Adrian was waiting by reception on Wednesday morning with a coffee and no apparent fear of being late.
Mara had got up early, tried on two dresses and come down in the first one. She felt annoyed with herself for discovering, halfway along the path, that she had also selected different earrings. This was supposed to be the part of life which did not require quite so much evidence that it was happening.
He stood when he saw her. He wore a white linen shirt, open at the neck, and sunglasses tucked into the front. There was a faint line across one cheek where he'd slept on something creased.
“Morning,” he said.
She liked the word in his voice. It arrived slowly, as if there were plenty of it.
“Are we going?”
“I've asked for a taxi. Coffee?”
“I've had one.”
“Mine's good.”
He offered the cup. She took a sip, discovered he had sugar in it and pulled a face.
“You could have warned me.”
“Didn't know you needed warning.”
“I do now.”
He grinned and took it back. She wiped a small wet mark from the lip with her thumb. He watched the movement, and she became aware of it after she'd finished.
They left without anyone stopping them. Mara had imagined Freya waving from a sunbed, Leah appearing with a last useful question, Theo asking whether she had the small bag. In fact he had been in the shower when she went. She'd called goodbye through the door and heard it returned over the water. Now Adrian stood beside her while the driver put the car in gear, and the resort receded behind them without requiring a speech.
Santanyi was already busy when they arrived. People moved between stalls in the square and spilled into neighbouring streets, carrying bags, looking for shade, stopping in precisely the place other people needed to get through. Mara stepped aside for a woman with a basket and almost collided with Adrian.
“We'll have to move as a unit,” he said.
“I'm not very good at units.”
“Loose formation, then.”
She followed him between a stall of bright clothing and one piled with fruit. The square was loud with overlapping conversations. She caught words she knew, more she didn't, and the scrape of a crate moving across stone. Somewhere there was coffee. Somewhere closer there were warm pastries, whose smell made her regret saying she'd had breakfast.
Adrian asked what she wanted to see.
“All of it.”
“Let’s start with the square, then. We can go along the side streets after.”
He took her hand to get past a cluster of people at a stall, then let go on the other side. It was a small action. She noticed the place it left warm against her palm.
They looked at baskets. Adrian admired one so large Mara said he would have to put the holiday in it and send everything home separately. He said he could use it for shopping.
“For a village?”
“For myself.”
“You live extravagantly.”
“I live without somebody telling me I don't need another basket.”
He lifted it again, considered the price and put it down.
“Apparently I tell myself now.”
They went on. Mara bought a small bag of fruit because she liked the smell and then spent several minutes rearranging her things so it would fit. Adrian waited without providing a solution. When she finally surrendered and handed him the bag, he accepted it as though she had intended to give it to him all along.
“Good system,” he said.
“Still under development.”
At a stall of pottery she found a long blue dish with a fish painted across it. The fish looked slightly offended. It occupied most of the plate, leaving little room for whatever Mara imagined placing beside it.
“That's very you,” Adrian said.
She glanced at him. “How do you know?”
“You picked it up immediately.”
That was hard to argue with.
She turned it over. It was heavier than it looked, which made the purchase unreasonable before she had seen the price. She imagined it on her table in Bristol with a scattering of olives. She could invite people, put bread beside it, make something interesting happen on a Thursday.
“Do you need a fish plate?” Adrian asked.
“Desperately.”
“Then that seems decided.”
The woman at the stall wrapped it carefully while Mara paid. Adrian took the parcel, tested the weight with one hand and said he was pleased to discover he had come as transport.
“You were given several chances to prevent it,” Mara said.
“I thought you’d enjoy having it at home. I can carry it as far as the taxi.”
He told her about a customer who had bought a chair because it looked like a chair she remembered from childhood, and then refused delivery because it looked too much like the chair she remembered from childhood. He told the story well until he reached the end, then carried on for an extra minute proving the chair had not changed.
Mara watched his hands describe its arms. They were good hands, broad, with small pale marks along two knuckles. She wondered how they would feel at her waist. The customer was still refusing the chair when she realized she'd missed part of the account.
“Was she happy eventually?”
“No idea. I sold it to someone else.”
He smiled, a little pleased with the efficiency of the ending. Mara laughed and asked whether they could eat now.
“Thank God,” he said. “I thought you'd never ask.”
They bought a flaky pastry filled with soft cheese to share, then found a place to stand out of the main flow. Adrian held the parcel under one arm and the food in the other hand. Mara broke a piece off and managed to drop flakes all down the front of her dress.
