For a moment, I thought: How does she know about Aston? But then I realized that she was talking about the change of plans with Lochlon.
I don’t care about Lochlon; I’m too concerned about Aston, I wanted to object, but I couldn’t tell her that.
“Talk about what?” piped Gwen. “Talk about me?”
I gave Gwen a friendly tickle. “It’s all about you, isn’t it, you little hobgoblin?”
She giggled and stretched out on the plush leather seats.
I balanced my forehead against the cool glass of the car window. The sky was bruised with black-and-blue clouds, and the glass was speckled with rain. I traced a raindrop with my fingertip until I couldn’t feel anything but the sting of the cold.
“Any chance I can get that emergency phone, Elsbeth?”
“No way!” Gwendy exclaimed.
Elsbeth shook her head. “It’s against the rules, Kika.”
I coerced a deceptively sad smile onto my lips. It didn’t matter. I would find a way to sneak off at the airport.
The wipers wetly swished across the windshield like a muffled metronome. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
• • •
WHEN I WOKE up again, I saw that we had reached the airport but that the car was parked on the tarmac. It took me a moment to get it: Silly me; the Darlings didn’t fly commercial, lamb. We were taking a private jet.
I got out of the car into the rain, making my way over to men holding glistening black umbrellas for us. We even had our own customs official.
One of the tricks of being a good traveler is to strike a balance between being prepared and still being able to be surprised. I didn’t see this coming, but wasn’t this just the most wonderful distraction?
This meant that there would be no chance of getting to use a phone at the airport or on the plane, so I just would have to try once we landed.
Once aboard, I tipped my crystal flute to the stewardess, who had a chic little scarf tied around her neck, to accept a heavy-handed pour of champagne, or “champers,” as Elsbeth called it.
“It comes with the plane,” Elsbeth said, as if none of this was a big deal. But let me tell you, it was a big freaking deal. The bubbles tickled and fizzed at the bottom of my nose.
“Yum. It really classes up the joint.” The environment was making it very hard for me to ruminate on my boy problems. I leaned back into the smart cream leather seat. “You know, Elsbeth, I’ve ridden in overnight trains in third class and hitchhiked in the back of pickup trucks with chicken crates, but flying private is a first.”
Elsbeth clinked my glass. “It’s not too shabby, huh?”
“It’s hard to feel bad for myself when I’m flying private to Italy.”
“So, is everything okay, then?” she asked with real concern.
“Well, it’s over with Lochlon.”
Elsbeth nodded, but then in a kind of ah-young-love brush-off, she added: “Well, things may change. Sometimes you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone.”
“Like toilet paper?” I asked with a grin. “Sure. But not so much with Lochlon. I thought we were so alike, but it turns out I was so wrong.”
“Are you sad?” she asked.
“I think part of me already knew it was done. It’s been over a long time—it was over the minute my train pulled out of that station in South India, truth be told. But I didn’t want to believe it, you know? So no, I’m not so sad.”
When I heard my own feelings spoken aloud, I realized that was the truth. Now I understood that I wasn’t waiting and desperate to see Lochlon again; I was waiting to see myself again—the self I was when I traveled.
I tugged at my seat belt. Lochlon couldn’t bring back that girl (and to have gone away with him and tried would have meant ultimately to fail). I had to find her myself. And I did find her again, the moment I got to London.
“Well, it’s better that you found this out sooner than later. You can’t run on nostalgia, lamb,” said Elsbeth.
“True.” I nodded.
“And it’s easy to fall in love in Paris.”
“I met Lochlon in Barcelona,” I corrected.
“Yes, I know, but you get what I’m saying. Everything’s always chicer en français.”
Thoughts of Aston popped into my head again and again. What bothered me most of all was that he didn’t know how I felt about him. But until I got to a phone, I couldn’t do anything about that, so I gave myself permission to forget it for now and enjoy the trip.
