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walked up the terrace steps. ‘Everyone else is too busy.’
    ‘It’s a common complaint!’
    ‘So I understand. But you will come?’
    ‘No. Not today,’ she amended for no very obvious reason.
    ‘Then, tomorrow, perhaps?’
    ‘I don’t know. I never make promises I may not be able to keep.’
    ‘We could take your mother.’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t be any sort of solution. She doesn’t like motoring in the heat.'
    ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said, not taking her refusal as a final answer.
    ‘I can’t promise. We’re short of staff now that the season has begun in earnest.'
    ‘I meant to ask you about that.’ He stood between her and the glass door leading into the hall. ‘Do you have a winter season yet—ski-ing and that sort of thing?’
    ‘No. We would need a place in the mountains for that and it’s a short-time luxury we can’t afford.'
    ‘It would add to your amenities,’ he pointed out. ‘Something extra for the winter months when the snow is there.’ He looked at her keenly. ‘Have you thought about it at all?’
    She shook her head, wondering where their conversation was leading. ‘It’s much too grand an idea at present, having a second string to our small little bow, so why should I waste time thinking about it?’
    ‘Because you are now a businesswoman.'
    ‘Not like that. Not like your American friend.’
    ‘Ah! Lara,’ he said. ‘No, you are not at all like her.’ She flushed at the implication, knowing her own limitations in that respect.
    ‘Perhaps I shall learn, in time.’
    ‘You will never be hard enough to be completely successful,’ he predicted. ‘I can see that in you, Anna, at least. You may be disappointed—even bitter—but not hard deep down at the core.’
    ‘You imagine you know me very well!’
    ‘We were brought up together,’ he reminded her deliberately. ‘We shared a great many things.’
    ‘Except trust!’
    He took the mimosa from her, following her across the hall.
    ‘That’s as may be,’ he said. ‘I hope I can prove you wrong.’
    Her mother was in the small sitting-room overlooking the loggia and he went in to talk to her while Anna arranged the last of the mimosa in a blue porcelain bowl on the reception desk, adding a few pale mauve irises she had picked earlier in the sunken garden at the side of the house to give a more dramatic effect. She went to the kitchen after that and did not see Andreas leave.
    ‘What did Andreas want?’ she asked when she joined her mother for a belated lunch.
    ‘Just to be friendly, I think.’
    ‘And were you?’
    ‘I hope I was polite,’ Dorothy said. ‘Anna, he is trying so hard to make amends.’
    ‘By offering us help now that we don’t really need it? You must see that he is trying to ease his conscience because he knows how wrong he was.’
    Your father pushed him too hard—in the wrong direction, I’m afraid.’ Dorothy said, ‘but that’s all water under the bridge now and we can afford to be tolerant.’
    ‘But not to accept him back into the family as if the past had never been!’
    ‘Perhaps not.’ Dorothy looked distressed, toying with her salad as if the heat had become too much for her. ‘I think Helen Stylianu phoned, by the way. Paris took the message.’
    ‘It will be about the tour,’ Anna decided. ‘Let’s hope nothing has gone wrong.’
    ‘Why don’t you go with Helen tomorrow?’ Dorothy asked. ‘It would be a respite for you and we are never very busy on a Thursday.’
    Anna hesitated. ‘I might think about it,’ she agreed.
    It was a long time since she had been round the coast or up into the mountains; too long, she thought as she went in search of Paris to find out why Helen had phoned so unexpectedly.
    ‘Despinis Stylianu will not come tomorrow,’ Paris informed her gravely. ‘She is unwell with her throat. It is impossible for her to speak at all.’
    Which meant the tour would have to be cancelled, Anna decided, unless someone else would