They left just before Christmas, flying all the way this time, shedding layers of thick winter clothes in airport toilets as they did. Xanthe read Katerina Elogiat on the plane, smelled the incense on each page. She walked back into the bookshop and he didn’t look up; she pressed herself close to a bookcase, pretended to browse. When she turned around he was smiling at her. He touched his finger to his forehead, to what she would learn to call his third eye.

‘I knew,’ he said.

The money paid for rent on an apartment, an old car, and a tutor to help Dido with her Greek. Eventually, it also paid for the deposit on the studio on the clifftop, and for a local handyman to come and help them remove the main wall overlooking the sea, replacing it with windows; for them to buy the derelict building carved into the rock and refurbish it into six small apartments, and for a professional company in Athens to create their website. They lived on the last of it until the end of the first season, by which time word had spread and they were running eight yoga retreats a year.

The name had given her pause, when the email came through with the booking, grabbing the last place at the last minute for the beginners’ week. It actually took her a second to place it. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? No, of course, Clio would know that she ran this retreat. They’d used a picture of her and Nikolas, smiling, on the welcome page of the website. But why just book? Why no friendly little message on Facebook, no personal email? Well, Xanthe wasn’t going to be the first one to start things up. She counted down the four weeks until Clio’s arrival with steadily building dread.

The red hair. Xanthe could see it through the window of the van as it pulled into the driveway. Was it darker? Henna over the grey these days? Still the slash of lipstick, too. As the guests unfolded themselves from the back, she was amused to note that Clio fitted in with them very well. Just another slightly flustered forty-something, flyaway hair and trailing scarves. Xanthe pulled herself straight and tall and strode out to meet them, calling out a general welcome before turning to Clio, arms open but fixed beside her at the elbow.

‘And welcome to you, old friend.’