Some instinct had made him lower his newspaper and he was watching them over the top of it. She moved close to Noah’s side again and they resumed their slow walk. Jeanette’s face was suffused with sadness.
– She is my sister.
‘Yes.’
– I should decide what to tell her. And when. Shouldn’t I?
‘Of course, Mum, if that’s what you want.’
Bill strolled across the grass towards them.
‘What are you two talking about?’
Noah hesitated. Auntie Connie was rarely mentioned in the family. Or never, now he thought about it.
– Uzbekistan, Jeanette indicated.
‘Really?’
– Noah has a new girlfriend who comes from there.
‘She’s not my girlfriend yet. I’ve only met her twice.’
Bill smiled easily at him. ‘I’ll look forward to hearing about her. If and when. Now, does anyone want a cup of tea?’
Noah washed up the lunch dishes and Bill made tea. They sat out in the sun until it sank behind the trees and the garden receded into shadow. The pale roses began to glimmer against the depths of green. Noah said that he thought he would head back to town. In his mind was the thought and the hope that maybe Roxana wouldn’t have gone off to her club quite this early.
He kissed the top of his mother’s head and noted the pink channels of scalp visible through her hair.
‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mum.’ Talk was by email.
Bill walked him to the front door and leaned on the open door of Noah’s rusted Golf.
‘You haven’t told me about the girl.’
‘Nothing to tell. Let me know if anything happens here, Dad.’
Bill stood back. ‘We’re all right.’ He waved until Noah pulled out of sight.
Jeanette went upstairs to her study and turned on the computer.
Back at the flat, Noah found nothing but darkness and silence. Roxana had correctly double-locked the flat door and the street door. He looked into his bedroom, and saw that she had smoothed the duvet and plumped up the pillow after her sleep.
He drifted back into the living room and stretched himself out on the sofa. He thought he would wait up for her, to make sure that she came back safely.
Suitcases and boxes of film equipment almost filled the hotel lobby. Taxis and 4x4s were waiting to sweep them away, Angela and Rayner and Simon Sheringham, the complaining actress, the creative duo who were hiding their hangovers behind dark glasses, and all the rest of the cast and crew.
‘Thanks for coming to see us off,’ Angela murmured to Connie in the hubbub of departure. ‘Think about what I said, won’t you? I mean, it’s beautiful here, but it’s not home, is it?’
‘Yes,’ Connie said, ambiguously.
Miraculously, the mounds of luggage fitted into the vehicles and people variously scrambled for places in the cars that looked as if they would have the best air-conditioning. Only two minutes ago it had seemed as if the point of departure would never arrive, and now everyone except Connie had piled into a seat.
She stood back and waved. Angela blew her a kiss and Rayner Ingram lifted one hand before adjusting his Ray-Bans. People shouted goodbye to her and then hastily wound up their windows to keep out the flies and the gusts of hot, steamy air. The convoy of cars rolled forwards and Connie saw Ed looking at her through the rear window of the last 4x4. He touched two fingers to his temple in an ironic salute.
Connie stood still as silence descended. There was no clamour of mobile phones, no crackle of walkie-talkies, and no one was shouting. There was only birdsong, and the faint scrape of rough-edged leaves spreading in the sun’s glare.
She drew in a long breath and then exhaled.
The week had been like a runaway train ride. She had been right to be apprehensive. She had been very thoroughly shaken out of her equilibrium.
Maybe she should have gone back to Ed’s room last night.
She muttered to herself, ‘How many more chances d’you think you’re going to get?’
Then she saw that the doorman was glancing curiously at her. She gave the man what she hoped was a composed smile, and set off down the hotel drive towards the village street.
Connie didn’t have a car. As with her choice not to have a pool, her European neighbours (Kim and Neil who were in property and rentals, the French couple who owned a gallery in the main street, Werner Baum the sculptor, and all the others) regarded this as wilfully eccentric. But Connie liked walking, she had a bicycle for errands, and on the island she was never in a hurry. If she needed to go further afield there were the public bemos, small buses that ran fixed routes all over the island, and taxis were cheap.
The main street was quiet this morning. She passed a couple of dogs lolling in the shade, and a young woman sitting on her step with two smooth, plump toddlers playing at her feet. In front of the Café des Artistes a group of tourists in shorts and Birkenstocks were consulting a map and talking about a visit to the monkey forest.
‘They bite,’ one of the girls warned the others. ‘And then you get rabies.’
‘Noooo? They look so cute.’
Connie crossed the road and took her favourite route through the village’s central market. She loved the blazing colour and exuberance of the enclosed square. Two-storey buildings with open fronts were hung from ground to roof with dresses and T-shirts, ikat weavings and multicoloured sarongs, and the paved space in the centre was jammed with blue and red parasols. In the shade the stallholders were selling racks of beads and earrings, woven baskets in all shapes and sizes, plastic toys and cheap CDs. It was too early for the tourist crowds to be out in any force and the vendors were quietly gossiping with their neighbours. Connie was heading for the flower stall in the far corner. The blooms made a wall of brilliance beneath a sun-bleached awning.
Recognising Connie, the broad-hipped woman who owned the stall sprang up and began yanking stems of orchids and tuberoses out of buckets and pressing them into her hands. Business wasn’t good for any of these traders. Tourists had almost disappeared after the Kuta bombing, and they were still not coming to the island in the same numbers. Connie went through the ritual of praising the flowers for their freshness and the elegance of their blooms and at the same time firmly putting them back in their places.
She saw what she wanted at the back of the stall. They were scarlet cannas, blisteringly bright, offset by ribbed bronze leaves. When she had chosen an armful and told the stallholder what she wanted them for, the woman wrapped them in a swathe of white tissue brought
