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letter,’ he said quietly. ‘She believes I was speaking the truth when I said I wrote offering an explanation. She has come to terms with it.’
    ‘Which doesn’t begin to compensate for all the heartache you caused!’
    ‘No, that is true. I have already said I’m sorry.’
    She turned to look at him. ‘If you had stayed here,’ she said, ‘you could not have achieved so much success. That meant a great deal to you, I suppose—more than friendship and understanding.’
    ‘It did mean a lot to me,’ he admitted, ‘but not more than understanding. I don’t know whether I expected you to understand or not, but I had looked for friendship.’
    ‘Surely that can’t matter to you so much now that you have everything else.’ She finished her orange juice as her mother came towards them. ‘Shall we go in now before the rush begins?'
    Dorothy greeted him with a smile. ‘What do you think of our improvements?’ she asked. ‘I saw you out at the lighthouse.’
    ‘I remember helping to build it,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘Nothing has really changed, although six years is a long time in one respect. I remember how you used to say that the years flew away without us noticing, and that is true. This morning could have been yesterday as far as I was concerned.’ He waited in the doorway of the terrace room for Anna to catch up with them. ‘This used to be your sitting-room,’ he remembered.
    ‘We’ve made changes,’ Dorothy acknowledged wistfully. ‘It is no longer a home.’
    Oh, Mama, Anna thought, that’s the first time you’ve expressed regret so openly!
    A table had been reserved for them at a window overlooking the terrace.
    ‘We’re going to put the swimming-pool out there,' Dorothy told him. ‘It’s a natural declivity and very suitable, I understand.’
    ‘It’s where we found the Roman coins,’ he mused. ‘We were all very excited that day, wondering if we had stumbled on a fortune and vaguely disappointed when they had to be handed over to the authorities. Where are they now?’
    ‘In the museum,’ Anna said, ‘where they rightly belong.’
    He smiled as he made way for her at the buffet. ‘What do you recommend?’ he asked.
    ‘You must choose for yourself,’ she said. ‘I don’t know your tastes.’ Not now, she thought. Not any more. ‘Francis believes in one or two tried and accepted dishes rather than variety, especially at lunch time.’ She helped herself to prawns and salad. ‘If there is anything else you would like I can get it for you.’
    He shook his head, approving the dishes set out before them. ‘Everything is fine,’ he agreed, Tor a small hotel. Variety isn’t really essential, although it is often expected.’
    She watched him add some fat black olives to his plate, remembering how they had picked them from the trees as children, carrying them back to the house on the hill where they had spent their holidays away from the tiring heat of the plain.
    ‘How long were you in England?’ Dorothy asked as they sat down. ‘Three years. I spent most of them in London and Cambridge getting the experience I needed. After that I went to America,’ he explained. ‘I suppose it was something of a revelation to me, altering the pace of life I had known for so long.’
    ‘You made friends there, I dare say,’ Dorothy suggested almost jealously. ‘Good friends.’
    ‘Only one,’ he said, looking out over the garden. ‘There wasn’t time for more.’
    ‘Was he in the hotel business?’ Dorothy asked.
    He smiled at her interest. ‘She was Madam Hotel herself!’
    ‘Oh!’ Dorothy couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘A woman. Naturally, I thought ’
    ‘Women can be business tycoons in their own right these days.’ He laughed at her simple assumption that it must have been a man. ‘Especially American women, though this one was Swedish. She was married to an American, however, and that was how we met.’
    ‘Oh?’
    Dorothy waited for him to enlarge on the