Lily slipped a beach dress on over her head and looked down at Meg and Tess. ‘You want anything?’
‘I’m good, thanks,’ said Meg, which wasn’t a surprise. Since they’d met in the first term of their nursing degree at Leeds uni, Lily was pretty sure that Meg hadn’t once forgotten anything. And she was probably busy doing some Pilates-type meditation while she lay there.
Tess just gave a very small snore.
‘Did you actually forget your aftersun?’ Aaliyah asked as they walked up the wooden slatted path from the beach to the road.
‘Nope. You?’
‘No. Bored out of my mind.’
‘Same,’ said Lily, pleased. ‘I’m loving being here, I really am; it’s just quite hard to be in the middle of mega amounts of work one minute and then just doing nothing the next. I think I could relax better if I had something todo. I keep thinking about all the photo files I have to go through and feeling like I’m really wasting my time not getting on with those, but I can’t see my screen well enough with all this – lovely, obviously – sunshine.’
‘Same. Twenty-four hours ago, I’d got up at the crack of dawn after about five broken hours’ sleep, got three children dressed and breakfasted and out the door, done the school run, unloaded and re-loaded the dishwasher, put a load of laundry on, answered about ten emails from school and another ten from work even though I’m on holiday, made a tagine for them all to eat yesterday evening and dashed to the airport. This morning, I’ve got up after my first good night’s sleep for years, had a leisurely breakfast with no children in sight, and sunbathed. I mean, obviously I’mlovingbeing here, but it’s just a bit weird.’
‘You missing the kids a lot?’
‘Yep. But, you know, this is great.’
‘Yeah.’ Lily nodded. Itwasgreat. Absolutely. ‘Come on.’ She put her arm through Aaliyah’s. ‘Let’s shop slowly and then maybe go back just in time for lunch.’
Ten minutes later, they were under the awning of a shop, looking at sarongs. Lily held a purple one up against herself.
‘What do you think?’
Aaliyah turned round and nodded. ‘That’s gorgeous, and a great colour for you. It’ll be perfect with your lime-green bikini.’
Lily turned the sarong over to check the price tag and nodded. ‘Yep, I’m going to get it. What about you? You said you might get some new sunglasses?’ Aaliyah had told them yesterday that hers were chipped from where her toddler had got hold of them and chucked them against a wall.
‘Is there any point, though? They’ll just get broken again. And when you have young kids, no one really notices whatyoulook like.’ Pre-kids – in fact even after she’d had her older two – Aaliyah would never in a million years have worn chipped sunglasses. She’d always gone down the full-on glamour route. It didn’t seem like she’d just got more chilled because she had different priorities now, it seemed more like she’d given up a little bit. Probably because she was so tired all the time.
‘Why don’t you just try a few pairs on?’ Lily suggested, moving over to a locked glass case of designer sunglasses. ‘Why don’t I ask someone to come and open this cabinet?’
Five minutes later, a little of the old Aaliyah had reappeared. She had a pair of Prada shades on and was posing.
‘You look amazing,’ Lily told her. Aaliyah’s perfect features meant she’d look good in all sunglasses ever.
Aaliyah adjusted the sunglasses down and did an exaggerated pout and Lily laughed. She reached to take another pair out of the cabinet and then froze, with her hand out. Was that Matt she could see out of the corner of her eye?
No, probably not. She’d lost count of how many fake Matt-sightings she’d had on the way back to the hotel yesterday evening and on the way to the beach this morning and while they wereonthe beach.
The man was coming closer.
Oh. Itwashim.
He was so close now that the bright sunlight behind Aaliyah was partially blocked for a moment. Very apt.
He was getting even closer.
It felt like she was going to have to speak to him at some point, but – despite a somewhat sleepless night running through imaginary conversations in her head – she wasn’t prepared for that yet.
So it seemed like her best option right now was to hide.
She looked round. There was a tall display of scarves behind her and just to the right, which was definitely big enough to camouflage her.
Oh, God, he was turning towards them.
She whipped the purple sarong up so that it covered her face and jumped behind the scarf display.
