I couldn’t believe the hotel. Bianca had gently woken us as we rounded off up the private lane, and twilight set in making everything a dusty pink. I looked at the car’s clock up front: because we’d stopped off halfway to stretch our legs, it was now just after six. The clouds lit up from behind and reflected in the lakes either side of the road perfectly so that it was as if we were gliding through the sky itself. Up ahead was a grand lodge made of lightly coloured stone, surrounded by lavish gardens with plants that looked like they’d had their saturation turned up: purples and oranges and blues and pinks in their full brightness, an exotic fair for the senses. The lodge had a huge wrap-around porch where sets of guests sat out with their drinks and snacks, and a firepit burned just behind it, where more couples sat on reclining wooden chairs, blankets splayed across their knees. Two perfect white helicopters waited in the distance, and I was sure I saw a peacock dragging its feathers behind her over in the field, too. It was astounding. As we got out of the limo and took it all in, I couldn’t believe I was there. We’d pulled up in paradise.

‘It’s not bad, is it?’ Bianca said. ‘You just wait until you see your villa.’

14

‘Okay, listen to this,’ Patrick said, reading from the pamphlet. We’d been shown to our cottage out towards the edge of the compound, driven there on a little golf cart to save our legs from the tiny pedestrianized pathways that snaked through the grounds. The first thing Patrick had said when we’d opened the door was that if I was getting Fernanda and Charles a giant Toblerone, he was going to gift them a kidney. I made a mental note to call them as soon as it was morning back home – although words wouldn’t be enough to express my thanks.

‘Postcard-perfect shorelines,’ he read. ‘White sand beaches. Towering forests. As far as God-given beauty goes, Western Australia’s Margaret River region hits the jackpot …’

‘Oh my God,’ I murmured under my breath. ‘All of this is for us, Patrick. Wow.’

Everything inside was glass and birch wood, meaning the whole place filled with the last of the light and the inside merged with the outside, as if there was no distinction between the two. A huge central seating area with plush, biscuity sofas was sunken into the middle on three sides, and when I went over to the balcony door I saw that you could slide it all the way across so that the whole back was entirely open. Birds sang and some sort of exotic-sounding creature issued a soft cooing sound, and I crept through the rest of the place with my jaw slack.