It was probably stupid to feel she needed an excuse to see Nikos, but to just descend on him out of the blue and demand to know if he loved her was something Penny couldn’t contemplate. She’d never been good at being direct, anyway. What would Colin have done if she’d ever asked him if loved her? She could just imagine it. He’d have looked at her as if she’d lost her mind and then bark, ‘I married you, didn’t I?’

The scene suddenly struck her as both totally accurate and acutely painful.

As she went to find her bike Kyri’s daily life unfolded all around her. The children playing football on the beach, the old men in their usual position at the end of the harbour poised like old maids on the concrete wall, gossiping. The sun pouring its liquid gold over the aquamarine sea. The ferry arriving and disgorging lorries loaded with building materials or watermelons, a local woman with a vast checked shopping bag and finally a thin stream of tourists.

It was almost lunchtime and a couple caught her eye sitting at a table by the water’s edge. They were probably in their seventies, he white-haired, in a check shirt, she with shoulder-length hair in that forgiving colour somewhere between blonde and grey, nicely styled. She wore white jeans and a pretty top. For some reason Penny thought they might be Scandinavian.

But that wasn’t the most noticeable thing about them. It was that they shared a kind of affectionate peace. They didn’t seem to be talking but not – as with some couples you glimpsed in restaurants – because they had nothing to say. Penny sensed it was more because they didn’t need to. Being in each other’s company after many years together was enough.

Out of the blue, Penny’s eyes began to blur. She would never have that. But then, with Colin she never could have had it. She couldn’t think of a single happy evening they’d spent eating out, just the two of them, with a fraction of the peace this couple seemed to have.

She thought about home, and suddenly her decision to stay on here seemed extraordinary, outrageous even. To have just abandoned her husband, her daughter and her grandchildren on what must seem like a crazy whim. She thought about her usually tidy and sparkling home. Would Colin have tidied or washed up a single thing? What was he thinking anyway, that he had made so little protest? Wasn’t she worth protesting over?

She parked her bike and leaned on the harbour wall, staring out to sea. Just next to her two little boys were fishing, no different from her own son when he was young, or her grandson. Suddenly she missed them all passionately, all her certainty undermined. Was she just being some stupid Shirley Valentine?

She had to know.