‘I was. Volunteered to come back early to make a start on getting tea ready.’ She checked her watch. ‘You can help me if you like.’

I held her gaze.

You’re not going to admit it, are you? Then I will confront Sean instead.

‘Of course.’

She looked over my shoulder to see if there was anyone else with me. ‘Are you on your own?’

‘Left Sean with the kids. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Rowan in the last half hour, have you?’

‘I thought she was up at the villa with you?’

‘She went off somewhere.’

We made our way back up towards the villa, through the vineyard, the ground hard and uneven under my sandals. Izzy was chatting, talking about everything and nothing in a constant nervous stream, but I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying.

A moment ago I had been sure. But now certainty had fled.

Izzy was there. Izzy came to the rendezvous. She responded to a message she thought Sean had sent. Or was it just coincidence? Had she really left the gorge early to make tea? It was the kind of thing she would volunteer to do. And where had Rowan disappeared to?

We were halfway back to the villa when Izzy put a hand gently on my arm and gave me an inquisitive look.

‘Don’t you think, Kate?’

‘Think what? Sorry, I was miles away.’

‘That Jennifer’s eldest is a bit of a strange one?’

‘Jake?’

‘He just seems a bit . . . out there. Like he’s operating on a different plane to everyone else.’

‘That’s teenage boys for you.’

‘Do you think he realises that Lucy is out of his league?’

I turned to her in surprise, not sure if this was just another way for her to divert attention away from her secret meeting with my husband.

‘Lucy?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t think . . . I’ve always thought of them more like siblings.’

‘Kate, haven’t you seen the way he looks at her?’

‘How does he look at her?’

She laughed.

‘With his tongue hanging out, mostly.’

‘Really?’

‘Totally understandable, of course. I would be exactly the same if I was a teenage boy – you just have to look at her. It would be kind of cute if he wasn’t such an – well, an oddball.’

It was true, Lucy had blossomed in the last couple of years, from a pretty girl into a heart-stoppingly beautiful teenager. But to Sean and me it had been a very gradual, incremental change – day by day, week by week – and so we were less aware of the startling effect she had on people who saw her less often. Particularly boys.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I still think of them from when they were tiny, her and Jake and Ethan playing in the paddling pool, the three of them starkers, running around the back garden.’