As if on cue, lace-thin clouds gave way to crystalline blue waters, and the windblasted limestone cliffs of southern Italy’s fishing villages sharpened into focus. And here I was, still the luckiest girl in the world, despite it all.
“On to bigger, better adventures, right?” said Elsbeth, signaling for more champers. She rested her hand on the armrest and shimmied her fingers to make the high-altitude sunshine ballet across her manicure.
“Spoken like a girl who travels, Elsbeth,” I said.
50
“SO THE VILLA we’re staying at is outfitted with Vietri tiles and Murano glass lighting fixtures,” gushed Elsbeth as we bounced along southern Italy’s scrolling roads. She jabbered with the animated stamina of a teenager describing her prom dress. “And all the bedding is from Scandia Home, and the bathrooms are stocked with Carthusia products.”
I nodded even though I had no idea what she was talking about as we nosed down the final curve. The car made a jagged stop at the outer gate of a villa clinging to a cliff. Elsbeth adjusted her oversized sunglasses, which made her look like a Waspy Sophia Loren.
“Elsbeth, you did not have to talk this place up,” I told her as I climbed out of the car.
The whitewashed villa was traced in terra-cotta and sitting among lush tropical hanging gardens: handsome, ancient olive trees; thick palms and pines; lemon trees drooping with fruit; and flowers in punchy, flashy colors.
We entered through the foyer, which led to glass doors introducing a sun-bleached veranda. On the veranda, a tinkling fountain competed with a swimming pool that shone like a pillow-cut sapphire and overlooked the crescent of Positano and the cerulean Tyrrhenian Sea below.
(“It’s the Tyrrhenian, not the Mediterranean, lamb,” Elsbeth corrected me. “A common mistake.”)
I had been to postcard-perfect southern Italy once before but as a low-rent backpacker set on seeing the salt-preserved bodies in Pompeii and maybe making out with a hot Australian backpacker in one of Italy’s trashy, fever-dream nightclubs.
This trip is going to be a teensy bit different, I concluded as the staff (yes, the staff) showed us to our rooms, though everyone but me had been here before.
The wonderful thing about Positano was that there was nothing to do. I couldn’t wait to marinate in the Italian Limoncello sunshine—but of course I was here to work, I reminded myself. Though I was tempted to ask for a day or two for myself to do some scouting, I concluded that this was not the time to slack off on my au pair responsibilities. I had big plans for the girls this week, and I brought along boxes of watercolor paints, playing cards, and beach toys. I had planned day trips, seashell hunts, and beach games for us.
This was my moment to shine as an au pair extraordinaire by allowing Elsbeth and Mr. Darling to have their luxurious vacation while ensuring that the girls had a great time, too. Asking for time off now would seem flippant of me.
And so I would repurpose my acidic, hair-raising anger at Lochlon as drilling motivation to ensure that I would go after everything I wanted in life—especially when it came to staying true to the promise I made to myself that I would try my hardest at this job.
Now, I just had to get access to il telefono per un momento. (I dug through the Italian dictionary for an hour to figure that one out.) I needed to tell Aston that I liked him, and then I could get on with it. You see, th
e longer I waited to do so, the more I doubted his feelings for me: Did he really come off as strong as I remembered? And did he still feel that way about me after seeing me with Lochlon?
51
“STOP BOUNCING UP and down.” I wrangled Gwen to the ground, slathering her with sunscreen.
“Can’t stop! Won’t stop! Too excited!” she said, bobbing up and down like a Whack-A-Mole. “Can we go to the pool now? Can we? Can we?”
“Mina?” I angled my neck toward Mina’s adjoining room, connected by a Turkish bath–inspired lavatory—all heated marble floors and glorious fluffy white towels. “Are you almost ready? Gwen is about to pee herself.” My voice echoed off the imported tiles. My room, a Blue Grotto spectacle, was located right across the hall from the girls’ rooms.
Mina walked into Gwen’s room already in her bathing suit.
“As long as she doesn’t pee in the pool,” she said, looking peculiar without her cell phone; it was like she was missing an appendage.
