We take a cab from the station. As we drive along the narrow lanes my one preoccupation is to reach Duncan’s side. We pull up at the house and I jump out and ring the bell. A maid shows us into a sitting room. I gaze at neatly clipped box hedges through the open window. Eventually an elegantly dressed woman appears. I recognize her at once as Duncan’s mother. She shakes my hand, thanks me for my concern. She assures me that Duncan is recovering. I see her take in our bedraggled clothes, the chaos of our luggage. Her eyes stray to Angelica and her mouth sets in a firm line. When I ask if I can see Duncan she shakes her head, confident of her prerogative. She asks me where we are staying and her smile hardly falters as I tell her we have only just arrived. She bids us goodbye on the pretext of our being tired, adding over her shoulder that we must call again once Duncan is well. She leaves the maid to show us to the door. Our cab has long since departed and we have no alternative but to walk back to town.

I have no status. I am neither wife nor lover, not family or friend. I sit in the hotel bedroom and stare out to sea. If I lean out the window far enough I can glimpse the house where Duncan is convalescing. When I am finally allowed to see him I realize it is not only his mother who is against me. My coming has made him a laughingstock. He scarcely addresses a word to me.

I rent a villa. I cannot afford to continue paying for hotel rooms and I have no choice but to remain. Duncan visits Angelica, and he and I paint in the garden, savoring the bold Mediterranean colors, the great glancing planes of light. Gradually his anger toward me abates. When his mother returns to England he moves in with me.

You visit, with Leonard. We walk down to the harbor, enjoying the corridor of cool between the narrow rows of houses. You loop your arm through mine, and as we come out onto the quay we stop and watch the fishermen unloading their catch. You tell me how envious you are of the companionable way Duncan and I paint together, compared to your solitariness as a writer. We are like brother and sister, you say, fond yet inviolably chaste. With the surety of lightning, you scissor my sky into halves. I stare at a group of alluringly dressed young women gossiping and laughing as they wait for their men at the end of the quay. Your words leave me as shriveled and exposed as the starfish strung up to dry and sold for a few centimes to passersby.