The frog was not part of the golf course, according to Freya. It was a spectator, and therefore not a permissible route to the hole.
Theo stood over his ball on Wednesday morning and considered the frog anyway. It was a large green ornament beside a curved low wall, with a mouth whose size looked promising. Beyond the wall, the hole was almost entirely out of sight.
“There's an angle,” he said.
“There's always an angle,” Daniel said. “That's been the problem so far.”
They were on the fourth hole. Freya had been quietly excellent at the first three. Daniel was loudly inconsistent, a quality Theo respected. Kit stood nearby with the scorecard and a foot which had made clear its continuing disapproval of Tuesday. Nina had come to watch and then acquired a club when they discovered she could be persuaded to do almost anything by saying she probably wouldn't be good at it.
It was still early enough for part of the miniature course to be in shade. They'd walked past the family restaurant, down a path nobody had otherwise explored, and found nine holes laid out between low walls and bushes. The course was smaller than Theo expected and more beautiful than Kit felt necessary for something he intended to take seriously.
Freya had declined to organize teams. She wanted personal victory.
“You could putt around,” she told Theo now.
“That's what it expects.”
“The frog?”
“The establishment.”
Kit lifted the pencil. “I'm recording the ambition.”
Theo lined up his shot. He could see how it ought to work. The ball would touch the wall at the narrow point, come back across the green and pass neatly along the other side. He didn't need to explain any of the actual mathematics. He explained it anyway because Freya had put one hand on her hip, watching him with the look of somebody who would enjoy what happened next.
He struck the ball.
It hit the wall, rose over its edge and disappeared into a bush.
For a moment everybody stayed silent.
“Unexpected third dimension,” Theo said.
Freya made a small sound, then began to laugh so hard she had to sit down on the wall. Daniel went to the bush. Nina knelt beside him. Kit wrote something on the scorecard.
“What did you put?” Theo asked.
“Altitude.”
“That's not a score.”
“We've entered a new sporting category.”
They found the ball beneath the bush and another beside it, a faded yellow one which Theo was immediately accused of placing there for practice. He offered to continue with both, explaining that statistical fairness would eventually protect him. Freya told him to stop explaining and admire her shot.
She putted around the wall. The ball reached the hole with a small, ordinary click.
“A limited imagination,” he said.
“A low score.”
He bowed. She bowed back, one hand extended toward the frog as if acknowledging an important guest.
“Brian approves,” she said.
“Brian?”
“Look at him. He's clearly Brian.”
Theo did. The frog's paint had worn away at one corner of its smile. It looked faintly embarrassed by the amount of time humans were spending around its home.
“He's got standards,” Nina said.
“I don't think he likes the sport,” Daniel said. “He may have come with somebody.”
They continued. At the fifth hole Daniel knocked his ball beneath the little bridge and through to the other side, where it stopped short of the cup. He leaned after it, frowned, measured a short distance with his fingers and took a second shot which put it farther away.
Theo waited until he'd finished making the disappointed noise.
“I can explain.”
“Please don't.”
Freya smiled at him. He liked making his friend smile without any expectation that he was trying to demonstrate recovery. He put his ball where she indicated and hit it less thoughtfully. It went in.
She applauded with infuriating restraint.
By the seventh hole they had stopped caring about most of the score. Kit cared on their behalf and invented penalties when they forgot to notice him. Nina got a ball stuck in a narrow tunnel, crouched to examine it and discovered a child had left a plastic dinosaur inside. She lifted the dinosaur free and set it beside Brian, who became a minor visiting dignitary from elsewhere on the course.
“You can't move the frog,” Kit said.
“We're introducing him to people,” Freya told him.
“It's course furniture.”
“It's Brian.”
Kit looked at Theo, apparently expecting scientific solidarity. Theo turned the dinosaur so it could face the frog.
“He's not enjoying this,” he said. “They've given him a table with someone he doesn't know.”
Daniel laughed and put his club down. Freya gripped Theo’s arm while she tried to speak, then let go to point at the frog. He was laughing too hard to follow what she was saying.
A member of staff came past with a bucket and asked whether they were all right. Nina held up the rescued dinosaur. He thanked her, said he'd keep it at reception if somebody came looking, and took it away.
Brian was left alone. Theo put him back where they'd found him, perhaps an inch farther from the wall so the painted smile could acquire less responsibility.
