Freya had secured four sunbeds, two umbrellas and the emotional support of a waiter before Mara came down to the pool on Tuesday.
“This is where we live now,” she said.
She lay back wearing enormous sunglasses and held out a hand toward the empty bed beside her. There was a book on it which Mara recognized as the one Freya had brought on their last three holidays. The bookmark appeared not to have moved.
“I thought we weren't doing anything,” Mara said.
“We aren't. I've organized it.”
Mara sat down. Her stomach had been peculiar all morning. Not ill. Awake. She'd opened the bedroom door to find Theo making coffee in a T-shirt which did not belong to a holiday or a breakup or anything other than a man she'd lived with. He'd asked whether she'd slept. She'd said yes, then asked him. He'd said the daybed was better than it looked.
She didn't know whether he meant it. She also didn't want him to go somewhere else.
Freya handed her a small dish of melon.
“Breakfast?”
“I've had breakfast.”
“Second breakfast. Very important to a recovery.”
“It's not a recovery holiday.”
“Fine. A holiday. You can have melon on one of those.”
Mara took a piece. It was cold and sweet. Beyond Freya, Leah was standing beneath an umbrella reading something on her phone. Daniel had spread a towel on a bed in the sun and was taking his shirt off with the purposeful happiness of a man about to burn.
“Your parents?” Mara asked Leah.
“Daniel's. Apparently Oscar's had toast and watched a film about sharks. His standards for a good day are being exceeded.”
“What did you say?”
“More sun cream.”
Daniel stopped halfway through removing his shirt. “To whom?”
“Everyone.”
He pulled the shirt off and lay down. Leah went to him with the bottle, which Mara found both touching and a little discouraging. They were supposed to have left useful selves at home.
At the far end of the pool, Kit stood talking to Theo and three other guests. He had a small waterproof bag slung across his chest. Mara watched him demonstrate something with his hands and suspected everybody in the group had been told the activity would take less time than it would.
Theo looked toward the sunbeds. Mara raised her piece of melon. He waved back.
“You can wave,” Freya said.
“I am waving.”
“I mean you can like him and do this.”
“What is this?”
Freya lifted her arms wide enough to include the umbrellas, the pool, Daniel and a passing woman holding a drink Mara suddenly wanted.
“I see,” Mara said. “All of existence.”
“The part we're in. Nobody's asking you to get out.”
They watched Kit's group depart. Theo had put on a hat she hadn't seen before. It was brown, with a narrow brim. She wondered whether he'd bought it without asking anybody and then became annoyed with herself for wanting to know.
Freya removed her glasses.
“I saw the hat,” she said.
Mara laughed hard enough to spill melon juice on her hand.
The morning became exactly as lazy as they'd promised. Mara swam. Freya came in, announced the water was unnecessarily wet and remained for half an hour. Leah sat on the edge with her feet submerged until Daniel drew her in by backing away with both hands held out. She followed him and complained when he splashed her, then splashed him much harder.
Mara watched them from the deep end. Daniel's hair was plastered flat. Leah had forgotten to look dignified. Mara swam under the rope between sections of the pool and surfaced beside them, only to discover she'd misjudged the distance and come up beneath Daniel's arm.
“Sorry.”
“You should be. We've paid for privacy.”
“At my wedding.”
“This bit is ours. You can have the rest.”
Leah laughed, then took Mara's wrist and turned it to inspect a scrape she'd acquired on the edge of the pool.
“It's nothing,” Mara said.
“I know.”
Her sister let go. Mara swam away and lay on her back, ears beneath the water. For a little while the whole holiday was only light and muffled sound. She liked her body here. She liked the warmth along her skin, the people around her not asking her to use it for anything other than staying afloat.
When she got out, somebody had taken her sunbed.
He was lying on the towel she'd left there, reading Freya's book.
Mara stopped at the foot of the bed. “How is it?”
He looked up. His face changed immediately from polite enquiry to amused horror.
“I'm on your towel.”
“You are.”
He sat up. He was older than Theo, perhaps early forties, broad through the shoulders, with dark hair going grey at the temples. His shorts were faded blue. He had a small scar on one knee which she noticed because he moved it away so she could reach the towel.
“I'm very sorry. I thought this was theirs.”
He pointed toward the empty pair of beds on the other side of the umbrella. The towels were the same resort towels. They were all the same towels. Mara couldn't find a reason to be annoyed that wouldn't require an unreasonable amount of possession.
“You can keep the bed for a minute,” she said. “I only want the towel.”
“And the book?”
“That's my friend's. She's on her third holiday with it.”
“I've got further than she has.”
“You'll have to stay and explain it.”
He stood, shook out the towel and handed it to her. It was warm where his back had been. She rubbed it along her arms with a pleasure she did not need to announce.
“Adrian,” he said.
“Mara.”
“You're the wedding party?”
“Without the wedding.”
“Yes. The man at the bar told me.”
“Which man?”
“Shorts. Very enthusiastic about ice.”
“That'll be Bill.”
“He said it was a remarkable arrangement.”
She sat on the bed he'd surrendered. “We've put a lot of work into remarkable.”
“I believe you.”
He was still standing, holding Freya's book as if he'd been caught with a small valuable animal. Mara gestured toward the next bed. He sat, then put the book neatly between them.
“You don't have to look sorry for me,” she said.
“I was looking sorry about the towel.”
“Good. It will recover.”
“I'm glad. It seems a nice towel.”
