‘You’re right, Lily,’ she said, as Matt put another cup of coffee down in front of her. ‘Norm will be back. And if he isn’t, I need to accept it. Or maybe I need to go and find him and tell him I’m sorry if I upset him and I love him. In the meantime, I do need to make the most of this time alone. I’d like to have a girls’ night here at the house tonight. Let’s call Penelope and she can arrange it. She has a boat so she can get over here. Matt, you can be an honorary girl for the evening.’
Right. Not exactly what he’d had in mind for tonight at the airport when he’d leapt at the opportunity to spend another day on the island with Lily. With Lily and no one else.
‘Great,’ he said, pretty sure that if he objected out loud it would upset Carole and annoy Lily. ‘Um?’ he began, and Lily gave him the evil eye. ‘Great,’ he said again.
‘Do you know,’ Carole said after another cup of coffee, ‘I might go and have a lie-down now.’ Hurrah.
Matt and Lily both waited – weirdly, both of them quite statue-like, like any movement would look suspicious – until Carole had been safely inside the house for a few seconds, and then turned to each other.
‘Fancy a walk?’ Matt asked.
‘Yup.’ Lily smiled at him and it nearly took his breath away.
‘So you have a great imagination for chores,’ Matt said as they began to stroll towards the gate at the end of the garden.
‘Only because you apparently have a great imagination for saying the worst possible thing to cheer Carole up.’
‘I know. I didn’t realise I had such a knack for it.’ He reached out and took her hand. And that was nice. Better than nice. ‘You know it’s weird: on paper you might say that I’m keener than you, or historically I was keener, on an open-with-your-emotions conversation, but in practice you’re good at those conversations, and I’mbad.’
‘You aren’t bad. Except very specifically at cheering Carole up the day that she’s found out Norm’s left her. Not gifted there. But last night when we were talking it felt like you were making a lot of sense.’
‘It did? I mean,Ithought I was making sense. I thinkwemake sense. I’d love the opportunity to restart our relationship. Maybe differently from how we did things last time. Maybe put a lot more effort into spending quality time together.’
‘I’d like that.’ Lily’s smile was so beautiful that he had to kiss her, and then that was basically that for an extended period of time.
‘What about if we creep into the house?’ Matt wasn’t totally up for al fresco sex in broad daylight.
‘What if Carole hears us go in, though, and wants to chat?’ Lily leaned back into the crook of his arm and adjusted her top back to decency. ‘What about going to the pool house?’
‘Carole has a pool man, who comes a lot. I’d rather take my chances in the house.’
Lily started giggling as they crept through the house, and then she started coughing she was laughing so much. ‘We’re like teenagers,’ she hiccupped when they’d made it safely into her bedroom.
‘I know.’ Matt smiled at her and pulled her towards him and kissed her.
Some time later, Matt opened his incredibly heavy eyes to a thunderous banging. What was that? Where was he?
Oh, okay. He was wrapped around a sound-asleep Lily and he’d been asleep too. Her hair was in his face, their limbs were entwined, they were all tangled up in the bedsheets and they were gloriously naked. Two sleeps in one day. Clearly they were too old for staying up all night.
The banging was getting louder.
‘Are you in there, Lily?’ shouted Carole. And the door handle began to turn.
Lily – who’d always been a very dead-to-the-world sleeper – was still completely comatose, breathing deeply and regularly, smiling in her sleep. And the door was opening.
‘Stop,’ yelled Matt. ‘I’m here too. Don’t come in.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Carole through the crack in the open door. ‘Okay. Well, the girls will be here quite soon. I’ll see you downstairs.’
Lily heaved a big sigh, rolled over towards Matt and opened her eyes slowly. And then she smiled and Matt’s heart jumped.
When they got downstairs, ‘the girls’ had already arrived. There were about twenty of them standing on the terrace outside the kitchen, with Carole in the middle of the group, pink champagne in hand, all glammed up, looking alothappier.
‘OMG,’ she shouted as Matt and Lily made their way over. ‘What have you two beendoing? No, don’t give me the details, but OMG.’ She turned to all her friends and said, ‘Matt and Lily were an item for quite a while when they were younger, then Matt got married to someone else – clearly a mistake, they had a nasty divorce – andnowit seems like Matt and Lily might be back together again. Or at least sleeping together again.’
‘Iknewthere was something between you.’ Penelope stepped forward and began stroking Matt’s biceps again like she’d never left off from the morning of the wedding. ‘You make agorgeouscouple.’ And then she let go of his arms and began to clap. And then everyone was clapping.
So essentially they were being clapped for having slept together. Which was a new experience for Matt, and, he was guessing, Lily.
