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    The village that housed the bikes seemed deserted but Harry chose for her the least battered pushbike, no doubt drawing on his experience of bike fallibility, and the tread on the narrow tyres at least looked new.
    ‘Have a little pedal around here while everyone gets their bike,’ he said, and she climbed on with a nervous grimace. It had been years and she fought the tremble in her knees as she took off.
    At least she could touch the ground easily. The Portuguese girl had a death wobble until Harry stoppedher and put her seat down for safety. Bonnie liked it that he cared.
    Between Harry and the Balinese guides, everyone had their bikes set to go within ten minutes, bottles of water were handed out and then the lead rider took off with all his less confident ducklings behind him. Everyone except Harry and the fitness instructor rode stiffly. Bonnie and Harry brought up the rear, which seemed to set them apart in their own world.
    The descent started out gradual. A bit like the way she’d little by little become relaxed around Harry, though he’d become slightly anxious when she’d nearly steered her bike into an unexpected drain at the side of the road.
    ‘That ditch would have swallowed you. Stay nearer the centre,’ Harry pleaded as she veered his way again suddenly to avert another catastrophe.
    From then on he positioned his bike to keep her out of the gutter.
    ‘Whew.’ She took her hand off the handle to dry her sweaty palms on her used-to-be-white trousers. ‘How embarrassing it would be to wipe out in the first kilometre.’
    ‘Or worse,’ he muttered, and glanced across at her. ‘You can’t just choose an orthopaedic surgeon here, you know.’
    Bonnie laughed. ‘I missed the hole. Nothing to worry about.’ In fact, she felt remarkably relaxed now that the initial wobbles had disappeared.
    The sun was shining, the road had the occasional country vehicle, but most of the time it was just the bike riders, fields and villages as they sailed past.
    Harry pointed out features of different village temples, family buildings and the census plaques on top of the entry arches, which Bonnie had never noticed before.
    ‘So each census tag has how many sons and their families, and how many adults and children live in the family compound.’
    Bonnie slowed as they peddled past the entrance to another family compound and this time she could make out the little strokes denoting the family members. ‘Cool. So there’s five children in that compound.’
    ‘Yep.’ He looked quite pleased she was interested but it was no hardship. She found the insight into Balinese culture fascinating. And it was also attractive that Harry wanted to share his own interest with her.
    Too many things were attractive about him. ‘You care about these people, don’t you? You’re not just interested in them out of curiosity.’
    He nodded. ‘Of course. I’ve spent a lot of time here and anyone who does that comes to appreciate Bali and her people.’
    ‘So why don’t you work here?’
    ‘I do a bit.’ He didn’t enlarge on it. Instead he said, ‘My friend was born in a village near here. Sometimes the kids run out to wave as we ride by. They’ll hold their hands out for a high five. It can give you a fright.’
    The rest of the bike riders had stopped up ahead. There was a generalised wobble as they all put their feet down and Bonnie was no exception. She glanced at Harry’s face as he tried to hide his grin. ‘Don’t even think about laughing.’
    She pretended to frown at him and he held up his hands as if to say, ‘Never.’
    ‘We’ll go through the village here, and then later on you’ll be able to recognise the layout and functions of the buildings and compounds we still have to go past.’
    She glanced down the discreet dirt track between the buildings and couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable at the invasion of privacy. There seemed to be people at work in each section but none of them