By the time Theo returned from Kit's excellent morning, he had sand inside one ear and an opinion about organized encouragement.
Kit had begun at the volleyball court. He'd said it would be good to move before they all became the sort of people who argued over breakfast eggs. Theo had agreed. He liked volleyball, within the limits of his ability to remember where the lines were. Their team included his cousin Owen, who had been remarkable at sport as a teenager and still expected his body to behave accordingly, and Owen’s partner Nina, whose small stature encouraged people to underestimate her until she served.
The game was good. Theo had jumped, missed, laughed and discovered a part of his shoulder he'd forgotten could move so vigorously. Kit had invented a score when nobody remembered it. Nina had refused the score. Owen had made a magnificent dive for a ball that was nowhere near him, risen, brushed sand from his chest and announced he was warming up.
They lost, then won, then stopped counting. By the end Theo was sweaty and happy and his new hat had spent most of the morning under somebody's water bottle.
The difficulty had come when Kit tried to make it useful.
“See?” he said as they left the court. “You can still have a good time.”
“At volleyball?”
“Generally.”
“Yes. I've played before.”
Kit looked at him. Theo felt unkind, but not sufficiently unkind to apologize yet.
They had gone on a walk after changing out of the sandiest clothes. Along the path Kit kept pointing out places which would be good for photographs, then remembering who had paid for a photographer and adjusting his sentence halfway through. Nina bought a cold drink from a small kiosk. Owen found a rock that looked like a face and insisted they all look at it until he discovered it looked like a face from only one very particular position.
“It's your angle,” Theo told him.
“Come here.”
“I'm quite happy with my angle.”
“You can't see it properly.”
“Perhaps it can't see me properly either.”
They spent several minutes discussing the relationship between Owen and the rock. It was the best part of the walk. Kit took a picture and sent it to the group with the caption New member of the wedding party. Sue immediately asked whose friend it was. Theo laughed so hard that Nina had to take the phone from him to reply.
Now he was back at Casa Brisa, looking at the pool and the shade and the people who had selected them from the beginning.
Kit stood beside him examining his feet.
“I've got a blister.”
“Can't be right,” Theo said. “That was good for us.”
“Don't.”
“We could do another mile. See if it improves.”
Kit smiled reluctantly. “Sorry.”
“What for?”
“You know.”
Theo took off his hat, pushed a hand through his hair and gave up the effort to stop finding sand.
“It was good,” he said. “I like doing things with you.”
“That's a terrible blow to the people who asked why you'd come.”
“I didn't list you specifically.”
Kit put an arm around his shoulders briefly, then withdrew it because they were both hot and pleasantly filthy. “Pool?”
“We'd be crossing a border.”
“I can limply negotiate.”
They went down to Freya's sunbeds. She sat up when she saw them.
“Good walk?”
“Excellent,” Kit said.
“You look excellent.”
“He's got a blister,” Theo said.
“I can see that from here.”
Mara lay on the bed beside her with her eyes shut. Her book rested open on her stomach, face down. He knew her reading face. This was not it. A little smile had settled at one corner of her mouth, and he wanted to know what she was enjoying before he could decide whether asking would spoil it.
“You're back,” she said, opening one eye.
“We've been admitted.”
“What happened to your hat?”
He looked at it. There was a large dark patch where Owen had spilled water.
“Character.”
She opened the other eye and began to laugh. He held the hat in front of him until she had looked long enough.
“It wasn't very good before,” she said.
“Then this can only be progress.”
Freya told Kit to sit down and stop displaying his foot. He sat at the end of her bed, apologized for introducing sand into her system and stole a piece of melon. Theo took the spare chair. There was room for all of them if everyone moved a little, which seemed a better idea than the morning's neatly named plans.
Daniel came back from somewhere with a folded map. He stopped beside Theo and asked whether they'd seen the face-shaped rock. Theo showed him the picture. Daniel considered it, turned the phone slightly and said he looked forward to meeting the owner's parents.
Mara smiled, but she hadn't followed the story and asked whether it was a child they knew.
“It's a rock,” Theo said.
“Right.”
He was absurdly disappointed. She hadn't seen Owen persuading Nina to stand at a precise angle. She hadn't heard Sue asking whose friend it was. The entire joke seemed a smaller thing in the sunlight between them.
Daniel handed him the map. “Thinking of renting a car Friday.”
“For where?”
“Somewhere with no table plan.”
“We've done away with ours.”
“Not sure everybody knows that.”
Leah came toward them carrying a damp towel, looking at Daniel's map.
