“You’re interested in him,” Karo says, hovering on the deck as Maeve pulls up out of the pool. The moment feels a bit like an ambush.

“He’s interesting, all right.”

Karo hands her a robe.

“You married young, didn’t you?” But she doesn’t wait for an answer, turning instead to watch the players, the little ball flitting between them, tossed and caught in plastic champagne flutes. “I married Gianpietro when I was eighteen,” she says. “He was forty-four. I had to run away with him, can you believe it?”

“Eighteen is a lifetime ago.”

“It is,” Karo says. “He died.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean—”

Karo waves the apology away. Lung cancer, she says. “When I was thirty-two. It’s strange to think of him now. So you’re right—it’s like a different life completely. It’s almost as though I didn’t live it at all, like it’s something I read about once in a book.”

Maeve sits with that and doesn’t answer right away. She can feel her body tense. Iain does not seem a lifetime ago. “So,” she says, a little puzzled by Karo’s attention. “You’re interested in Sim?”

“Me?” Karo tips her glass. “No,” she says. “Not the way you mean. But I don’t want him to get distracted.” She glances over at the men again, then pulls it back. “Or electrified by something other than his work. He owes me an installation, and I want it done well.”

It’s not advice. It’s an accusation. Maeve feels herself harden in response. She wonders if Sadie has endured this same reproof.

Karo doesn’t break her serious look.

“People come here and they suddenly become teenagers. Don’t waste your time—”

“Fucking around?” Her mother’s phrase: You’re just fucking around. But Karo only dips a toe in the water and shrugs, as though Maeve is overreacting, before she turns away.

Maeve pulls Anna into the bathroom with her.

“Karo gave me another lecture,” she says, through the cubicle wall. “That’s two in two hours.”

“Oh, fuck her.” Anna’s feet go pigeon-toed in the next stall. “She gave me a lecture about smoking in my room. What am I, fifteen?” Her foot dances about, trying to get back into its flip-flop. “I wish you’d been here when the place was crowded. It’s easier. The truth is she handpicks her artists and then she thinks she owns us. She was a painter, you know, but she stopped making art to do this admin job instead. So now she wants to pretend our work is hers somehow? No, thanks.” A pause. “I mean, it’s a big job, I guess,” Anna says. “In fairness. But still.”

There’s the rolling thunder of the toilet-paper dispenser.