She laughed. He didn't immediately add something. He looked toward the pool, let her finish drying her hair, and then told her the bed confusion had begun with an argument about umbrellas. His friends wanted sun. He wanted shade. He'd been overruled until one of them went to find his glasses and the other followed. Adrian had moved beds in their absence, which was how he had come to possess property belonging to a canceled bride.
“Ex-bride,” Mara said.
“That's a category?”
“Very small. We have our own newsletter.”
“What does it say?”
“Mostly please stop asking.”
This time he laughed, a low, unhurried sound. She liked his mouth. She looked away before she'd decided whether he might notice.
Freya returned carrying three drinks and wearing the expression of somebody whose organization had been rewarded.
“I've been robbed,” she told Mara.
“Of what?”
“The opportunity to make a generous purchase. The waiter says this man ordered before I could.”
She nodded at Adrian.
“You were carrying several glasses,” he said. “I thought I'd help.”
“You did. But now I can't drink them with superiority.”
“I'm sorry. I can let you buy the next ones.”
Freya gave Mara the drink she'd wanted from the passing woman, examined Adrian and sat down. “You're on holiday?”
“I hope so.”
“Alone?”
“Two friends are here. They're off having a married-couple argument somewhere in the hotel.”
Mara blinked.
“What about?”
“Lunch yesterday. Jess says one bottle of wine, Malcolm says two. I left them looking for a compromise.”
Freya nodded approval. “Excellent. We can send you extras.”
“No thanks. I'm divorced.”
He said it pleasantly. Mara liked that he didn't pause to ask what sort of unhappy thing she might need it to mean.
“How long are you here?” she asked.
“Till Friday. Came last Friday. One week is enough before people start asking where you've put the invoice for a sofa.”
“You sell sofas?”
“Among other pieces of furniture. It's less exciting than you hope.”
“I design packaging. I'm prepared for professional disappointment.”
“Really? For what?”
She told him about the food company. He asked a question she hadn't been asked before about whether people touched a box differently depending on how it felt, and then spoiled the question by answering most of it himself. Mara smiled into her glass. He had opinions. Not unpleasant ones, but an abundant supply.
Leah came over wrapped in a towel. Daniel was still in the pool, floating with his eyes shut and a faint expression of triumph.
Mara introduced her. Leah gave Adrian a friendly look which became much more interested when he said he had a twenty-one-year-old daughter.
“Twenty-one,” Mara repeated.
“Yes. She tells me I'm old.”
“Are you?”
“Forty-two.”
“That's quite young to have a daughter of twenty-one.”
“Yes. I was twenty-one when she was born. Still learning how to look after myself.”
Freya looked at him more carefully. Mara wondered how much of that early life he would want to explain to people he had only just met.
His phone lit up beside the book. He glanced at it and smiled.
“She's asked whether I'm going brown. She doesn't mean the furniture.”
“Are you?” Freya asked.
“Not if I can keep this umbrella.”
Leah looked at Mara. Mara pretended to be interested in the ice in her glass. It was the first time that day she had enjoyed pretending not to see somebody's concern.
By lunch Adrian's friends had returned, mildly surprised to find him with different people. They spoke to him like a man they had been listening to for years and were still voluntarily travelling with. They invited everybody to join them for food on the lower terrace. Freya said yes before Leah could look for Daniel, and Mara went to fetch him.
He was sitting on the pool edge now, letting water run off his feet.
“Lunch,” she said. “With some people.”
“Which people?”
She pointed.
“That one you've been talking to?”
“And his friends.”
Daniel looked at her, then nodded. “I'll get dressed.”
At lunch, Adrian ordered several dishes for the table before asking whether anyone wanted them. Mara objected to one, added two others and made him move the bread nearer. He accepted the changes with a smile and told her he had thought she looked like someone who'd have views about lunch.
“I look hungry,” she said.
“That too.”
His knee was near hers beneath the table. Not touching. Close enough that she knew exactly where it was.
Afterward Freya and Leah went to find their sunbeds again. Daniel stayed to discuss somewhere Malcolm wanted to drive, and Jess went with him to investigate a map. Mara remained at the table with Adrian and a jug of water which had become warm.
“Will this be a problem?” he asked.
“The water?”
“Talking to you.”
She glanced across the terrace. Theo was not there. She didn't need to find him before answering.
“No. We're separated.”
“I know. I meant the holiday. I don't want to spend my week having conversations which stop when someone else comes over.”
It irritated her a little. She had liked being able to talk without having to account for the holiday.
“Then don't stop,” she said.
He sat back, looking at her. “Fair enough.”
“And I'm not looking to collect you as an alternative husband.”
“Relief. I've had one marriage. I don't want to start another household at the moment.”
“I don't either.”
He nodded toward the sea. “There's plenty else to do.”
She looked at it with him. His hand was on the table, thumb moving along a small flaw in the wood. She wanted to touch that hand and discover what it would do.
“There's a market tomorrow,” she said. “In Santanyi.”
“I know. I was thinking of going.”
“So was I.”
He looked back at her. “Together?”
She smiled. “Provided you let me order something.”
“We can negotiate.”
“I can order and you can be pleased.”
He laughed again, then poured the last of the warm water into her glass. She drank it. It was still water.
When she returned to the pool, Freya lifted her head.
“Well?”
“He's finished your book.”
“We may need to keep him.”
Mara lay down in the shade and shut her eyes. Tomorrow there would be a place she'd never visited and a man who had not yet heard most of the things she found funny. She had no idea what to wear. The thought made her smile before she could make it useful to anybody else.