‘Keep doing that,’ she instructs.
‘Then what?’ he asks jokily. ‘Is there a ten-point plan?’
‘Yes,’ says India, reaching for the button on his shorts. ‘But whatever it is you’re doing, keep doing it.’
‘Do you want the whole hundred per cent or just fifty, like Bernard?’
‘Ugh,’ says India, shuddering. ‘No Bernard remarks. But one hundred per cent? I do like that.’
Then there was no more talking, only the smooth noises of skin on skin and the sound of cicadas and tiny birds, and then, soft moans of pleasure.
Rose is determined to see Keera to her taxi.
‘Take as long as you like, Keera,’ Rose instructs her as they walk out of the hotel.
Keera shoots an anxious gaze at Bernard, who’s emerging from the hotel ostentatiously carrying a slimleather folio which looks as if it has an iPad inside, and with the BritishTimesnewspaper folded neatly beside it.
‘I think Bernard might be a bit grizzly, so you sit in the front with Marceline.’
Bernard shoots her a look so hostile that Rose feels dizzy. What is he planning?
She quickly stuffs all her fears deep inside her and opens the taxi passenger door.
‘Hello Marceline,’ she says brightly to the taxi driver. ‘How is your mother’s leg?’
Marceline, a cheerful woman in her fifties with a mane of blonde hair with black roots, smiles out at Rose and waves a hand heavily braceleted with silver bangles of varying sizes.
‘Much better. She can manage the crutches so well now. Did I tell you she met a lovely man in the hospital and they’ve arranged to meet when she’s better?’
‘Single man?’ asks Rose, delighted at this news.
‘Widowed, many children – all of whom worry he’s lonely. He has a small hotel in Benitses.’
‘Sounds lovely. Listen, Marceline, will you take care of my friend, Keera?’ Rose lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘She has to travel with this grumpy man tonight and she needs a little kindness. She will be in town for two hours, perhaps, and then back here?’
Marceline examines Bernard who’s clambering into the back.
She pats the passenger seat beside her, which has a pink-and-white crocheted seat cover.
‘Sit here, pet. I will visit my friend in the town and then drive you home. Grandpapa can sit in the back.’
Rose takes Grazia down to the beach. On the way there, they encounter India and Dan, both with a flushed look on their faces.
Rose smiles at them both but feels anxious at what these encounters will do to Dan.
India is free but Dan doesn’t feel he is.
Will he be able to cope?
Not something she can deal with tonight.
‘Were you a model in a previous life?’ she asks Grazia as they walk slowly along the beach, moving from the curve of the sand onto the pebbly part. The sun is still meltingly hot even though it’s now after six.
‘No,’ says Grazia, adjusting her hat so that the sun does not touch her face. She never sunbathes like her husband, Rose has noticed.
‘Everyone thinks this. Years ago, a man in Georgia wanted me to be a model when I was very young but I knew it was not safe. Myself and my friends were at the Tbilisi rock festival in 1980 and this man was very keen to take pictures of me. But he was connected to many party people and I was scared.’ Grazia shrugs. ‘It was not like the West.’
Rose has researched Georgia but has many questions about what it was like when Grazia was young, before the country was liberated from Soviet rule in 1991.
