Sorry about last night. Hope you found something nice to do.
Sofia looked down at the table. Probably best not to be honest about her evening. She had nothing to hide– they were both free and single– but in the end, it hadn’t been quite as nice as she’d hoped.
She looked up again just in time to see a secret smile pass between Charlotte and Maria’s son, Dimitris, who was walking through the breakfast room on his way to the terrace. He even gave her friend a little wave.
Surely not? She blinked to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Charlotte’s relationship with her husband Doug had always made her a tiny bit envious. The man had a wicked sense of humour as well as being more than passably good-looking. He and her friend were often to be found giggling away in corners together at social events.
Sofia found it hard to believe you could retain that level of interest in someone over such a long period of time. They must have been married more than thirty years. Thirty years with the same person sounded like a prison sentence. Her usual cut-off point was around thirty days.
She’d managed to massage her ill-advised starter marriage to fellow lawyer, Rupert, into limping on for a year, but in reality, she’d checked out mentally after six months, the twenty-five-year age-gap proving too big to bridge on both sides. No one blinked an eyelid when it was that way round, older men with young women.
He was a lovely guy, a bit like a more charming version of her father, which a psychologist would have had a field day with, but she’d been desperate to progress in her career and see as much of the world as she could, while he’d been happy to stay out late most nights drinking whiskey in gentlemen’s clubs with his cigar-smoking cronies, forcing her to seek other amusements.
She’d been the one to leave, but neither of their hearts was really in it. The divorce had left her with a little mews house in Chelsea, where she still lived, plus an in-depth knowledge of the legal system, and some lovely jewellery. At least she and Rupert had parted as friends. Sofia crossed herself and blew a kiss to the sky to his dear departed memory, hoping Charlotte wouldn’t notice. But her friend’s eyes were still firmly on Dimitris.
Of the three of them, Charlotte had always liked to keep things closest to her chest, and worried the most about what other people thought of her. Maddie couldn’t give a toss about other people’s opinions, particularly now Tony had gone. Sofia considered herself somewhere in the middle.
Dimitris grabbed a croissant from the display with one hand and stuffed it into his mouth. With the other, he picked up a banana to go. Sofia would have put money on Charlotte beingthe least likely person she knew to have a holiday fling with a guy young enough to be her son.
Still, her friend had seemed out of sorts at times over the past few days, and the thing about not being able to paint was plain weird. Charlotte had painted for as long as she’d known her and had never mentioned the muse vanishing before. Charlotte not painting was shocking, like Charlotte stopping breathing. It meant something was seriously wrong.
But she was probably putting two and two together and making seventy-five. She was hardly in a position to make any negative comments about being attracted to younger guys. But the big difference was that she was single. She’d never had to worry about betraying anyone. Perhaps it was just lack of sleep sending her mind off in crazy directions.
The flush that appeared on Charlotte’s cheeks when she realised Sofia had clocked the exchange was hardly proof of her innocence. Sofia raised her eyebrows towards a departing Dimitris.
Charlotte’s voice came out in a hiss.
‘You can’t be serious, Sof. We don’t all have our minds below the belt!’
‘Just saying…’
‘For goodness’s sake. He’s a nice young man that I happened to bump into early one morning when he was about to start his shift. He’s the same age as Rueben. And a guy young enough to be my son is absolutely not who I’d chose if I was going to be unfaithful to Doug.’
If? Since when had it become an if?
Charlotte was still in full flow and Sofia didn’t bother to interrupt.
‘Look, we had a little chat and watched the sun rise. That isit.’
Maddie returned to the table with a full plate ofstrapatsádagarnished with cucumber and olives.
‘What isit?’
Charlotte put her coffee cup in its saucer so violently that some of the brown liquid spilled over the side.
‘Oh nothing. Sof was just accusing me of copping off with Dimitris, the pool boy.’
Sofia looked around her.
‘Keep your voice down. Maria’s only over there. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.’
‘Sounded like it.’
Maddie forked up the first mouthful of her second course.
‘Mmmm, yummy. Now, you two. Play nicely. Calm down. Calm down.’
The calm down was a pretty good impression of Harry Enfield’s character inThe Scousersand had all three of them smiling again, although Charlotte’s smile looked somewhat forced to Sofia.