On the last hole Kit finally played. He said he could hit the ball without damaging his foot, and Freya said that was the sort of confidence which had led to most of their morning. He borrowed her club, balanced carefully and knocked it past the hole, off the side and into a small area of blue paint meant to suggest water.
“A swimmer,” Theo said.
“Altitude,” Freya said.
Kit grinned, took the ball out of the painted pool and announced that everybody had tied. This provoked more argument than any honest score would have done.
They returned the clubs and went for coffee. At the bar Theo could still feel the morning in his face: the warmth from laughing, a small ache near the jaw which he usually acquired only after a long meal with Mara. He didn't look for his phone immediately. He wanted to keep telling the others how Brian had felt about the dinosaur.
Freya bought coffees. Daniel found a table in the shade. Nina went to fetch her sunglasses, which she had left in the room before discovering that golf involved being outside. Kit sat with his foot stretched beneath the table and let the sun reach the other one.
“Best activity so far,” Freya said.
“Narrow field,” Kit told her.
“Your field. Not mine.”
Theo drank his coffee and watched people walking past. Several were from the wedding group. One woman he knew from Mara's office stopped to ask where they'd been. Freya explained the golf course as if it were a place everybody ought to visit once in a lifetime. The woman asked whether it was suitable for adults. Theo said they had not established that yet.
“You'll be at the boat tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Lovely. My husband wants to know whether he's supposed to dress up.”
Freya looked at Kit's stretched foot. “We're discouraging shoes generally.”
The woman laughed and went on. Daniel took out the folded map, placed it on the table and smoothed it with his hand.
“Friday,” he said.
“Still?” Theo asked.
“Still.”
“You'll need Leah.”
“That's the main idea.”
He said it evenly. Theo looked at the map, not trying to find a solution. Freya leaned over and pointed out a part she'd seen on a previous visit, which led to an account of a lunch she still wanted to have again. Kit said he would come. Daniel smiled politely and said he was thinking of a day for two.
“Oh,” Kit said.
“I could bring Brian,” Daniel added.
They laughed, but the answer remained on the table. Theo admired it a little. He'd declined his mother's lunch last night and spent the whole morning expecting a message to make the choice feel less simple. None had arrived.
At the terrace restaurant Daniel leaned back between mouthfuls with his eyes nearly shut. Theo asked what he would usually be doing on a Wednesday.
“Eating with one hand. Looking for the school letter with the other. Oscar would be refusing a sausage.”
“Doesn't he like them?”
“Yes. Yesterday he had three.” Daniel shook his head and reached for the bread.
Theo noticed the sunburn beginning at his collar and wondered whether to point it out before it became worse.
Later they went to the pool. Freya swam seriously for a few minutes, surprising Kit so much he asked whether she'd always known how. She stopped beside him and said he was about to learn how much water a person could displace deliberately. Theo got in on the other side and lay on his back, eyes open to a sky which required nothing from him.
His mother appeared with Bill and Aunt Janette after their lunch. Janette wore a hat large enough to have its own shade arrangements. She told Theo the flight had been completely uneventful, then spent ten minutes giving him the events.
Sue seemed pleased to see him. She asked about the morning, and he said golf had been unexpectedly good. She said Mara would have enjoyed it.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I did.”
His mother looked at him. Then Janette asked whether the volleyball was something she'd be expected to join, and Bill said he would buy a seat if she did.
They stayed by the pool. Theo let himself be fed details of other people's lives. Janette asked about school, and he told her about the boy with the laptop in the wardrobe. She laughed at the wrong part and asked whether the boy's parents had been told. He said he believed the wardrobe had been resolved internally.
By late afternoon, he was pleasantly tired. Kit had found a better chair for his foot. Freya lay under an umbrella reading three more pages of her book. Daniel had gone to find Leah with the map. Theo collected his shirt and hat, then discovered he had also collected the faded yellow golf ball.
It was in his pocket. He'd meant to hand it back with the others.
“Contraband,” Freya said.
“A commemorative object.”
“You'll have to tell Mara what Brian said.”
He smiled, already imagining it.
Back at the villa, he put the ball on the small table, showered and made coffee. The bedroom door was open. The scarf Mara had brought from Bristol was still folded on the back of the chair, and her empty cup from the morning stood beside the machine.
He rinsed it because it was there, then left it to dry. He had a good story to tell her, and enough of the day still in his body to be happy while he waited.