The Santiago Sisters

Today, the house was empty. Teresa ventured into her mama’s bedroom and sat at the dressing table. It was a claw-footed thing in eggshell-beige with an oval glass top: a relic from Julia’s former life, and at odds with the austerity of the rest of the farm. Above the dresser was a mirror, mottled where it met its frame, and in it Teresa appraised her reflection, the effect uncanny because she looked so like Julia in her younger years that it could well have been the same person. She reached for a brush and ran it through her hair, black as coal and sheer as silk. Her eyes were green, wide, and Cleopatric, and her brows were thick. Her mouth was a Cupid’s bow.

Your beauty will serve you well … Julia’s voice reached her—or was it her own? It will be the thing that gets you out of here. She clung to it, her pass, her ticket to freedom: the one thing she had that was all hers, not her twin’s, not anyone else’s.

Her reflection gazed back at her for so long that she began to lose her grip on which was the real version—the one here or the one in the mirror.

Quickly, she left the room.

Calida wasn’t speaking to her. Teresa understood why, but the further she climbed in, the deeper she dug, the harder it became to turn back. She was testing her beauty; how far it would take her and the currency it held—and Daniel would give her her answer.

Every time she felt bad about Calida, knowing how her sister adored him, she reminded herself of the many things Calida had taken from her. Forever being the one in control, telling Teresa what she could and couldn’t do, always making the decisions and treating her like a child. Being the apple of their father’s eye, the one people trusted and relied on and respected. Being born first: the eternal offence.

What did Teresa have? Her looks. They were all she had.

Many times she wanted to forget the whole thing, say sorry to Calida and go back to how they were. But then she thought of the cracks in their companionship, and the glaring rift where she had kept the facts of their father’s death to herself. Teresa felt wronged by it, made to protect his affair and then watch him die and feel responsible for it. Calida hadn’t had to go through that, had she? Her memories of Diego were untainted. Teresa carried the burden and resented her sister for it.

Moreover, her father and Gonzalez had proven one unambiguous truth: that there was no justice, no integrity when it came to love. In an adult world, it was every person for herself: a question of survival. Realising that was just part of growing up.

Friday night, she made a decision. Daniel was in town—she had overheard him making arrangements to meet at Luz de Las Estrellas.

Teresa prepared carefully: her best outfit, lashings of mascara, high heels she had practised walking in. Finally ready, she stumbled into the kitchen—only to find that Calida had beaten her to it. Her sister was in the process of sneaking out of the door. Calida’s face was painted with lipstick and eye shadow, badly applied, and with a pang Teresa thought of the dozens of times their mama had taught her to put on make-up and had never done the same for Calida. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

Calida was defiant. ‘To find Daniel.’

‘Oh. So am I.’

Calida broke out and went ahead down the lane. Teresa followed, seeing her twin’s balled fists and tight shoulders and feeling sorry but at the same time proud.

Finally, here was something she could take control of. A judgement she alone could make. Besides, why was it fair that Calida got Daniel all to herself? Did she feel entitled, because she was older? Did that mean Teresa deserved only scraps for the rest of her life? In truth, she had no feelings for Daniel. He was a gaucho, not a billionaire, and he had Calida’s soul, the soul of the ranch, the soul of Argentina …

Her own soul felt confused.

But she had to know if he liked her. If beauty was everything Julia vowed it was. Daniel was a test, the results of which decided her survival in the outside world.

The moon was whole in the sky, illuminating the track that led the half-mile to the highway. When they reached the road, Calida looked like an abandoned child, shivering in her skirt and top, her arms wrapped round her waist.

‘How are you going to get there?’ Teresa asked.

‘I’ll think of something. I don’t need you.’

Teresa put her arm out to hail a car. Calida slapped it down.

‘Someone will stop!’

‘That’s the idea.’

It wasn’t long before a truck pulled over.

‘Hi.’ Teresa leaned in the window. She looked older than she was: they could easily have been sixteen-year-old friends on a night out. ‘Give us a ride?’

‘Jump right in.’

She slid on to the back seat. Calida hesitated, before cutting her losses and joining her. The girls sat as far apart as possible, Calida staring resolutely out of the window at nothing, hating every perilous moment but unwilling to allow her sister to go alone. The man driving was middle-aged, with thinning hair. He wore a beige shirt and slacks. Teresa couldn’t see his face, only his darting eyes in the rear-view mirror.

‘Where you headed?’ he asked as the car pulled away.

‘Las Estrellas,’ Teresa answered.

The man sneered. ‘You old enough?’

‘We’re eighteen.’

His eyebrow lifted. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Something the matter with your amiga?’

‘She’s shy.’

‘You’re the chatty one,’ he said. ‘I like that.’

Teresa took her eyes from the man’s. Her heart was beating like crazy. The way the man ogled her, like a bear in need of a meal. She could say or do anything and he would still want her. She could ask for anything and he would say yes.

Minutes later, their ride pulled up outside the club. Calida got out and slammed the door. The entrance was heaving. A crowd swigged from beer bottles, blowing smoke into the air. The deep, heady thrum of music leaked out to the street.

