Oh God, this was so different from her fantasy. On the internet it had looked like a lovely village house and she hadn’t thought to ask how far it was from the beach. Typical. Colin sometimes told her she was a waste of space, and that was exactly what she felt like today.

There was a knock on the door, and Nell’s face appeared. ‘Come on, we’re all going down to look for the beach and have some breakfast. So stop looking like a squashed plum and let’s go out. It isn’t the end of the world. It’s a perfectly nice house apart from the unfortunate location.’

She held out her hand to Penny. Penny willed herself to take it.

‘Look, you did all the work while the rest of us sat back and let you. Maybe it’s a lesson to us all.’

Penny allowed herself to be led downstairs, where the other three were waiting. ‘Why don’t we try and find our cafe on the beach?’ Nell suggested. ‘I mean, the village may have changed but at least they can’t have moved the beach!’

They made their way through groups of tourists in the steep narrow streets, all dutifully looking up at carved doorways and glimpses of the blue-domed church.

‘Look at that,’ Moira pointed to what was obviously a bar, called The Sunburnt Arms. ‘That’s quite witty.’

‘And look at all these cash machines,’ Nell marvelled. They stopped and studied the bank of three ATMs. ‘Do you remember how long it took to cash a traveller’s cheque when we were here? About half an hour in a stiflingly hot bank? I wonder what happened to traveller’s cheques. Do you think anyone still uses them?’

‘And poste restante,’ chimed in Dora. ‘I was really impressed by the cool guys with dreadlocks and dark brown tans who were eternal travellers and picked up money and letters from their poste restante addresses. Like something out of Graham Greene or Hemingway.’

‘Probably cheques from their parents in Tunbridge Wells,’ Nell pointed out laconically. ‘OK, what’s happened to the main square?’

When they’d last seen Zanthos it had seemed to consist only of the main square plus a few vertiginous side streets leading up to the Acropolis.

‘Isn’t that where Penny attacked the donkey man for being cruel?’ Nell asked, pointing at a small side street.

‘Doesn’t seem to have done much good,’ Moira commented as a donkey passed them carrying a vast air-conditioning unit. ‘And no, Penny, you are not allowed to have a go at him.’ They passed a dimly lit interior from which the aroma of coffee drifted enticingly out. ‘Come on, let’s look for the beach in a minute. I’d kill for a coffee.’