'Oh my God!' she exclaimed, 'what's happened?'
Connor stood up and came over to take a closer look at the pimples.
'Allergic reaction', was his verdict. 'Nasty. Those things take ages to clear up. When I was filming in—'
'Allergic reaction?!' Dinah cut him off. 'To Sisley?'
'Erm . . . I think you'll find that's totally dodgy Sisley that my mum got cheap on the internet,' Lana piped up. 'You should have seen my face when she got me supposedly Lancôme Juicy Tubes. I looked like the elephant man for weeks.'
'Oh no, you're joking.' The full horror of this – the fact that she might still be covered in a scaly rash for the surprise party – was only just beginning to dawn on Dinah when Ed, busy stacking wine bottles in the tiny fridge, casually asked, 'So I take it Owen and Billie made it back OK then?'
'Owen and Billie?' Dinah repeated, her mind completely clearing of pimples, all her attention now focused on Ed.
'Yeah – ' Ed was still stacking – 'not long after we set off, Billie needed the toilet, so they came back here . . .' he turned towards Dinah now, with just the slightest prickle of anxiety.
'Owen and Billie?' There was clear agitation in Dinah's voice now. 'Back here? Just after you set off? No.
No!!
They're not here, we've not seen them, they're not here!' And then she let off the most ear-piercing scream, so that Ed dropped both the wine bottles he was holding, and they exploded against the tiled kitchen floor sending wine and shards of glass flying everywhere.
'Whoa!' was Connor's reaction as he swung his feet clear of the mess. 'Hold onto your hats, everyone. We'll go and look round the garden and we'll probably find them out there having a giggle at us.'
'Owen is the most boring kid in the universe,' Lana offered; 'believe me, nothing exciting ever happens to him.
Now
please can I have my phone back, Connor? Pleeeeease?'
None of this was having any sort of calming effect on Dinah. In her flip-flops and bikini, she was already tearing out of the kitchen shouting, 'Billie! Billie!' at the top of her voice.
'Harrods!
This
is the where I want to sell my bags!' Mr B was holding forth. 'This is the ultimo. The pinnaculo of success.'
At the back of the shop, he was flicking excitedly through a ring-binder of drawings and photographs of handbags.
'Look at these beautiful things from the two best factories in Italy, all for very, very best price for you, Signorina Valentina.'
Annie didn't really want to break it to him that Harrods was not exactly the cutting edge. It was a bit stuffy, packed with expensive but unadventurous luxury goods and the tubby, middle-aged tourists who'd come to pay their respects at the Diana and Dodi shrine. But now that she'd sunk a third, or could it even be a fourth, glass of fizzy wine, she didn't really have the head for a debate, so was just agreeing with him.
'Harrods, yes! And The Store and maybe Harvey Nichols . . . although everyone wants to have things exclusive,' she reminded him. 'Exclusivo? Their shop only, that's the thing.'
'Esclusivo!' Mr B pounced on the word. 'My bags very, very esclusivo. And such a wonderful price for such fantastico quality. No?' He kissed the fingertips of his left hand extravagantly.
Annie decided that it really was time for her to get up gracefully from the sofa, where she seemed to be sliding ever closer and closer towards this charming man and his fragrant embrace.
Then she noticed that her back was already making contact with his right side, his right arm was casually slung across the top of the sofa and he
appeared
to be stroking her hair ever so gently with his right hand.
'
It must be late
,' Annie hoped she'd conveyed, but she'd just told a surprised Mr B that she had to be reprinted.
She lurched forward and attempted to stand up but wobbled on her heel and fell back down onto the sofa again, now even closer to him.
'Whoops!' she said out loud, then, taking a glance at the clock hanging from a nearby wall, she saw to her horror that it was almost 5 p.m. The extensive tour of Mr B's stock and catalogues had obviously taken much longer than she'd thought.
'I have to go!' she exclaimed. 'It's nearly five o'clock! I said I'd be back for lunch.'
'Ha!' Mr B nodded. 'Five o'clock is late for lunch, even in Italy.'
'Why have there not been any customers?' she wondered. 'I see what you mean about not much passing trade . . .'
Well that's what she'd meant to say. Mr B was looking at her in confusion. 'Tassing Parade?' he asked. 'What is this?'
Once she'd made herself understood, he boomed, 'Oh, the shop is shut. Saturday afternoon in Italy. Chiuso. Closed. Fermé.'
'Saturday afternoon!' Annie was incredulous. 'A half-day on Saturday? Mr B, that is where you are going wrong.'
The squashy sofa seemed to have flung them very close together once again. And now Mr B's warm finger was under her chin, drawing her face closer to his.
'I like you,' he said, leaning in still closer.
He had very nice lips, it occurred to her, dark pink, full for a man, with a defined cupid's bow at the top. Despite the numbing blanket of booze, Annie knew she should not be contemplating Mr B's lips in close-up like this. She dived down for her handbag and came back up with her mobile phone in her hand, which she held between them like a protective shield.
