David would not have taken any of the women of his family in to this bar; yet it was his own choice. The places he had dropped into for a drink in his own city were also the sort he thought of as out of bounds, not for women but for his women. Yet he could imagine sitting here with Constance or Diana. Only those with illusions could be disillusioned. Constance had never been sheltered in her marginal childhood in London, in the war, and Diana had chosen to work in the world. He would not have called either of them a masculine woman. They were worldly women, as his wife and daughters were not.

David was tempted to order another beer, but Patricia would consider two ‘drinking in the morning’, and she had a point. The three men, into another round, had deteriorated from bragging to telling dirty stories at which the bartender and her friend were expected to laugh. David stood up.

‘Getting a little rough for you, are they?’ the bartender asked, kindly. ‘You want another? I’ll tell those apes to clean up their act.’

‘No, no thanks,’ David said.

‘You come and see us again, now.’

It wasn’t a forced friendliness but natural to the climate, and the tourists who stayed long enough learned to speak not only to the locals who served them but to each other with the same shy awkwardness of people learning to speak a new language. Even Diana nodded curt acknowledgement to people they encountered by the pool or on their walks. On good days, Constance spoke and smiled. Sometimes she walked with her head down, refusing to see anyone.

David wandered over to the shopping mall. His Christmas shopping experience had given him a new confidence about going into stores. He had liked the bright tents he saw so many of the women wearing out on their screened porches, and he wondered if he could find any for Constance and Diana. In the window of one shop he saw one that would be exactly right for his sister, the colours darker, the pattern smaller and more complex than most he had seen.

‘One size fits all,’ the clerk assured him as she held it out for him.

‘All’ which could include his outsized sister obviously didn’t include the small, elegant Constance. With the present for his sister under his arm, he was puzzled by the difficulty of Constance’s size. He finally found a robe in bright orange with a Chinese collar and frogs, which fell straight to the floor, in a size he thought would do, though it might be a little long.