Maya’s ear, very close.

The little hairs behind it, exquisitely fine.

Her cheek. Her small, round shoulder.

Her laughter. Our laughter. The dog barking.

Fred huffing and growling, great big dangerous creature of the blanket cave.

The car, of course, is packed to the rafters. As if we were moving, not going on holiday. We are, says Fred; we’re moving to another routine. And he packs a big box of books. He’s read them all. Several times, most of them. One he even wrote. It’s a sort of chronicle of his home town, entitled Paulstadt: A Town Without a Neighbourhood. He only wrote it so he could carry it around with him all the time and use it when necessary to justify his work as parish librarian. He needs familiar things around him, he says, foreign countries are quite unfamiliar enough. But now he’s checking the oil. And the water. The tyre pressure, too. He does this by clumsily groping the sides of the tyres with his fingers. It’s a serious business. I used to love him for efforts like these. Maya is whining. Her beach ball needs blowing up. It can only come if it’s blown up, otherwise you can’t see the dolphin’s face, and we can’t leave without it. Fred blows it up. His freshly shaven cheeks are pink and shiny. Maya is happy. Ready? Ready. Blanket, child and dog on the back seat. Here we go. In we get. Driving away. Maya and the blue-­and-­yellow dolphin laugh out of the rear window. Is Paulstadt disappearing, Mama? Yes, my love, like everything in this world.

Fields. Dark, thin trees in the distance.

Fred’s hands on the steering wheel. His fingers tapping in time to ‘Let’s Get It On’.

A truck full of pigs. Their ears and snouts between the wooden slats.

My face in the windowpane at the border station.

The official’s lazy wave.

The yellow landscape. Lemons. Olives. Half-­finished buildings. And, by the side of the road, an actual donkey.

Little sounds from Maya in her sleep.

My hand on the open window.

*

Our holiday home sits slightly above the small coastal town with a view across the harbour out to sea. There used to be a fishing industry, now there’s just folklore. Some restaurants and tourist bars, half a dozen souvenir shops, the little beach, and right behind it the ten-­storey hotel with dancing at the poolside bar in the evening. Fred loves it here. He says it’s not ugly enough to be off-­putting, but not beautiful enough to get unnecessarily excited about. Strangely, I think he’s right. Nothing is too much here, almost everything is just enough. There’s something soothing about this; also, we can afford it. This is the fourth time we’ve come, and Maya recognizes ‘her’ things again. The room with the blue bed. The bucket and spade in the garage. The mouldy patch on the kitchen ceiling that’s always changing shape; this year it looks like the profile of an angry man in a hat. In the morning we go swimming, in the afternoon we sit on the terrace, and in the evening we eat in the only authentic fish restaurant on the harbour promenade. Umberto, our landlord, tells us the fish comes deep-­frozen from Norway, which is why it tastes so good. We’re OK with that. The harbour air is Italian, at least, and probably the vegetables as well.