Helen said, ‘You’re right. Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa wrote about it in his book Fuerteventura. He painted the villa as a kind of Nazi pleasure palace.’
‘This house was never meant for pleasure,’ Vera said grimly.
‘True,’ Carol said with a backward glance at her friend.
Carol’s gaze then met Clarissa’s and she quickly turned away without so much as a smile. Flashing into Clarissa’s mind was the sudden observation that all through lunch, while she had been happy not to engage with the others, none of them had bothered to engage with her, least of all Carol and Vera, two women whom she might have thought would have made a point of including her.
The history lesson continued, each of the contenders for most knowledgeable person in the room vying for supremacy.
‘The locals were kept out of
