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Caroline’s cool voice floated away on a list of instructions. She breathed in deeply. It smelt so good here, the air, rich enough to drink, scented with rosemary and lavender and the cool smell of watered stone. She thought of her back garden at home, in a dilapidated row above Finsbury Park station, and how their tangle of lilac acted as a shield against the flat, burnt air of the main road. Three weeks! She gulped down another mouthful, and she followed her father into the house.
    The house was tiled and new, inside at least, with pale-wood doors and creamy sofas. It was built for summer with a small stark kitchen lined with cupboards and a tall, loudly humming fridge. One wall of the living room was made of glass, a section of which slid back on to a terrace where a round table stood scattered with Caroline’s correspondence, peach-coloured sheets with ‘La Forestella’ printed across the top. I’m sorry to have to tell you this , Lara read, she couldn’t help it, but I didn’t want you to hear it through some idle gossip , which as it turns out you are . . . She looked round quickly in case she’d been observed, and finding she hadn’t she glanced back down. They say fresh air and sunlight . . . and I say what the hell, may as well throw in the odd cigarillo   . . .
    She forced herself away to join her father as he leant over the railings of the terrace. The house was built on a hill, something you couldn’t tell from the front, because below them the land dropped away in a steep garden of ferns and reeds and flowering oleander, a crooked path of flagstone winding down to a flat basin below, where, like an oasis, lay a bright-blue kidney-shaped pool. Lara wanted to fling off her clothes, run down the steps and throw herself in, but just then Caroline appeared.
    Her arms were slim and cool as they rested on the railings between them. ‘Now.’ She took a breath. ‘I’ve told Ginny she can swim between eight and nine, so as not to disturb anyone, and I like to swim first thing, before breakfast, but apart from that, you can use the pool whenever you like.’
    Lara gazed down at it, so clear and tempting, the turquoise water dazzling in the sun.
    ‘But now.’ She turned. ‘I expect you’d like to freshen up.’
     
     
    When Lara stepped out of the shower she could hear the telephone, then Caroline’s slow, serious voice, followed almost immediately by the bubble of her laughter. The sun was still hot, beating through the open window, and anxious to get to the pool before the afternoon cooled, she began to rifle through her bag. She had a swimming costume somewhere, a bikini, borrowed at the last minute from her mother, but once she’d pulled it on and fastened it, she realised it was a horrible mistake. The bikini was striped, purple and white, the top tied at the neck with ribbon, the pants held high on the thigh with bows, but since the last time she’d borrowed it, her body had changed. ‘Oh my God.’ She stared into the full-length mirror, tucking in a crescent of protruding breast, adjusting the narrow strip of cloth that only half-covered her bottom.
    She couldn’t even blame her mother. It wasn’t her fault that at the last minute she’d discarded her all-in-one black costume and started rummaging through Cathy’s clothes. And anyway, she’d never actually known Cathy wear it. Maybe it didn’t fit her either, although that was less likely. Cathy was slight and sinewy with narrow hips, and fine long hands and feet. She had a mass of caramel-coloured hair that she tamed with flowery-smelling products, camomile and calendula, and occasionally – accepting defeat – a headscarf. Lara was nothing like her. Taller and darker. She must have inherited her curves from somewhere else.
    Ruefully she moved to the window to check the pool was still in sunshine, and there to her surprise she saw her father, naked except for a pair of bright-blue swimming trunks. He stood at the near end of the pool,