Owen ordered chips large enough to require both hands. He carried them outside, and Bea followed, eating before she remembered to object to leaving the hotel.
'One hour,' she said. 'Then everybody back.'
'We're not schoolchildren,' Kit said.
'Then I won't have to count you.'
They went down the steps to the promenade. The sun had emerged, low and pale, and the wind carried a fine spray that made Lena's lips taste of salt. After the reception room, the open space felt enormous. She unbuttoned her coat.
Tom walked beside her, eating the chips Bea passed back. They were too hot, and he kept breathing with his mouth open.
'You could wait,' Lena said.
'I could. But there might not be any left.'
There was a miniature-golf course beside the closed ice-cream stand. Tom stopped at its gate.
'Oh, no,' Lena said.
'Oh, yes.'
'We have an hour.'
'The captain has doubts about her team.'
'Your team has a documented history of cheating.'
'I moved one ball with my shoe. There was a wasp.'
'In November.'
Bea looked at her watch. Owen took the chips from her and put them on a bench inside the gate.
'Nine holes,' he said. 'Very quickly. Then we can say we've been out.'
He bought six tickets before she could decide. The man in the hut handed out putters of different lengths. Nia tried one, then exchanged it.
'I like to blame the equipment,' she said. 'I need to get this part right.'
Lena liked her more than she wanted to.
They divided into three pairs. Tom held the scorecard; Lena demanded custody of the pencil. It was a joke with rules, worn smooth by use. The first time they had played together, she had won by eleven strokes and he had kept the card on the fridge for a year, telling visitors it was evidence of fraud.
The first hole had a lighthouse in the middle. Lena lined up her shot and sent the ball straight into its door. It bounced back towards her.
Tom looked down at the scorecard. 'One.'
'Don't enjoy this.'
'I'm being very professional.'
She needed four more strokes. He took two. When he passed behind her he touched her shoulder with the head of his putter, a gentle tap. She nearly leaned back into him.
On the next hole, Kit tried to send his ball up a wooden ramp. It rolled halfway, lost speed and returned.
Nia applauded. 'I think that was brave.'
'You do better.'
She did. The ball dropped neatly through the opening at the top. Kit crouched to look for it, while she walked away with both arms raised.
Tom laughed. 'That's him finished.'
Lena made the next shot without watching. She heard it strike the wooden edge and groaned.
'You have to look at your own ball,' Tom told her.
'I know how golf works.'
He held the pencil out. 'Would you like to record your expertise?'
She took it and put down a four.
They caught up with Bea and Owen at the windmill. Bea was standing over her ball with an expression Lena had seen her use on a badly made spreadsheet.
'You can't frighten it in,' Owen said.
'I'm concentrating.'
He put his hands on her hips, lining her up. She pushed him off with her elbow and hit the ball hard enough to clear the hole altogether.
It landed in the flowerbed.
For a second Bea looked furious. Then Owen started laughing, proper helpless laughter, and she put the putter down before she hit him with it.
'You moved me.'
'You elbowed me.'
'Because you moved me.'
He went into the flowerbed after her ball. Bea followed to brush soil off the back of his trousers. They were still laughing when they came back.
Lena's chest loosened. Bea could have this. The dress, the dancing, this ordinary happiness. Lena could stand beside her for two more days.
She won the seventh hole. Tom's ball got stuck under a little bridge, and she refused to let him reach it with his foot.
'I have rights,' he said.
'You have a putter.'
He lay flat on the artificial grass and poked at it. A little girl with a yellow bucket stopped on the other side of the fence to watch.
'He's fallen over,' she told her father.
'He does that,' Lena said.
Tom raised a hand from the ground. 'I'm working.'
The girl giggled. Owen offered her his spare ball, showing her how it rolled down a channel along the fence. She pushed it back. It missed his hand, and he chased it with exaggerated panic until she laughed again.
Her little brother wandered towards Bea, one sticky hand out, jam or melted chocolate shining on his palm. Bea stepped back just as he reached her cardigan. Then she picked up the bucket he had dropped and gave it to his father.
'You've got a spill there,' she said, nodding at the child's sleeve.
His father thanked her and found a tissue. Bea moved the chips farther back from the edge of the bench. Owen was still playing with the girl, solemnly agreeing that her ball was faster than his.
Lena watched until Tom got up, brushing grit off his elbows.
'Seven,' she said.
'It was six.'
'I've written seven.'
'Then our legal system has failed.'
He had a green stain on his knee. She rubbed at it with her thumb without thinking. His hand settled over hers for a moment, warm and familiar. Kit was looking in their direction. Lena withdrew her hand and reached for the scorecard.
Tom had won by one stroke.
He tried to be gracious. It lasted until the gate.
'By one,' he said softly.
'I can hear you.'
'I'm just making sure the result is widely known.'
Nia had beaten Kit by so much that he said the card ought to be destroyed. She folded it carefully into her pocket.
'I'll keep it for your next birthday.'
They wandered farther along the promenade, past shuttered beach huts and a man taking photographs of gulls. Outside a seafood kiosk, Nia stopped to read the board.
'Do you like these?' she asked Kit, pointing.
'I've never had them.'
'Neither have I.'
'Excellent basis for ordering food.'
She bought a little pot of cockles and two forks. Kit watched her taste one, then took one himself. His face changed in stages. Nia bent over laughing, trying not to spill the pot.
'Don't spit it out,' she said.
'I'm not going to. I'm just considering my options.'
Lena knew that face. She'd seen it over cheap wine and a burnt dinner he had insisted was edible. She wanted to be the reason for it again.
Tom declined the offer of a fork. Bea said they needed to turn back. Owen had finished the chips, so she was easier to persuade.
Music came from a speaker on the kiosk counter, an old song Bea knew. She stopped walking and sang a line to Owen, horribly out of tune. He held his hand out.
'Absolutely not,' she said, already taking it.
He spun her under his arm. She went the wrong way and tangled her cardigan round his wrist. They tried again, worse. A passing couple smiled; Bea hid her face against Owen's shirt.
Lena wanted her phone for the scene, but it was in the wrong pocket. By the time she found it they had stopped.
'That's the trailer,' she said.
Kit turned towards her.
She regretted saying it, then couldn't resist. 'A woman has forty-eight hours to learn how to dance. The fate of a whole hotel depends on her.'
He glanced at Bea. 'She hires a man with no qualifications.'
'A disastrous decision.'
'A terrible attraction.' Kit lowered his voice into the gravelly tone he used to do while washing up. 'This autumn. Two left feet. One last chance.'
Lena laughed. It came out too freely. Four years away and he still knew where to enter the game.
'What's it called?' Nia asked.
'Love on the Wrong Foot,' Lena said.
'No,' Kit said. 'Too good. It has to sound like they ran out of money.'
Owen looked at Bea's trainers. 'Dance Hotel?'
Kit pointed at him. 'That's it.'
Bea laughed and pulled Owen's arm round her shoulders. Nia shook her head, smiling. Tom stood beside Lena, hands in his coat pockets.
'Can I be the man who fixes the dance floor?' he asked.
'Essential role,' she said.
'But I die ten minutes in.'
'No. You get a sequel.'
'Floor Two.'
She laughed again, and this time reached for his hand. It was an easy thing to do. A good thing to do, for this one moment on the promenade.
His fingers closed around hers. They walked back to the hotel that way, Kit and Nia ahead of them, Bea and Owen behind. Lena could hear Bea singing the wrong words to the song, then asking Owen whether he'd eaten enough.
When they reached the steps, Tom lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckles.
'Good afternoon,' he said.
She nodded. It had been. That made no part of what she had to do easier.