down her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, alarmed.
‘No. No, it’s fine. I’m just thinking about how you’re absolutely right. We can’t unknow this and will have to go back into life at home, which will no doubt feel different when you have a fresh point of comparison. I meant what I said the other night. That even though I have a good life in many ways in London, I don’t feel quite alive most of the time. Like less than half of my mental and emotional register is ever activated. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Oh yeah.’ More than you could possibly imagine, thinks Bianka. She half sits, supporting her head with her hand, letting her elbow sink into the soft sand. ‘All we have is now,’ she says.
‘At least we have that,’ says Charlotte, eyes shining, raising her arms and locking them around Bianka’s neck, pulling her back down into another embrace, making her shift her weight so she rolls on top of her.
*
