Theo's mother had brought two speeches to Mallorca, although there was only one occasion and nobody had asked her to speak at it.
He discovered this when she came to the villa to borrow a safety pin before supper. She had changed again. The white flowers were gone, replaced by a blue dress she described as very ordinary, which meant he was not supposed to mention it more than twice.
“Do you have one?” she asked.
“Not on me.”
“Mara will.”
“Mara's still with Leah.”
“There might be one in her bag.”
He opened his own washbag. There was a plaster, some tablets and the little sewing kit he had taken from a hotel several years ago because Mara had said it was just the thing they would need precisely once and never be able to find. It contained two safety pins.
“Here.”
Sue looked delighted. “You're very well trained.”
He put the kit down. “What's it for?”
She showed him a strap at the back of the dress. He turned while she fixed it, apparently requiring more privacy from his eyes than from the whole week of their conversations.
On the table beside her bag lay a sheet of paper covered in handwriting.
“Is that your speech?”
“It's the first version.”
“Mum.”
“I haven't done anything with it. I brought it in case I wanted some of the stories.”
“For Saturday?”
“It is still a party. Other people may say things.”
He picked up the paper. It began with a joke about his first attempt at school trousers, an anecdote he had begged her not to tell at his twenty-first birthday. She had told it anyway. Beneath that came Mara's name, and he put the page down before he could read the next line.
“I can make it shorter,” Sue said.
“I'd suggest starting with the trousers.”
“People like that story.”
“The people who've heard it like knowing it will end.”
She smiled. He could always get that smile if he was sufficiently rude in the right way. It had made him lazy about the things he actually needed to say.
“I've written another one,” she admitted.
“Why?”
“In case the first one wasn't appropriate.”
“For the party we said wasn't a wedding?”
She held out her hand for the paper. He gave it back.
“Theo, I know there isn't going to be a ceremony.”
“Or a marriage.”
“Yes.” She folded the speech once. “We can still say how pleased we are to have people together.”
“That bit's fine.”
“Thank you very much.”
He heard the edge and looked at her. She had paid for part of the occasion. He and Mara had refused several things she wanted, accepted several others and only discovered how many decisions they'd made when they tried to undo them. His mother had kept the receipts for her dress and not asked what they thought she should do with it. He appreciated that more than he knew how to say without inviting her to ask for something else.
“Are you going to wear the Saturday outfit?”
“Of course.”
“Good.”
“Your aunt will be here.”
“I don't think she's been told to bring a judging sheet.”
“She won't need one.”
He laughed. Sue tucked the speech into her bag.
“You two looked so happy today,” she said.
He was standing with one hand on the table. The kitchen lights were still off. Through the open door he could see the patch of terrace where he and Mara had drunk coffee.
“It was a good journey.”
“Exactly. Sometimes getting away—”
“We are glad we're here.”
“I can see that.”
She let the answer sit. He let her. It was the easiest version of the conversation, and he chose it with a small, guilty relief.
When Mara returned, Sue was already at the welcome terrace, greeting people who had arrived on a later transfer. Mara had changed into a loose black dress. She smelled faintly of the expensive shower gel and asked whether he'd like to walk to supper or carry on staring at his shoes.
“I'm thinking.”
“Very brave in this heat.”
He offered her the sewing kit. “We own two safety pins. Your reputation is restored.”
“Did I damage it?”
“Mum needed one.”
Mara took the little box and shook it. “I always said we would.”
“You did.”
“And you always said we'd never find it.”
“I found it.”
She gave him the smile which meant she was going to let him win because the victory was very small. He put the kit back in his bag before she could tell him so.
The welcome terrace had long tables beneath lights which were not yet needed. People were arriving in groups, pink-faced from travel, calling across one another with the enormous pleasure of finding friends somewhere they had all paid to be. Theo felt the ease of that before anyone said a word about him.
Kit put a cold bottle in his hand. Daniel waved from a table. Bill had reunited with the man whose suitcase had gone elsewhere and was introducing him to people as if he were one of the invited guests. The man's name was Patrick, and he looked happy to be annexed.
“That's food for our guests,” Sue told Bill, quietly enough that Patrick couldn't hear.
“He doesn't eat much.”
“How do you know?”
“He's got very little luggage.”
Theo turned away before she saw him laughing. Mara was holding a plate and listening to one of his cousins describe the difficult logistics of getting leave. She looked up at him over the cousin's shoulder, widened her eyes and moved the plate a fraction toward the food. He shook his head: too obvious. She drew her eyebrows together. He was going to pay for this later.
The food was glorious. There were dishes of bright chopped vegetables, bread warm enough to steam when he tore it, fish with crisp skin, bowls of potatoes whose smell made him immediately abandon the idea of filling his plate sensibly. Mara found him at the table with a small heap of things she wanted him to taste.
“You disappeared,” she said.
“The potatoes called.”
“I listened to an entire annual-leave dispute.”
“Strong start to the holiday.”
She took a potato off his plate. He didn't object. It was easier to give her one now than defend the whole supply later.
