‘Hello again.’

‘Oh! Hi there.’ She put on a practised vague smile. Welcoming but not too keen. She’d had to learn these games the hard way, on boys her age, and this was a man. She didn’t know what games he’d want to play. ‘Couldn’t stay away from the chicken korma?’

He laughed, a full, throaty sound. ‘No offence to your chef, but that’s not really the draw here.’ He didn’t say what was but she knew he meant you, I’ve come to see you, and she glowed. ‘Listen,’ he said, stepping closer, ‘do you mind if I put the UK news on? Know how it is, you come for a break then you can’t keep away!’

There was hardly anyone else in, just an elderly couple who couldn’t hear the TV anyway, and kept screeching at each other about the weather. ‘I said it’s NICE!’ ‘No I think it’s NICE outside!’ Maddy passed him the bar remote, their hands almost touching as she did. She felt giddy, high on the clean smell of his laundry detergent and aftershave. He turned on Sky News, and watched it intently, the pint she’d poured him unattended.

After five minutes, she had to interrupt. She couldn’t bear the way he was watching the screen, transfixed by a story about a death back home, some ancient alco suffocated by an even more ancient gas fire. He should have been watching her.

‘Is it not OK?’ Meaning his drink.

‘Oh! Course it is.’ He sipped his pint.

‘So what’s really brought you here?’ She leaned on the bar, coquettish. ‘It’s not the sort of place people travel to alone, is it? No backpacker hostels or that sort of thing.’

‘So, why am I here then, Detective Barmaid?’

‘Well, I have a few guesses.’

‘Go on.’

‘Number one, you’re a cop. Casing out a criminal somewhere here on the Costa del Dodgy.’ He laughed again. Her heart swelled. ‘Number two, you’re on the lam.’

‘On the what?’

‘On the lam.’ She blushed. ‘It’s like, old-time talk for being a crim. Running off so you don’t get caught. Costa del Crime, isn’t that what they call it here? Because we have no, like, extradition treaty or something.’

He looked at her over his pint. ‘You’re a smart young woman. Except for that law changed in 1985.’

‘Oh.’

‘What was your name again?’

She told him.

‘Very pretty.’ And from the way he smiled at her, she knew he didn’t just mean her name. ‘So, Maddy, if I really was on the lam, would you keep my secret? Or would you betray me?’

She leaned further over the bar. She knew it made her cheap T-shirt, bought in the local market, stretch over her breasts. Her mother had told her this, not disapprovingly.

‘I’d never betray you,’ she said.

Eleanor

Eleanor