‘Would you like me to move the parasol?’

‘Please – an aperitif, on the house, Miss Jeanie. Enjoy!’

Enjoy? Oh my word, she was enjoying herself all right, thought Jeanie, thanking the smart, handsome waiter and accepting the orange-pink Negroni, which clinked pleasingly with ice cubes. (Daisy would love that little cocktail umbrella, she noted, removing it from the glass and putting it on the side to keep for her.) What was not to enjoy? The hotel staff had been positively delighted when she’d ventured down to the polished mahogany reception desk in the lobby last Sunday and explained her position: that she was supposed to be flying back home today, but had come to the conclusion that she would actually much rather stay on here. Would that be possible?

She was rather embarrassed about asking – after all, there was nothing to be proud of: her ‘being a wuss’, as her grandchildren would say, hiding away at the hotel rather than going home and facing the music. However Bernardo, the manager, had reacted as if she were some kind of hero. ‘But of course!’ he had cried, clicking the mouse energetically so as to shuffle around the allotted bedrooms on the hotel system. He was smartly dressed, with a pristine white shirt and comb-marks visible in his neat dark hair; the sort of man you could tell had been brought up nicely. ‘Do you need me to change your flight? When do you think you will return?’

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ she’d told him, with a little shrug. ‘I have absolutely no idea. I’m having such a wonderful time, I might never go home again!’

This last had been a joke, it had come out of nowhere – of course she would go home again at some point – but it was clear that Bernardo loved her reply. He’d actually clapped his hands together with delight. ‘You never want to go home! My dear, then you shall be our guest for as long as you like,’ he declared. ‘We are honoured to have your company.’

Goodness, Jeanie thought, as she gave him her credit card for the deposit and he suggested that she might like to book a treatment at the spa, with his compliments, and could he do anything else for her? So this was what it felt like to be a daring person, to go about breaking the rules and behaving impulsively. Usually she would be holidaying with Harry, and he would make all the arrangements: signing the two of them in, dealing with keys and bills, organizing the day-trips and nights out. Leave it to me, he would tell her. As a result, she barely received a second glance in places like this; she would stand there by his side, the dutiful wife, and people’s gazes would slide right over her. Nothing to see here, only the little woman. The boring little woman, they probably thought.