‘Maybe we can eat Spanish from time to time when we get home, then!’ I said, being sassy. ‘It would certainly make a change from steak and chips.’
‘Ooh, you can’t eat steak,’ Ben said. ‘Steak’s disgusting.’
‘Why’s it disgusting?’ Lucy asked. ‘I like steak.’
‘Steak’s just dead cow,’ Ben told her, pulling a face. ‘It’s like killing a little cow and then just eating the poor thing.’
Sarah, who was on my lap, turned to look at Ben in horror. ‘That’s not true, is it, Mummy?’ she asked.
‘Yes, it sort of is, I’m afraid,’ I told her. ‘Well, it’s a bit of cow, anyway.’
‘Eww,’ she said, pulling a face.
We were home in time for the siesta, and we all slept quite soundly until four.
Lucy climbed on the bed and woke me up. ‘Can we go in the pool?’ she asked.
‘Mmm? Of course,’ I said, dragging myself from a rather pleasant dream.
‘The door’s locked,’ she said. ‘I can’t find the key.’
Ant rolled on to his back. ‘Joe took it,’ he explained through a yawn. ‘To stop them swimming without supervision.’
‘You have to get up, Mummy,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s too hot and I need to get in the pool right now!’
It was hotter than normal that afternoon – even the lounge felt stuffy. So everyone stayed indoors, merely nipping out to the pool from time to time in order to cool off: Amy, Ant and the kids playing snap, and Joe in his room, reading.
In spite of the heat, I wanted to be outside. I didn’t feel as if I was on holiday indoors and I wanted to experience Spain, even if experiencing Spain meant feeling overly sweaty. So I lounged in the hammock that Ant had found in the outhouse and suspended beneath the olive tree, while Sarah ran back and forth all afternoon, alternating between disrupting the indoor card game and interrupting my reading instead.
Just as the sun began to set, a welcome breeze arrived, and the temperature dropped quite rapidly so that by the time it was dark we’d all had to put on sweaters.
We ate bits and bobs from the fridge and then sat drinking and chatting as insects buzzed around the light that hung over the table.
Our new neighbours walked past at one point. They stopped and waved at us across the courtyard but declined Amy’s invitation to join us for a drink. ‘We’re going for a walk,’ the tall dark one said, and he indeed sounded quite French. In fact, Amy had been right about everything. They were French, good-looking, and if I was pushed to guess, I’d have to agree they were almost certainly a couple.
Once the kids had fallen asleep, Joe got out a proper pack of cards, and after a brief refresher course given by Amy, we started to play gin rummy. Other than snap with the kids, I hadn’t played cards for at least twenty years. It was far more fun than I remembered, though that may have had something to do with all the alcohol we were drinking. The problem was that everyone kept topping up my glass with white wine, and because it was warm and I was thirsty, and because there was no water on the table, I just kept drinking the damn stuff.
About eleven, I got up to go to the toilet, and realised that I could barely stand up. Though we were in the middle of a game, I decided to lie down for a bit, and from the moment my head hit the pillow I knew that I wasn’t going to make it back. Though I could hear Joe and Ant calling drunkenly for me to return to the game, I simply couldn’t move.
It was my body that woke me up initially. The wine had gone through me, and my bladder felt like it was about to explode. I was feeling thirsty, too, and had the beginnings of a headache.
The bedroom light was on and I was still fully clothed, which surprised me. But then I remembered the card game, the wine, my intention to rest and return to the game . . .
I listened for a moment, but the house was silent, so I stood, a little unstable still, and made my way through to the lounge, which was in darkness. Only the kitchen was lit, by the yellow bulb of the cooker hood.
I continued to the bathroom and then returned to the kitchen, where I gulped down three glasses of water, remembering belatedly that we weren’t supposed to drink the tap water here. I peeped into the kids’ room and saw that the nightlight was on and that all three beds were occupied, before returning to our bedroom, where I started to undress. But I got no further than removing my shoes and my jumper before Ant’s absence began to bother me, so I returned to the kitchen, then stepped outside.
The moon seemed even bigger, so perhaps it hadn’t been a full moon last night after all. The light outside was as bright as dawn, only cooler, giving a spooky bluish tinge to everything. Unusually, the table was still covered with the debris of the evening – numerous empty bottles, sparkling in the moonlight.
The air was quite cool now, almost cold in fact, but the paving slabs underfoot were still hot from all the sunshine they’d received during the day, so as I crossed the courtyard towards the track, I had the strange sensation of feeling chilly, with the exception of my feet. When I reached the track, I looked out at the plain. It appeared particularly strange in the moonlight, a bit like a dream sequence from a film.
Other than the non-stop cicadas
