When We Believed in Mermaids(52)
Sarah nods. But she’s turning away, heading for the stairs. “I want to see the bedrooms.”
Leo is already up there. “Mom, you’ve gotta see this! This room has its own little bathroom, and there are tiles all over it! Can I have this room?”
“You don’t get to choose before I even see!” Sarah protests, and runs past him into the bedroom.
I follow more slowly, because four of the six bedrooms have their own bathrooms, and all of them are tiled magnificently. Leo runs into the one I knew he’d love, with its row of windows like a captain’s quarters in the prow of a ship. They overlook the driveway and the city.
The children dash around, pulling open drawers and doors to peer inside. Most of it is empty. I haven’t spent time in the secondary bedrooms yet. This one looks weary, with a faded mural along the top of the walls and curtains of no distinction. From my bag, I take out a notebook and scribble a few notes to myself, using a fountain pen I picked up yesterday and filled with a bright-magenta ink. The reds and yellows were always my shades, while Kit loved turquoise, violet, green. Dylan liked brush calligraphy in a Chinese style, using the darkest, blackest ink he could find. I always thought Kit seemed like a person who’d want more serious ink, the heavy blacks or browns, but no. She loved vivid shades in her colors and favored a fine tip for her precise handwriting. As I make note of the curtains, the wallpaper, I’m pleased by the elegance the stubbed tip lends even my scribbled notes.
“What about me?” Sarah says. “Which room do I get?”
“Come here.” I tuck pen and book back in my bag and take her across the hall to a room very similar to the others. The walls are a faded, awful shade of grimy yellow, and the bookshelves are sagging, but all that is cosmetic. The best feature is the one Sarah narrows in on immediately: a trio of porthole windows that looks to the sea. She dashes toward them, stands on her toes to look out. On either side of the portholes are two windows that open outward, and I crank one energetically to let nature in. “Listen,” I say, putting a hand to my ear.
“I do like to listen to the ocean,” she says, smiling. “It helps me sleep.”
My heart stings. It’s something we always said—the Bianci women need to be able to hear the ocean when they sleep. For a moment, I am unbearably sad that she will never know she even is a Bianci. “I know,” I manage in an upbeat voice. “That’s why I thought of it.”
“Thanks, Mummy.” She hugs my waist.
“Let’s go check out the greenhouse, shall we?”
But Simon calls up, “Mari, darling, can you come down?”
I take Sarah’s hand, and we head down the stairs. A woman with a video camera on her shoulder and another wearing the coiffed hair and suit jacket of a television reporter are standing in the grand hallway. The camera blinks red, recording, as it tilts itself upward to Sarah and me, coming down the sweep of stairs. “What’s going on?”
Simon, looking highly pleased with himself, introduces them. “This is Hannah Gorton and Yvonne Partridge from TVNZ. They’re here to do a feature.”
My heart freezes so hard I think it might shatter. “Nice to meet you,” I say, walking toward them to shake hands. Then I turn back to Simon. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Of course.” He follows me into the pantry, out of earshot.
“What are they doing here?”
“I told them they could come.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I might have wanted some better makeup, you know!”
“I knew you’d resist, and it will be good for publicity.”
“Why do we need publicity?” A frantic terror of revelation bangs around in my chest. “I don’t want our private lives made public!”
“It’s just business. We’re going to want to sell the other parcels at the best possible price, and this will generate excitement,” he says with a firmness I know will not budge. He’s a lovely man in a thousand and one ways, but when he decides on something, he is immovable. “And it’s only a half hour.”
“What other parcels?”
“I told you—to make this profitable, we’ll be developing the lower levels of the land into housing.”
“I don’t remember you talking about that.” Pressing my fingers to my temples, I try to calm down. It’s true that in the land-starved suburbs, housing parcels will make a mint. “But why do we have to put our lives on television?”
He presses his palm into my shoulder. “Come on, now. It’ll be right.”
For one long moment, I feel the two sides of my life in direct conflict. I feel them both on either side of my heart, pounding against each other. If I let him have his way, my face will be out on the internet again, increasing the danger that someone will recognize me. But I can’t argue with Simon when he makes up his mind on something. I may as well slam my head against granite. And if I’m too resistant, he’ll wonder why.
Shoving my fears down, I say sharply, “Fine,” and push his hand away, then stomp back into the other room. With effort, I plaster a smile over my face and laugh in a way I’ve learned to do, and I let them film me in the lounge and the halfway horrible kitchen. After a little while, I let go of everything but this—showing them the exquisite stairs made of kauri wood and Australian blackwood railings, the master bath entirely tiled in the Art Deco fashion, and the amazing windows with their views of the harbor, islands slumped across the horizon.