The sun was still high when she awoke from an exhausted sleep over an hour later, the lawns below were deep in shade on the cliff side of the garden, but the point at the far end was bathed in golden light and far out to sea a slim white ship moved smoothly to the west, probably bound for Marseilles or Barcelona. A cruise ship; she didn’t know where it was going. She knew where she was going, that was the main thing. She buttoned the deep pockets of the safari jacket, buckled the belt tightly round her still slender waist, pushed her feet into a pair of worn espadrilles, and crossing to her dressing-table carefully removed her rings and the one bracelet which she had worn all day, and tumbled them into a drawer. In the mirror her face looked drawn without make-up, her eyes still puffed from sleep and the idiot tears of self-pity which she was ashamed to have shed. Her mouth tasted stale, bitter, even though she had cleaned her teeth, and her hair, roughly pulled back and tied with a bit of ribbon, made her look quite ordinary, just an ordinary woman with rather good bones. Those she had, and ran a hand down her cheek, in a light caress. Drab, my dear, just a drab. Like someone’s maid. No one has seen you look like this for years and years; and no one will.

She closed the bedroom door softly behind her and went quickly down the wide staircase on silent feet. The hall was still, empty. From the kitchens a clattering of china and Bruna’s scolding voice raised and as suddenly cut off as a door slammed. She crossed the hall swiftly, the terrace, with the soft sound of bubbling water from the fountain; she hurried down the steps, across the lawn to the little path which led to the cliff through the trees. She hadn’t been this way for ages – it was steep and zig-zagging, overgrown with broom, spiked with tall agave – but she was soon out of sight of the house. At the end of the path, she knew, there was a tiny cove of almost flat rocks from which, in other days long past, they had swum in the deep water before they had built the swimming pool on top, to save the long clamber up to the house. This had been one of the best picnic sites on the land, secret, silent, shaded by one great wind-writhen pine, and they had all humped baskets, towels, ice buckets, and hampers of white wine to the rocks, sometimes even a portable gramophone with Layton and Johnston or Yvonne Printemps, for Archie. So long ago. It was more fun than the great new pool up at the point. But things change, fashions alter; legs grew less limber and the track up became tiresome.