Speaking of, the plan was to get the girls in the pool, then see if I could borrow a phone off a maid or a cook or someone.
Apparently the villa “came with” (sounds so wrong) a staff of ten, as well as a German shepherd named Mussolini, which also sounded a little wrong.
Yet so far, we saw no one besides the butler: a mushroom of a man with tiny legs that bloomed into a massive, operatic chest. He said a whole bunch of stuff to us including a whole slew of “mamma mias” (seriously didn’t think Italians really said that), sprinkled with “bellissimas,” then showed us to our rooms.
Elsbeth’s first order of business was to get herself a seaweed wrap in the solarium. She said she’d meet us for dinner.
Mr. Darling was out driving a Ferrari or a cigarette boat, pretending to be in a Bond movie. (Not to sound unimpressed, but after a while all these ridiculous displays of wealth just blurred together.)
And me? All I wanted was to make a quick phone call and then take the girls down those winding stairs carved into the rock face and jump into the water, which was so frothy it looked carbonated.
Initially, I was a little surprised that everyone went off to do their own thing. Weren’t they going tech-free to have family time? But then I realized that it was just a way to spend the whole day apart without having to stay in contact with one another.
“Are you guys sure you want to go into the pool instead of the ocean?” I asked the girls as they led the way to the patio.
“The ocean’s too cold this time of year, Kika,” said Mina, shaking an aerosol can of sunscreen. “But the pool’s heated.”
“Yeah, the pool’s super fun,” said Gwen. “Let’s go.” She grabbed my hand. The girls had been coming here for years, so it was nothing special to them. But I couldn’t ever imagine tiring of it.
On my count of three, both girls cannonballed into the pool, shattering the pristine stillness like glass. I clapped vigorously on the sidelines.
Another butler or waiter (I didn’t want to call him a “servant” for God’s sake!) came out onto the patio with freshly squeezed blood orange juice in too-fancy glasses.
“Buon giorno,” he greeted us politely and unloaded the tray of drinks onto a little frosted glass table beside my sun lounger.
I motioned for him to come closer to my lounge chair. “Excuse me, sir, but do you have a telephone I could borrow for a moment?”
He shook his head and babbled noisily, “Mi scusi, mi scusi, non parlo inglese.”
I motioned for him to lower the volume—I didn’t want the girls to hear.
“Hmm, okay. Brrrrrrring! Brrrrrrrring!” I blared idiotically, forgetting all the Italian I learned a mere hour ago. I curved my hand into a phone shape and held it to my ear.
“Halo? Halo?” I said in an appalling generic foreign accent. I sounded way more Swedish than Italian, but it worked, and the young man began prattling in rattling-fast Italian.
“Non abbiamo i telefoni. Sono state rimosse come richiesto.”
“Kika Shores!” shouted Gwendy. She hoisted herself out of the pool and padded toward me.
The young waiter shrugged his shoulders up and down comically like a bird ruffling then smoothing its feathers. He backed away with a routine of little bows while repeating: “Mi scusi! Mi scusi!”
“You know you’re not allowed to use phones,” Gwen said with her fists planted on her waist. Drips of chlorine water spattered on the pavement.
“Sorry, Gwendolyn. I know,” I said. “I just need the phone for one teensy second, though.”
“No dice, lady.” She picked up her blood orange juice and made a fish face around the straw.
“Mom called and made sure all the phones and computers were disconnected before we came,” said Mina, getting out of the pool as well.
“No shit. Really? She can do that?” I asked.
“Um, yeah,” Mina said, like it was obvious. “One year, when she decided that we were all eating gluten free, she had them remove all the pasta from the premises. She literally took the pasta out of Italy! Having a few phones shut off is child’s play for her.”
I looked at her, horror-struck.
Mina nodded. “We’ll find some way to deal.”
I wrapped the girls in downy towels, and we slurped our juice wordlessly.
