In the meantime, there were plenty of other things with which to distract herself. Was it naughty of her to include a certain member of staff as one of them? Luis, his name was: softly spoken and broad-shouldered, with soulful chocolate-brown eyes and a smile that revealed perfect white teeth. He worked in the pool bar and she would often find her gaze drifting over admiringly to him, watching from behind her sunglasses as he theatrically mixed cocktails, both hands on the glinting silver shaker, joking with the customers so that their laughter carried across the water to her. Sometimes he would catch her watching and give her a cheeky little salute as if to say I see you, and then she’d blush like a schoolgirl. Jeanie Mortimer, now you just behave, she would scold herself, but really, honestly, if she was thirty years younger and single, she knew she’d be feeling pretty tempted right now. ‘Miss Jeanie’ he called her every time he brought her a drink, and it made her feel girlish again, and a tiny bit trembly, as those dark, melty eyes lingered mischievously on hers for a second too long.

Heavens! She was starting to sound like Harry’s sister, Penelope, who had already burned through four different husbands and always seemed to have a new boyfriend on the go, even though she was seventy-two years young, in her words. Jeanie had always felt faintly disapproving of Pen’s waywardness, but she was starting to see the attraction of such behaviour. Because being out here on her own was the closest she’d come in decades to feeling carefree and heady again, to feeling young. She had strolled to the beach the other day and picked up a hot pink maxi-dress from one of the boutiques there, along with a pair of matching flip-flops with huge plastic flowers on them, just because. Some people would call them trashy and they were – oh, they were – but that was the point! They were tacky and silly and would probably fall to bits before the week was out, but so what? She was on holiday! She was having the time of her life, and if she wanted to wear naff flip-flops and a dress that was slit all the way up the thigh, then by God she was going to do those things and enjoy every minute.