'I thought I heard it beep,' she said and looked closely at the screen, which read, 'fourteen missed calls'.
'Oh good grief, I have to go,' she insisted and stood up, wobbling dangerously.
'You leave your car here,' Mr B, who was now up on his feet too, said firmly. 'I drive you back to the villa and tomorrow when you get car . . . we make our deal.'
* * *
'Careful!' Owen was instructing Billie. 'Careful! Don't let go of my hand too soon.'
He and Maria were up on the higher branches trying to lower Billie out of the pear tree the three of them had climbed for a very successful picking session.
This was the third tree the trio had scaled, because, as any budding fruit picker could see, the best stuff was always at the top.
Billie had turned out to be extremely brave and skilful at climbing up, but just about entirely useless at coming back down again. Maria, on the other hand, could leap between the branches like a monkey.
Owen had a tight hold of his cousin's hand, which was just as well as she'd lost her footing and he was now urging her to let herself drop to the ground. She was only a foot or so up in the air.
'Just jump!' Owen told Billie. 'Let go. You'll be fine.' The ache in his arm meant he couldn't hold onto her much longer.
'Let go!' he ordered sharply now because the pain was becoming quite unbearable.
But still Billie hung on, her other hand gripping Owen's wrist tightly. 'No!' she wailed. 'Too high!'
'OW! Let
go
!' Owen shouted, beginning to feel his grip on the tree branch loosen a little. 'You'll be fine, you'll land on the grass.'
Billie was clinging even tighter.
Owen closed his eyes and just concentrated on his left arm which was clinging to the tree branch and now hurting as much as his right.
'Let go, let go, let go!' he said calmly, 'or I'm going to fall on top of you.'
At last, her grip on his arm relaxed and Owen opened his eyes to see that Maria, understanding the problem, had hurried down the other side and run to get hold of Billie from underneath so that she was spared even the small drop to the grass.
He let himself slide down the fat branch he was holding and then climbed down to join the two girls.
'We'll have to go,' he said casually. Neither he nor Maria had a watch and a quick glance at the sun (tribesmen could tell the time incredibly accurately by the sun) told him only that it was still very hot.
Maria held out the smaller of the two fruit baskets to him. It was full of warm, ripe pears and some squashed-looking blackberries, a mushroom or two and a few other edible leaves Maria had insisted they add to their haul.
'Um . . . so how do we get back to the house from here?' Owen asked, trying to sound casual. He didn't want her to think he was like, lost, or anything deeply uncool like that.
And if he was lost . . . he'd be able to find his way again. Another glance at the sun . . . did it set in the west? Or was it the east? But anyway, their villa was up a hill, so that meant north didn't it? But then, they had walked quite far with her, from one field to another, so that he had lost track of which hill the villa was on.
Maria turned and looked thoughtfully around her before giving them the simple directions she had worked out for them.
'. . . and then,' she concluded, 'after the field, you see the road and walk up. But in the field, by the tree, attention. Very profondo.'
Which meant absolutely nothing to Owen. But he repeated the route they were to take carefully: 'Top of this hill, turn left into the field. Cross field, join the road.'
'Si!'
She leaned forwards as if she was going to give him a kiss, but Owen quickly leaned back, making it clear that he didn't want anything like that to happen.
Instead, Maria turned and gave Billie a hug and a kiss on her cheek.
'Ciao,' she said.
'Bye-bye,' Billie told her.
'You do understand the way?' Maria just wanted to check.
'Yeah, no problem.'
So with the basket of fruit and other pickings in one hand and Billie holding on cheerfully to the other, Owen set off.
He hoped they would make it back before Ed, so as not to worry anyone, but he had the slightest of misgivings that they might have stayed with Maria much longer than he'd intended.
He looked at the plants growing in the grass as they walked. How did she know so much about them? How could she just pick things so confidently and announce 'For salad' when every leaf she'd chosen had looked exactly like the next? She'd be able to live in the wild. She'd even told him that she could trap rabbits. He'd always wanted to be able to do that. Even though he wasn't exactly sure about killing them, let alone eating them.
'Look! There's a butterfly! Bright blue!' Billie called out and let go of Owen's hand.
They were in the big field on the left now. The one Maria had said just needed to be crossed before they were back on the road to the villa.
There was a large, gnarled olive tree right in the middle of the field. Both the butterfly and Billie seemed to be heading straight towards it.
What was it Maria had said about the tree? Pay attention, it's very profound? Maybe he was supposed to study the tree closely for some reason.
Something to do with living out in the wild.
'I'm going to catch it!' Billie called out and began to run a little faster towards the butterfly.
Maybe because they were on a slope, heading down, Owen felt himself speed up. Felt himself start to run too, after the butterfly and after Billie.
Then all of a sudden, with just the tiniest flick of her hair, she was gone.
'Billie?' Owen shouted after her in surprise.