“You were going to find the room,” she said.
“I found it. Then I found this.”
“Mara thought we might all have lunch Friday.”
Daniel glanced toward Mara, who had closed her book now.
“I’d rather keep Friday for the two of us,” he said. “We could find lunch while we’re out.”
“We could all go somewhere,” Leah said.
“In a car?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
He took the map back from Theo. The paper didn't want to fold along its original lines. Leah reached to help, and he moved one edge toward her, then away again when she put her finger in the wrong place.
“It's all right,” he said. “I've got it.”
She dropped her hand.
Mara got up. “I'll go and ask about drinks.”
“I'm coming,” Leah said.
Daniel looked after them, then sat down in the chair Theo had shifted to make space. For a little while nobody said anything. Kit inspected his blister discreetly, which wasn't discreet at all. Freya poked his shoulder with the end of her book and told him she was going to swim if he promised to still be there when she returned.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because this is my bed.”
“Right. I thought it was a proposal.”
“You'd need a better foot.”
She went to the pool. Kit followed after removing his shirt and standing for a moment in the sunlight as though he'd invented that too. Daniel shook his head, laughing, then looked at Theo.
“I'm going in.”
“So am I.”
Theo left his hat on the chair. It would dry. Or it wouldn't. He didn't want it quite enough to guard its future.
The water was good. Daniel challenged him to swim without using their hands, an activity they discovered required an unreasonable amount of dignity to survive. Freya watched from the side and judged them both inadequate. Kit joined in, injured foot elevated so far above the surface that he kept sinking at the other end.
People began to watch. Not many, but enough to make stopping difficult.
Theo made it to the wall first, clutched the edge and looked back at Daniel, who was slowly revolving without getting closer. He went to help, then realized helping required his hands, which would retrospectively destroy the entire competition.
“Ask for assistance,” he called.
“Never.”
Daniel reached the wall at last, breathing hard and laughing. Freya informed them that they had both lost to a woman who hadn't left her drink unattended.
Mara was at the bar beyond the pool. She was talking to a man whose face Theo didn't know. He had a glass in one hand and was leaning toward her, saying something which made her shake her head and then smile. Leah stood a little apart, speaking to the waiter.
Theo looked away. Then he looked back, which was worse.
The man wasn't doing anything objectionable. He was older, broad-shouldered, wearing shorts and the relaxed face of someone whose reason for being at Casa Brisa had not required a difficult message to eighty people. Mara was listening with her head slightly tilted. She did that when she liked a story but wasn't yet sure where she would interrupt it.
“You know him?” Daniel asked.
“No.”
Daniel looked toward the bar. “Adrian. Met him at lunch.”
“Right.”
“Seems nice.”
Theo put his chin on his folded arms against the pool edge. “An aggressive quality.”
Daniel laughed quietly. Theo was glad it had sounded like a joke.
Mara turned toward the pool, said something to Adrian and raised her hand. Theo raised his in return. She didn't look caught. There was no reason she should.
They had separated. He had agreed. They had sent clear messages. He could recite all of it without finding a single thing to do with the hot, small feeling beneath his ribs.
Freya swam past and splashed him. He retaliated before he thought about it. She complained loudly, then splashed him again. Within a minute Daniel and Kit had joined in and a member of staff was walking toward the pool with the expression of somebody who knew children were much easier to instruct than grown people who had bought drinks.
They stopped before he had to ask.
Theo apologized. The man smiled, pointed toward the other end of the pool where two women were trying to float in peace, and left them to reconsider their size.
It was nearly time to get ready for the dance lesson when Mara came back. Adrian had gone somewhere else. She put a glass of water beside Theo's chair and said he should drink it before his shoulder stopped working.
“I didn't know you were watching.”
“Everybody was watching. You appeared to be drowning competitively.”
“I won.”
“That's an alarming verdict.”
He took the glass. She sat on the arm of the chair for a moment, then shifted when it tipped beneath her.
“Dance lesson still on?” she asked.
“It's paid for.”
“I know. But do you want to?”
He looked at her bare feet on the stone. One ankle was still marked by the sandal strap she'd worn to supper. He knew how it would feel in his hand.
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. I'm going to be terrible.”
“You've trained.”
She smiled, stood and took the glass from him to carry it back with hers. He remained in the chair, warming in the late-afternoon light, his new hat on his knee. He had won something ludicrous, met a rock, made Daniel laugh and seen his former fiancée smile at a man he didn't know. It had been quite a day.
He put the hat on. It was dry now, and worse.