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smiled at her. ‘Whenever it is suitable for your mother to come you will phone me?’ She took Andreas’ proffered arm. ‘Good night, Anna,’ she said deliberately. ‘I know you will allow me to call you that.’
    ‘She’s absolutely ravishing!’ Nikos declared as she walked away. ‘Do you think there’s anything between them? Sexually, I mean. You heard what she said about the flat.’
    ‘Yes, I heard.’ Anna’s voice sounded harsh, even in her own ears. ‘But—it isn’t our business, is it, Nikos? They are both old enough to do what they like with their lives.’
    He looked across the table at her with hurt, enquiring eyes. ‘What is Andreas to you?’ he asked.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You mean that?’
    ‘Why would I say it if I didn’t?’
    ‘I wonder if he’s come back to stay,’ he said jealously.
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘He may fancy himself back here at the villa managing everything for you,’ he suggested tentatively.
    ‘I’m sure that won’t happen.’ Her voice was determined. ‘We don’t need his help. When we did he wasn’t there.’
    ‘Which means you’re not inclined to fall on his neck and kiss him or even to kill the fatted calf in honour of his return?’
    ‘Something like that,’ she agreed, ‘though I can’t quite see Andreas as the Prodigal Son.’
    ‘He’s come back for a reason, I think,’ Nikos said. ‘A reason of his own which has something to do with Lara Warrender. Do you think Mr. Warrender is vastly wealthy? Or she might be his equally wealthy widow, if Andreas plans to marry her.’
    ‘We don’t know that!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘There’s no point in being dramatic about their relationship when we don’t know the truth. She’s—lovely and desirable, I grant you, but she may not even be free to marry anyone.’
    ‘Hmm. Maybe you’re right,’ he said as her mother came to meet them.
    It was several days before Anna saw Lara Warrender again. Some of their guests had departed by the weekend and there was what her mother called ‘a lull’ in the activity of the villa until the middle of the week when two more would fly in from Germany to be met at Lamaca by Paris with the mini-bus. It was a time to relax a little, but also a time to plan for the immediate future. By June summer would be upon them in earnest with its hosts of visitors and there would be more need for a swimming- pool than ever so their hope was that the new pool would be almost ready for the influx of holidaymakers. Already the contract had been signed and the work was scheduled to go ahead steadily during the slack period between. Because the pool was to be built well to one side of the villa itself, there had not been any need to close even while the excavations were in progress and a canvas shield had been erected between the terrace and the shrubbery which was now in the process of being cleared.
    Anna hated to see even those trees go as she walked down to the beach for a breath of sea air before it was time to prepare the buffet lunch everyone seemed to enjoy. They were shabby old friends, carobs and ragged eucalyptus and overgrown hibiscus offering only a few jaded blossoms at the best of times, but ‘the jungle’, as they had called it, had been part of her youth, part of the happier rememberings which she had always kept in her heart.
    How far away those days seemed now, she thought; gone into the mists of time! If nothing had happened to her peaceful life, if her father hadn’t died and Andreas hadn’t gone away
    She pulled up her thoughts there. ‘If only’ was a phrase she had never intended to use and self-pity was something she despised. Her life was now set in other ways and she turned her face to the future. With the scrub land cleared and the pool tiled and ready for use something else would be achieved.
    She looked along the curve of the bay to where the blue-and-white sun-umbrellas of the Crescent Beach appeared beyond the dividing wall, thinking how shipshape