The Club(15)

‘God knows what I would have done about tonight if it wasn’t for you, though, Jess,’ she said. ‘We hadn’t really thought this through . . .’ She trailed off, distracted by rifling through her suitcase.

There was a strange kind of buzz in hearing your name in the mouth of someone famous. There was something strange, too, something quite dreamlike, about finding yourself face to face with someone you had seen bantering on Freddie Hunter’s televised couch, someone whose wedding photos you had pored over in a GP’s surgery, whose divorce you had read about in the Mail Online. Especially when they were still somewhere between outfits, and wandering around in just their underwear and tattoos for quite a long stretch of the conversation.

Jess did wonder, as she listened to Kyra chattering away, talking about the helicopter flight down, explaining how she knew Freddie, if she had any idea quite how much chaos and consternation her unexpected arrival had caused. The debates about whether or not she was to be allowed to come to that night’s dinner. The anxious discussions about where on earth, if they did stay, she and Lyra were going to sleep. It was lucky for Kyra, Jess thought, that another member had been forced to cancel their attendance at the party last minute, calling mid-afternoon from a hospital in the Pyrenees with a broken leg.

‘I won’t be late,’ Kyra had promised as she was leaving, with a big hug for Lyra, a kiss on both cheeks for Jess. ‘I promise. I’m just going to meet Freddie for a drink in the bar, then we’re all going for dinner. I doubt it’ll be much after ten when I get back here.’

The time was now almost half eleven. Even if Kyra got back in the next five minutes, it would still be after midnight by the time Jess got to bed. A bit rude, that. A bit inconsiderate.

To be fair, just as promised, Lyra Highway had really not been any trouble at all.

The first thing she had asked Jess was how many of the different Home clubs around the world she had been to. Two, said Jess – if you included this place and the one in London where she had been interviewed. Lyra had been to all of them. Paris Home was the one she liked the best, she thought. She then began to rank all the others, in order.

‘I like the Malibu Home pool most,’ she had informed Jess, breezily. ‘But the water is a bit too cold.’ At Shanghai Home they let you watch as they prepared the dim sum. The view from the cabins at Upstate Home in New York were pretty amazing, but these cabins here on this island were a bit bigger, and a lot nicer. ‘The burgers there are better though,’ she’d said, eyeing her uneaten room service order.

Jess tried to remember if she’d had such confident opinions about anything when she was Lyra’s age. Ice-cream flavours, possibly. Her favourite member of Sideways, perhaps. It was also quite unsettling to be babysitting a child who was objectively a lot cooler than you were.

After they’d played Candy Crush on Lyra’s iPad for almost an hour, Jess had tried and failed to teach Lyra chess with the ornate set on the coffee table, realizing in the process that she couldn’t remember the rules all that well herself. Jess had called reception to see if there was anything to draw or colour with – but with under-eighteens not technically allowed on the island, there was nothing in stock to entertain them so they’d sent an ice bucket full of silver fountain pens and some headed notepaper instead. Jess had used this as kindling for the wood-burner in the corner of the cabin, which quickly made the room so hot they had to open the balcony doors.

Lyra had asked for a Wagyu burger and a bottle of Badoit for dinner but it had been unclear to Jess whether she should order something to eat as well, so she had decided against it. This was a decision that, as the hours passed, she had come to regret.

After Jess spent some time fumbling with it, Lyra had shown her how to open the TV cabinet on the cabin wall, opposite the enormous bed with its scalloped rust-coloured velvet headboard. About eighty channels – movies, news, lots of lifestyle and travel stuff – she had scrolled through, without finding anything quite suitable for a seven-year-old. They had ended up watching some kind of endless information loop about the island – the different places to eat, the spa menu, plus a video about the art here, which incorporated an interview with Keith Little.

‘Do you know Keith?’ asked Lyra from the bed, chin resting on her upturned palms, her tumbling curls, hazel eyes and heart-shaped face an exact facsimile of her mother’s, but in perfect miniature. The question was seemingly a genuine one – perhaps it simply didn’t occur to her that there were other social circles to move in.

Jess, in her armchair, shook her head. She knew the name, of course, and vaguely recognized the face on the screen – the grizzled stubble, the earring, the jet-black hair tied back in a ponytail, the striking pale blue eyes. There was a clip they always showed of him, from the nineties, drunk on some late-night BBC Two talk show, slowly slipping down in his chair, gradually getting growlier and growlier until eventually he ripped his microphone from the front of his shirt and stormed off set ‘to get a pint of Guinness’.

‘I’ve met him about ten times,’ said Lyra, counting on her fingers and nodding along as she mentally checked off the occasions. ‘But he still never remembers my name. He always kisses on both cheeks and his stubble scratches. And he stinks of cigarettes.’

Jess checked the time again.

It was now nearly a quarter to midnight.

She had suggested, several times, that it might be time for Lyra to brush her teeth and go to sleep.