“Elegance,” she said.
He brushed one from near her collar, then paused with his hand still lifted. She held his gaze. He let the hand fall.
For a few seconds neither of them made the moment funny.
Then a child squeezed past them, followed by an adult apologizing, and Mara had to step closer to Adrian to make room. His shirt smelled of sun and the faint clean scent she'd noticed yesterday. She didn't move back at once.
“You could kiss me,” she said quietly.
He looked at the crowded street. “I was thinking about it.”
“Good.”
“But I've got your fish under my arm.”
She began to laugh. He looked down at the parcel, smiling now, and shifted it farther up so it could stop governing their available actions.
“We'll find somewhere,” he said.
She liked that answer enough to let it be an answer.
They walked until the busiest streets fell behind them. She bought a scarf, though she had come to a hot island and owned several scarves already. Adrian looked at it, looked at her and said he admired consistency. She tied it to her bag. He told her he had a daughter who could make a scarf look like an entire outfit, and then looked fondly irritated while describing the amount she spent on clothes.
“She's twenty-one,” Mara said.
“So she keeps reminding me.”
“What does she do?”
“She's studying. And working when she can. And going places she appears to afford through a method she hasn't told me.”
“I had that method.”
“Did it work?”
“It worked until I paid for a wedding.”
He gave her a sideways look. She'd said it easily. The day made that possible.
“I don't need to avoid the word,” he said.
“I'd run out of conversation if you did.”
“You might not.”
She turned her face toward him. He smiled, then asked if she wanted to sit down somewhere. She did. Her feet had begun to regret her first-choice sandals, and the market bag was digging into her wrist even without the plate in it.
They found a table in the shade. The waiter came, and Adrian began ordering before Mara had decided. She put two fingers on his forearm.
“Allow the customer a view.”
“Sorry.”
He waited. She asked a question about one of the dishes, got an answer, asked for that and another, then looked at Adrian, who was smiling.
“I know,” she said.
“I haven't said anything.”
“You were going to.”
“You ordered before I decided.”
She laughed. “A very brief democracy.”
He added something he wanted. The waiter nodded and went. Mara poured herself water and put the bottle where Adrian could reach it.
Across the street, two people were trying to pack an enormous bag into a small car. The bag contained something with corners, and every effort made it more resolutely itself. Mara watched for a moment, then said it was probably an antique throne belonging to a woman who had acquired the island through a very successful divorce.
Adrian looked at the bag. “It seems to have a shop label.”
“A discreet one.”
“Really?”
“No.”
He smiled, belatedly amused. Mara had been waiting for a detail, a measured statement about the divorce or the throne, something to help her make the story more absurd. Instead he asked her whether she often made things up.
“Only when people are trying to get furniture into cars.”
“I'll be careful.”
It was not the answer she'd expected, but she liked its slower arrival. He leaned back, looking at her, and she felt the strange pleasure of being watched by someone who couldn't supply the rest of her sentence.
The food came. They stopped inventing anything and ate. One plate was better than she'd hoped. One was less interesting, and Adrian argued that it improved if she ate it with the other thing, then accepted defeat when she pushed it toward him.
“You can have the successful ones,” he said.
“Generous.”
“I’m having a good time. I’d like you to as well.”
She rested her chin on her hand. “It's working.”
He held her gaze long enough that she became aware of the skin beneath her dress, warmed by the walk and the thought of a different hand. The plate parcel sat at his feet. Her scarf moved slightly in the breeze. Around them people ate, stood up, argued over bills, made their own ordinary days.
Adrian's phone lit up. He glanced at it and said he needed to answer. His daughter had sent a picture of something she'd assembled in her room. He looked at it for a while before replying, then showed Mara a shelf which appeared to lean with enormous optimism.
“She says it's level.”
“Perhaps the room isn't.”
“I'll tell her that.”
He typed, smiled at the reply and put the phone away. Mara hadn't felt abandoned while he looked at it. She'd been able to eat the last thing on her plate without making the moment mean he preferred another person's company.
When the meal was finished, he asked whether she wanted to go back to the hotel.
“Not yet.”
“Somewhere by the sea?”
She nodded. They could have another few hours. She didn't need them to explain the rest of her life.
He picked up the fish parcel and handed her the bag of fruit. Outside, the light was hard enough to make her close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them Adrian was beside her, holding out his free hand.
She took it. This time he didn't let go when the crowd cleared.