They sat between Daniel and Freya, with Kit opposite. Sue and Bill were several places farther down, where Sue had found an audience for the story of how she'd packed her hat. Leah arrived last, carrying a plate for herself and a second glass which Daniel reached for hopefully.
“Mara's,” she said.
He withdrew his hand and smiled. “Worth trying.”
“I'll get you one.”
“Sit down. I'll go.”
Leah sat. Daniel got up. Theo followed him to the bar with the excuse of needing water, though his own glass was still half full.
“How's the ice cream?” he asked.
“Fluid.”
“She told me.”
Daniel leaned against the bar. He had the relaxed shoulders of a man intending to be on holiday by force if necessary.
“Our son Oscar’s with my parents all week,” he said. “No washing. Nobody needs us to find his football boots. I've forgotten how to use this much time.”
“You can practise.”
“I'd like Leah to practise too.”
Theo looked toward the table. Leah was bending close to Mara to say something, and Mara was laughing into her glass.
“Sorry,” he said.
Daniel turned his head. “Didn't mean you should be.”
“Still.”
“I like your mother adopting the man with the suitcase.”
“That's my father. Mum's fighting the adoption.”
“Might come down to who gets him Saturday.”
They took drinks back. There were more people at the table now, and Kit had acquired a resort leaflet. He spread it beside his plate and said tomorrow could start with something active.
“I'm actively eating,” Freya said.
“You can do both. There are kayaks.”
“There is shade.”
“That's not an activity.”
“You've clearly been doing it wrong.”
Mara leaned over the leaflet. “What else?”
“Somebody suggested a walk along the coast,” Kit said. “And there's a beach volleyball court.”
“Somebody was you,” Freya said.
“I'm somebody.”
“A pool day,” Freya announced, looking down the table at the women who had already begun removing their shoes beneath it. “A proper one. Nobody tells you to get out because lunch has become an expedition. Drinks, shade, water within falling distance.”
“I like falling distance,” Daniel said.
Leah looked at him. “I thought we were going to walk.”
“We haven't agreed anything.”
“You said a walk sounded nice.”
“It does. So does falling distance.”
Kit turned toward Theo. “Come on. Something with boats. It'll be good.”
Theo glanced at Mara. She was smiling at the leaflet, tracing one of the little pictures with a finger.
“We're being assigned,” she said.
“You don't have to do either,” Leah told her.
“But if you do,” Freya said, “mine will be nicer.”
Theo drank his water. The table was getting louder as people committed themselves to plans they might forget before breakfast. It was wonderful. He wanted the week to begin with this particular untidy table and continue until nobody remembered how to make an invitation.
Sue stood to say a few words before pudding. Theo braced, but she only welcomed people, thanked them for coming and warned them that Bill was now able to identify the bar without supervision. She said they were going to have a lovely week together. The people who clapped seemed to mean it.
Then pudding appeared, and Mara gripped his wrist under the table.
“Look,” she whispered.
There were small glasses of cream and fruit, a cake with nuts, a dark chocolate thing whose identity Theo did not need in order to want it. Mara released him and went to investigate. He watched her cross the terrace, pause to answer somebody, then manoeuvre herself away with the skill she had failed to apply earlier when he could have helped.
His mother sat down beside him in Mara's empty chair.
“Lovely girl,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Always has been.”
He wanted to say that he knew. Instead he reached for the bowl of almonds between them.
“Leah says you've got the daybed.”
“We agreed it.”
“You'll hurt your back.”
“I'll manage.”
“You used to sleep in worse places, I suppose.”
He looked at her. She smiled and picked up her glass, apparently satisfied with whatever memory she'd given herself. Theo hadn't agreed to any of it. He had also avoided answering.
Mara came back with three puddings and no plan for where to put them. Sue moved immediately, helping clear a place on the table.
“I thought we'd sample,” Mara said.
“An ambitious sample,” Theo said.
“Don't eat it if you disapprove.”
He took the spoon she offered. She gave Sue a second spoon and asked what she thought of the cake. Within a minute they were all arguing pleasantly about whether the smallest pudding was the best one, and his mother was taking a mouthful of the dark chocolate thing she'd insisted she didn't want.
It was late when he and Mara returned to the villa. The terrace lights were on now. Inside, someone had folded down the bed and arranged the linen for the daybed. The embroidered cushion sat on top, waiting for him.
“A generous dowry,” Mara said.
“That's all I get?”
“You got most of the chocolate.”
“That was communal.”
She leaned in the bedroom doorway, one sandal dangling from her fingers. He was standing by the daybed holding the cushion. The room was quieter than he had expected after the noise of supper.
“Good first night,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Tuesday tomorrow.”
“You're going to be unbearable when we get to Thursday.”
“I may start again from Monday. See who's listening.”
She smiled. He wanted her to stay there a little longer, ask for something, need the coffee machine explained. She shifted the sandal to her other hand.
“Night, Theo.”
“Night.”
The bedroom door closed. He sat down and began undoing his shoes. Behind the door he could hear her dropping things onto the chair, the zip of a bag, the tap turning on. He put the cushion carefully on the floor, took off his shirt and lay down beneath the sheet.
His feet just fitted if he pointed his toes.
After a while he bent his knees instead.