Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Important Stuff

 

 

SHE KNEW THE hotel was called the Desert Hideaway, and found it easily. From there, the trail grew more difficult to follow. Sand had closed the road Rachel had presumably taken, so she was forced to make a detour and enter the area from a connecting route on the far side. Even then, she wondered how she would ever be sure that she had found the right spot.

But there, straight ahead of her, beneath a double hump of ochre sand and bracken, a series of red and white striped plastic poles marked out the spot where Rachel’s 4X4 had been found.

She checked the temperature gauge and found that it was 42 degrees outside. She didn’t know what she expected to find here. It had been foolish to think of duplicating Rachel’s final journey, slipping out at dawn without telling her family, but she wanted to see for herself and put some errant feeling at rest.

Even though she was wearing desert boots and a long-sleeved shirt, she was reluctant to leave the safety of the vehicle. Heat was radiating up from the ground like the fan-assisted air from a convection oven. She pulled a raffia shopping bag from the back seat and slipped it over the corner of the car door so that it couldn‘t shut, then walked over to the arrangement of poles.

There was nothing to be found, of course. The sand had slipped across the road and the landscape had no doubt changed. The wind had written its signature onto these spines of rock, which history was relentlessly eroding and sifting away. If Rachel had left any mark of her existence in this barren region, it had been buried with the fossils of long-dead creatures beneath micrite and silt. Some bird tracks and a shed snake skin provided the only obvious proof of recent life.

She tossed the single red rose she had brought with her into the centre of the poles, and offered up a silent prayer. Talk to me, Rachel, tell me what happened. I need to know.

A bird cried in the sky, a terrible tearing shriek. Her cheeks were moist for a brief moment before the desert dried them.

As she arrived back at Dream Ranches she realised that Betty must have been watching out for her, because she came over moments after Lea left the Renault and entered the house.

‘I need to speak to you for a moment,’ she said, stepping onto the pristine front lawn with her arms defensively folded, clearly wishing not to be heard by anyone else.

Lea came down and joined her. ‘What’s the matter?’

A few minutes later, Lea returned indoors and went up to Cara’s room. It was Saturday and there was no school, but she knew Cara was in because her computer was chattering to itself. She entered without knocking. Cara was lying on her bed, working on her laptop.

‘You’re supposed to give me a warning before you come in,’ she complained. ‘We had a deal.’

‘The deal’s off.’

Cara sullenly closed her laptop and sat back, awaiting a lecture.

‘Do we need to have a conversation about contraception?’ Lea asked.

‘What? No.’ Cara looked grossed out.

‘You’re spending a lot of time with Dean.’

‘So?’ Never had two letters of the alphabet sounded more defensive.

‘His mother says—’

‘His mother doesn’t know anything.’

‘She found condoms in his room.’

‘You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?’ Cara replied hotly. ‘That’s the incredible part. Nothing breaks through to you. What we do doesn’t matter, Dean and I hang out together and let off steam, it’s not important. You never notice the important stuff.’

‘What important stuff?’

‘Dream World stuff.’

‘Oh, you know all about that?’

‘Ask your pal Hardy over at the resort how many workers he beat up yesterday. Ask that Russian thug you had over for dinner about his “special” security force and the deal he has going with the secret police. Ask yourself why they won’t block up the underpass. You have no idea what really goes on around here.’

‘You seem to know so much, why don’t you tell me about the underpass?’

‘They keep it open to give the workers somewhere to take their whores. It’s where they buy the drugs that keep them awake and working.’

‘How do you know? Is it because Dean told you?’

‘I know a lot more than you think.’

‘That has nothing to with the way you and your pals behave. I want you to think about what you do and be careful. You’re not even sixteen yet.’

‘You can’t choose my friends for me,’ said Cara, reopening her laptop to signify that their conversation was at an end. ‘I’m old enough to decide for myself who I want to hang out with.’

‘Not until you cease to be my responsibility, and that doesn’t happen until you’re eighteen. You get a very easy ride here, and you know it.’

‘I know right from wrong. But I have to experience things for myself, and then decide.’

‘You have to promise me you’ll be sensible and take control of your life. I really mean it. Do you have any idea how much you mean to me?’

But an email pinged in and Cara returned her attention to her laptop, pecking at the keyboard, indicating that the topic was closed.

 

CARA STAYED IN Lea’s thoughts throughout the day. She knew that Colette was just as worried about Norah’s behaviour. The kids spent a lot of their spare time on the internet together, creating material for Bubble Life, but what else were they getting up to? She wondered how her daughter had formed such strong ideas about Petrovich. You were exactly the same when you were that age, she remembered. You did some pretty crazy stuff and didn’t grow out of it until you met a boy at college.

Still restless, she drove to a deserted section of beach at the edge of the city and walked between the last of the shorefront cafés, down onto the scalding yellow sand. One sickly date palm had collapsed on itself, providing a small area of shaded relief from the light.

In the distance, through a shimmering heat haze, she could see the silvered towers of the Atlantica and the Persiana, an as-yet uninhabited Xanadu available to the highest bidder. The “twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers girdled round” were an earthly vision of paradise unimaginable to Coleridge, and just as unaffordable. This is the world we are making, Lea thought, stripped back to its barest essence. The pleasures of the few, built on the burdens of the many.

Sweating, she headed for the new boulevard that had been constructed along the seafront. The grey concrete paving stones of its promenade petered out, as if marking the point where time ceased to matter. She found an empty coffee bar, a neutral zone where she could sit and think.

You’re trying to forget, she told herself. You don’t want to think about what happened to Milo and Rachel. If you cease to care, they’ll cease to exist. You have to do something before it’s too late.

But even if she discovered concrete proof of wrongdoing, she knew it would be ignored by the men. They had all the power here. Women were to be humoured and ignored. And as for sisterhood, that was just a forgotten term that belonged in one of Rachel’s yellowed student books.