A guy on the door stepped forward. ‘ID,’ he demanded.

Teresa lifted her chin. ‘I don’t have mine. I’m eighteen.’

‘Sure you are. ID, or you’re not coming in.’

Teresa batted her lashes. ‘Come on, give me a break …’

The man looked over her head to the next in line. Scowling, Teresa stepped to the side. Just as she was working out a Plan B she saw Daniel Cabrera emerge from the club, his arm round an attractive blonde. Behind her, Calida stiffened, appalled at the notion he had a girlfriend. Teresa stalked over without a backward glance.

‘Hi,’ she said.

Daniel was shocked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then: ‘Calida? Is that you?’

Teresa sensed rather than saw her sister approach. She stood her ground. ‘We came separately,’ she said.

‘Does Julia know?’

‘She doesn’t need to know.’

‘Hey, Dani, what’s going on?’ The blonde came over.

‘Nothing,’ Daniel said, stepping away from her.

‘Who are they?’

‘Girls I work with.’

‘Shit, what are they, like twelve?’

‘Too young to be out, that’s for sure.’

Teresa glared. ‘I’m still here, you know. I can hear just fine.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t be here,’ Daniel said. His voice softened somewhat when he addressed Calida. ‘I’m surprised you did this, Calida,’ he said. ‘You should have known better. Why did you bring your sister with you?’

Teresa wanted to scream. Why do they have to treat me like a baby?

All Calida did was to grimly lift her shoulders—and then, to everyone’s embarrassment but most of all her twin’s, a sob broke out of its carefully assembled cage. Calida sniffed and wiped her eyes, trying to contain it so nobody would notice.

Daniel extricated himself from the blonde and pulled her into a hug. Teresa heard her sobs honking against his sweater. Daniel held the back of Calida’s neck tenderly, and the blonde became agitated. ‘Are we going or not?’ she said irritably.

Calida drew away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I just … I’m sorry.’ Her face was blotchy with tears and humiliation and the wound of an exploded dream.

Daniel led his girlfriend away and began speaking to her intently. The girlfriend sighed, rolled her eyes, then turned on her heel and went back inside.

‘Come on,’ he told the sisters, ‘we’re going home.’

‘We don’t have any money,’ said Calida. She sounded utterly dejected.

‘It’s a good job I do, then, isn’t it?’

On the ride back to the farm, they barely spoke. Calida was curled against the window. Teresa wondered if she was asleep, and leaned into the front so that her mouth was inches from Daniel’s shoulder and she could smell the smoky scent coming off him. ‘You won’t tell Mama, will you?’ she whispered.

Daniel waited a moment before responding. When he did, he reached into the back and touched Calida’s knee. Perhaps he thought she was the one who’d asked it.

‘I won’t tell,’ he said.

7

‘Money,’ said Simone Geddes’ manager, as they took a car from the airstrip and began the long drive through northern Patagonia, ‘plain and simple. Once we show these people the kind of cash we’re carrying, it’s a free pass straight to your kid.’

Simone opened her diamond-encrusted compact and reapplied SOS lip cream. Travel made her horribly dehydrated, and the trip from London had been exhausting; first the city-hop to Amsterdam, then the fourteen hours to Buenos Aires, then the final leg to this deadbeat part of the world that looked as if it had never seen a car on four wheels, let alone a Range Rover Lumma CLR with built-in sound system and a sun roof that allowed Simone’s headscarf to whip prettily in the breeze.

‘Well,’ she turned to Michelle, ‘I trust you know what you’re doing.’

‘Naturally. I’ve had my contacts working round the clock on this for over a year, Simone. I don’t make mistakes.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ Simone lit one of her super-slim menthols—she was trying to give up, but these hardly counted. ‘That’s why you’re my manager.’

Michelle Horner delivered a tight smile, the equivalent of a raucous laugh from an ordinary person, and consulted her papers. She passed a file to Simone.

‘Six daughters, the right age, and a nice spread of light and dark.’

‘I’d like one with dark hair.’

‘I meant skin tone.’ Michelle tapped a sharp red fingernail on the photo, which showed half a dozen grinning tweens holding hands on a farm. They looked poor, but happy. ‘We’ve got everything from mocha to cappuccino.’

‘I feel like I’m buying a puppy!’ Simone trilled joyously.

‘With any luck this one won’t pee all over your floors.’

Simone flicked ash out of the window. Some of it blew back on her and without needing to be asked the driver activated the rear-seat ashtray; a crystal plate slid smoothly from the leather footrest. Simone tapped her cigarette into it.

‘So, which has your vote?’ Michelle asked.

‘Hmm, I’m not sure. Maybe the one in the middle.’

‘That’s my favourite, too.’

‘They’re a bit scrawny, aren’t they? Will they grow into their looks? It’s important, Michelle. This girl is going to be my ambassador, among other things.’

‘I understand that,’ Michelle replied. ‘I even had one of those photo-fit experts draw up estimates of what they’ll be like in ten years’ time, like they do for missing people.’ She handed the printouts to Simone. ‘Feast your eyes on this.’

Simone consulted the images. She thought they all looked a bit creepy, to be honest: half botched cosmetic surgery victim, half low-budget drag act.

