Rowan stood up and went over to Sean, hugging him tightly, arms clasped around his broad back. ‘Thank you, Sean, thank you,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘I don’t know what to say. Thank you for keeping an eye out for her.’

He hugged her in return, biceps flattened against her back.

‘No worries,’ he said quietly. ‘It was nothing.’

They stood there like that, not saying anything else, simply holding each other tight.

Two people, two parents, giving and receiving thanks for the safety of a young child.

Holding each other.

For just a little too long.

Just as they were about to part, half-turning away from me, Rowan turned her head and stood on tiptoes, her lips near his ear. Just for a moment. Sean tilted his head down so his ear was almost touching her lips. Her hands at the back of his neck. His expression softening into a smile. A few seconds, nothing more, then they moved apart into an awkward silence.

Had I imagined it?

Had she whispered something?

What did she say?

What was that?

Finally, they separated. Rowan smiling at my husband, the hero.

My husband, who seemed to be losing his way in life.

Whose midlife crisis had snowballed into an affair.

Who had been lying to me for weeks, maybe months.

Not for the first time, I wondered whether Rowan had brought us here to impress him, to impress my husband. If that was what was really going on. The free holiday and the villa and the champagne were all to impress Sean. An in-joke, of which only the two of them were aware. They had worked out a way to come away on holiday together – the rest of us just happened to have been invited along for the ride.

Stop it.

Stop. It.

Russ extended a hand and Sean shook it, both men nodding awkwardly.

Sean had strong hands. I loved his hands. They were already starting to darken with exposure to the Mediterranean sun. I noticed something else about him as he reached to drink from a bottle of water: a pale line of skin around the fourth finger of his left hand.

Where his wedding ring should have been.

Chapter 17

17

Ethan