would have liked to have tried somewhere new but didn’t want to raise churlish objections when Rupert had gone to the trouble of putting a copy of the menu from their very first meal, with flight details added, into the side pocket of her handbag. She found it at work when she was looking for her pen, and just for a moment, as she pulled it out and saw what it was, she felt breathless. She thought of him waiting for his opportunity. Waiting for her to go upstairs or out into the garden and then opening the bag, maybe looking through her things to see which would be the best place to leave it and then zipping the pocket up again quickly so that she would discover it later and think of him. If Molly was irked by the way it had all been decided without any consultation, she didn’t show it, nor did she reveal her embarrassment when he caused a scene in the marbled hotel lobby on discovering that they had been put into a different room from the one they had stayed in before. Although the honeyed skin of the young receptionist flushed under the onslaught of Rupert’s bad temper, she remained composed.
‘I’m sorry Sir, we cannot ask our other guests to move,’ she said, biting down with small white teeth on her bottom lip.
‘I expressly asked for room number 8. I definitely put it in the email. Go and check. Go and check now.’
She checked and double checked and then a perfectly groomed young man tilted his head gravely at them and expressed the deepest of regret in impeccable English, but no amount of bluster from Rupert made the slightest bit of difference.
‘I’m so sorry, Sir; we only have the one room free. Would you like me to arrange for your bags to be taken up?’
As Rupert snatched the key from the receptionist, Molly saw the little purse of her lips and the quick glance she gave Molly before lowering her head, and she knew that the other woman felt sorry for her. You don’t understand, she felt like saying, you don’t know what he is really like, how he loves me. She was angry, and then regretful, that this place that had been so full of wonderful memories had been soured by this second visit.
Rupert remained cold and irritated throughout their evening meal, barely speaking despite her attempts at gaiety. She ate slivers of duck that were pinker than she liked, and he moved his sea bream around his plate and drank quickly, ordering another bottle of wine before he had finished the first. Because he wouldn’t talk to her, Molly spent the time looking at the other diners and wondering about their stories. At the table opposite there was an older man with a breathtakingly beautiful young woman who twisted her great fall of hair around her hand as he showed her how to eat langoustine. Next to them there was a woman with her head wrapped in a silk scarf patterned with butterflies. She was with a young man who was unmistakably her son. They had the same awkward thinness and sharp, pink-tipped elbows resting on the table. It looked to Molly as if the woman had been crying. ‘What makes me sad,’ Molly heard her say, ‘is the fact that I will never see them.’ Her son looked as if he wished he were anywhere else but sitting in this dining room with its sconces and tablecloths and extra cutlery.
‘They’ll probably be ugly sods,’ he said, shielding his face with one hand.
‘Nonsense,’ said the older woman, ‘they’ll be beautiful,’ and she smiled at a point behind his head as if she could see them in her mind’s eye, lined up, lovely and gleaming for her inspection.
Back in their room Rupert stroked himself, then held her wrists tightly and came quickly into her as if he didn’t care if she was there or not. She waited until she could hear from his breathing that he had fallen asleep and got up, as quietly as possible. She put on the same white cotton dressing gown that she remembered wearing on their honeymoon and pushed open the wide doors that led out onto the balcony. At some point in the evening it had rained and the air was fresh and smelt of quenched dust. Two hot air balloons moved through the sky slowly like oil in water.
The next morning his moodiness of the day before was forgotten and Rupert was back to his loving, attentive self. He ordered breakfast for them both and insisted that she sat in bed while he fed her small spoonfuls of yogurt. Afterwards he pulled her off the bed and pushed her against the wall and she wrapped her legs around his waist while he thrust hard into her until she cried out so loudly he had to put his hand over her mouth to stop the people in the next room from hearing. Fiercely private, he hated the thought that anyone else might know what they were doing. She stood in the shower whilst he knelt in front of her and washed slowly between her legs, his hands slippery with soap that smelt of honey, the warm water soothing against her back where the skin had been grazed by the uneven plaster on the wall. They went to Gubbio and took a swaying funicular up the mountain to the Abbey of Saint Ubaldo. She pretended that she was more scared than she really was of the sloping hillside beneath their caged feet so that he would hold her close and put his hand into her shirt to distract her, his clever fingers slipping through the cotton and plucking at her nipple. Above the Abbey, the evening landscape spread out, perfectly composed, just for them, and she wondered how she could ever think that she was anything other than completely happy.
Molly heard Max’s feet padding across the landing floor and a quick glance at the clock showed that she had been lying in a stupor for some time. She felt a fizzing in her arms and hands that she recognised as a reaction to shock or fear; the unexpected lurch against her shoulder by a stranger on the edge of a train station platform, the sudden sound of beating wings rising up from a still hedgerow. The door creaked open and Max’s head poked cautiously around the frame.
‘Are you awake yet?’ he said hopefully, his teeth chattering, his arms clutching his chest. In reply, Molly pulled back the blankets and he ran and jumped into the warm patch by her side.
Chapter Five
He wasn’t in the sea. It was the first place Carrie looked, scanning the water for his head, looking out to the very edge of the horizon that suddenly seemed even further away than it had earlier in the day. She ran along the beach, occasionally stopping and asking people if they had seen a small boy in yellow shorts. They shook their heads and got up and looked around too. Most of them parents themselves, they knew from her face what she was feeling. They said things like; ‘He’ll turn up,’ and, ‘Where shall I say you are if I see him?’ but she barely listened. She stumbled on the sand, breathless, desperate already. She saw the boy who had played with Charlie earlier walking back across the beach and she ran up to him. ‘Have you seen my boy?’ she asked him. He shook his head and walked on, hands in the pockets of his shorts.
The tide had come in and the sun gleamed on the sea. The dazzling light and panic filled Carrie’s head like static. She ran backwards and forwards, into the shallows and then up the beach again, searching the dunes for small hollows in which Charlie might be hiding. The desire to see the familiar shape of him was so intense it made her whimper. Maybe he was playing a game. She remembered how the year before he had crawled into a cupboard in a holiday caravan and fallen asleep. When they had found him he had a crescent-shaped mark across his cheek where his face had rested on the edge of a plate. He liked small spaces. Perhaps he had found his way into the old lookout post further along from where they had been sitting. Carrie ran to the concrete bunker and looked through the slotted aperture. At first she couldn’t see anything but a small shape in the corner. Then her eyes grew accustomed to the dark and she saw it was nothing but a heap of abandoned clothes. She ran to where Damian was standing, still scanning the beach.
‘I can’t find him,’ said Carrie, grabbing Damian’s arm and holding on to it.
‘Where did you last see him? How long ago?’ asked Damian.
‘Where we were sitting. I’m not sure. Not long. I’m sure it hasn’t been long.’ She could barely talk.
‘I’d better go and tell the lifeguard. You stay here. You have to be here in case he