She turned to gaze out at the sprawling rustic geography. Argentina. Who would have thought it when, all those months ago, she and Michelle had spoken of adoption for the first time? Since then Michelle had been true to her word. She had dispatched the finest team to every corner of the globe in search of treasure. After countless meetings, endless back and forth, and a spate of ugly arguments with Brian, who couldn’t understand any of it and refused to try, Simone had settled on South America. She desired an exotic-looking daughter. The girl had to be poor, because poverty would make her grateful: Simone wanted to be thanked for this. They had narrowed their quest to an estancia on the Pampas, and a single father with six children to feed and not two pesos to rub together. Simone would be their saviour.

‘Aren’t our children enough?’ Brian had complained, the day she’d told him.

Simone had bitten her tongue—hard. Never mind the fact that Emily and Lysander weren’t hers, they were hideous. Especially Lysander, who had possessed the nerve to pinch her bottom by the swimming pool last Friday, in front of all her friends and during the barbecue she had put on as a charity fundraiser. Hey! magazine had been covering the event and Simone could only imagine her flushed, affronted face, spicy sausage hanging between the grill tongs, as she’d opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. Oh, she’d wanted to slap him! Too quick, Lysander had dived into the water.

‘I need to do this, Brian,’ she had said. ‘For me.’

‘This new one won’t be yours either.’ It wasn’t like meek, mild Brian to take that toxic tone and Simone had been startled. She had almost liked it.

‘It will be as close as I can get,’ she replied.

Brian had stared her down for a moment, but Simone always won a stare-off and predictably her husband cowed, his shoulders rounding, before he skulked away. How could she expect him to understand? He didn’t know. She’d never told him. No child would ever come from her womb because her womb was incapable.

Hostile, they’d informed her. A hostile womb. Cripes.

Michelle brought her back to the present. ‘This family is going to get the shock of its life when we turn up,’ she was saying smugly. ‘We told them who you were but of course they’d barely even heard of the bloody Beckhams.’

‘Gosh, it must be remote.’

The car was slowing. ‘Are we there?’ called Michelle.

Their driver pulled over. He consulted the GPS.

‘José, is there a problem?’

The man didn’t speak much English. ‘We are lost,’ he said eventually.

‘Lost?’ Michelle snapped. ‘How can we be?’

‘Ah no, it is right way.’ The car started up again. Michelle and Simone exchanged sidelong glances. Does he know what he’s doing? mouthed Simone. She had visions of being driven to a hilltop plateau and sacrificed like a mountain goat.

Michelle nodded curtly, but didn’t take her hawk eyes off the wavering GPS.

‘We’ve lost signal,’ she said, throwing her hands in the air. ‘Typical!’

José had the indicator on. They came off on to a dirt track.

‘Is this it?’ Simone enquired. She was tempted to light another cigarette, but it was so overheated inside the car that she feared something might explode.

‘I do not know. We follow trail, ask at house.’

Before they could stop him, José climbed out of the car and opened the gate, tying it with rope to a knackered wooden post. The sun beat down. Simone sighed.

‘I want my hotel, Michelle. I’m tired and I’m cranky. I knew it was a bad idea to do this on the day we arrived.’

‘You know what I say: strike while the iron’s hot.’

‘Everything’s hot. Too bloody hot.’

José jumped back in. The engine gunned. They had barely set off when a crunching sound erupted from the belly of the car, quickly followed by a burst and a hiss, like a balloon deflating. ‘What was that?’ shrieked Simone.

‘Tyre is gone,’ said José. ‘Problem with tyre.’

‘So fix it!’ Michelle roared. She wound up the windows and blasted the air-con, as poor José sweated and heaved outside, attempting to jack the vehicle’s considerable weight. Michelle assaulted her phone for a moment, fishing for signal. The networks were down. Simone rolled her eyes. This was hardly shaping up to be the glamorous entrance she’d envisaged, sweeping into the beggars’ idyll like a fairy godmother. This broken-down heap of trash was hardly the ball-bound pumpkin.

José was out there for forty-five minutes. The women became crotchety. Simone finished her bottle of Perrier then admitted to needing the loo.

‘I can’t go here, what if somebody sees?’

‘We’re in the middle of nowhere,’ said Michelle.

‘Yes: a completely flat, no-damn-bushes-in-sight nowhere. What about him?’

‘José?’

‘Of course José—whom else would I be talking about?’

But Michelle lifted a thin eyebrow and nodded through the windscreen.

‘Our knight in shining armour,’ she said. A man of about twenty was riding towards them on a horse. He came in a cloud of dust, his blond hair reflecting the sun. As he neared the Range Rover, his horse began circling and stamping its hooves.

José stood, and the men conversed in Spanish. The stranger climbed down, tied his horse to a shrub and came towards the car. He had a rugged, tanned face and startling blue eyes. The word gaucho ran through Simone’s mind, and it had the same effect as someone pinching the tender skin on the underside of her arm.

Michelle opened the door. ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked José.

‘He say we get help at farm. We leave car here.’

‘And 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.’

8

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 flourish.