“It’s actually not so bad being without my phone,” said Mina. “I guess it’s just super annoying that it has to happen now when Peaches and I are actually friends. I mean, couldn’t we have gone on vacation when I used to play Candy Crush on my phone and only pretend like I was texting?”
In a glorious turn of fate, Mina and Peaches had become genuine friends stemming from their mutual appreciation of preppy American fashion. As suspected, Peaches was just jealous of Mina—even though she’d never admit it. But once Peaches saw who Mina really was (i.e., someone who’d let you borrow her cool American clothes rather than just use them to one-up you), Peaches changed her attitude. Now I just had to hope that Mina would rub off on Peaches and not the other way around.
I positioned the girls’ chairs under giant, ice cream–colored parasols straight out of a Fellini film.
“Speaking of which . . . where are the Snotty McSnots Benson-Westwoods going on their school holidays? Somewhere standard-issue faaaaaabulous I’m sure.”
Mina shook her head. “Nope. They’re staying in England—they’re going to the countryside. Peaches says their estate is haunted so they’re selling it. They have to clean out all their stuff.”
“Selling a family estate? That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“No,” said Mina, crossing her blue-white legs. I chucked the sunscreen over to her.
“They’ve been selling lots of stuff. At first Peaches didn’t like it, but now she knows she’s getting all new stuff, so she’s okay with it.”
I raised my eyebrow. “What else have they been selling?”
“Peaches’ nanny walks her home from school now because they sold the nanny’s car. But it’s okay because Peaches said they’re getting something cooler. An awesome Italian sports car, a Linguine or whatever.”
“Hmm.” I nodded. “What else?”
“Peaches’ mom made her sell her Louis Vuitton bags. She only has one Louis Vuitton bag left—the old one with the giant ink stain on the bottom. She said her mom took her others because she’s getting a Paraty Chloé bag—the one that’s made from real python skin. So she doesn’t care about her Louis Vuitton bags anymore.”
My mind drifted. I wondered if I would ever be the kind of girl to care about Chloé bags, seaweed wraps, or sports cars. I mean, just because Lochlon was going to be a farmer and father didn’t mean I was going to just up and change one day, did it?
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t blown back by how quickly he gave up the existence he wanted for himself. It’s scary when someone similar to yourself morphs 18
0 degrees—it makes you think that one day it could happen to you.
But it won’t happen to me, I assured myself, setting my orange juice onto the table and crossing my legs.
“So Peaches is happy,” Mina concluded.
“Really, she doesn’t mind? You’d think Peaches would be devastated having to sell all these things. Especially her precious bags,” I said.
“Well, she’s not allowed to talk about it. She only tells me because we’re for real best friends now.”
“I see,” I said. “Are you girls hungry? I can go into the kitchen and rustle up some grub if you want.”
“No, Kika.” Gwendy leaped up and trotted over to a silver panel intercom affixed to a wall curtained in bougainvillea.
“You just press here when you want something.” Gwendy sunk her chubby finger into a silver button.
“Buon giorno, come posso aiutarla?” asked a detached, static-tinged voice from the intercom.
“Hello, friend! This is Gwendolyn Prudence Darling III. Can we have more bloody orange juice and some delicious snacks?”
“Say please, Gwen,” I added from the sidelines. (Just because we would have our every desire tended to didn’t mean we could forget about our manners.)
“Please?”
“Of course, piccola signora. And where would you like it? At the pool?”
“Yes, please.”
“Very good,” confirmed the voice.
“Thanks!” said Gwen, looking very impressed with herself. I gave her a thumbs-up.
Mina turned to me to elaborate, and Gwen went back into the pool. “There’s a button in every room that connects to reception. Just press it whenever you want anything. They speak English, but most of the staff don’t.”
“Thanks for the tip. Life here is not so bad, huh?”
“Nope, even without a connection to the real world, it’s not too bad,” Mina said, resting her hands behind her head.
A little while later, the same young waiter from earlier arrived with a tray of olives, tangy cheeses, and cured meats, along with another carafe of blood orange juice.
Girls Who Travel Page 18