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a
gypsy?’
    ‘Camille, shall we go in the
pool?’
    ‘Okay.’
    Reluctantly he rises and leads
her back to the shallow-end, encouraging her to take a jump into his
arms.  To his relief she is soon distracted by the other kids, who are
drowning what appears to be a locust.  Small friends reunited, Adam
paddles surreptitiously back to his berth, to haul himself out beside his
lounger.  Hastily he dries his hands, rearranges his towel and squats on
the sunbed.  He opens Xara’s message.  True to form, she’s provided
few lines for him to read between: ‘Client mtg Tue 10pm. X.’  
Nevertheless, it conjures a surge of excitement, a warm wave that ripples
through the centre line of his body, quickening his vital signs.
    He sinks back on the bed and
closes his eyes against the overhead glare.  A brief lysergic flashback
flickers across the inadequate screen of his eyelids.  He fumbles blindly
for his sunglasses and sends them clattering across the tiles and under the
adjoining sunbed.  The female occupier – Camille’s putative, amply
proportioned gypsy – stirs and fishes them with a grunt from between a
pair of sandals.  As, carefully, she hands over the glasses he notices the
gaze beneath her own dark but not quite impenetrable lenses sweep across the
swollen skin-tight Lycra of his black trunks.  He wrestles his instincts
to turn over (and so acknowledge his complicity), but instead says thanks, and
settles back, his thoughts jumping like a jam-jar of grasshoppers from his
childhood.  Ten p.m.  Now she wants it at night.  What does that
mean?  A single woman, perhaps.  Not an easy time to explain an
absence from home.  Or her partner’s away for the night.  Or she
could be the one in town on business.  Isn’t that when most males would
indulge?
    But ten p.m. Tuesday?  How
shall he explain his own absence?  (He notes he’s not questioning his
attendance.)  They travel home on Tuesday – he should be there in
good time, but typically they’d stay in after a trip away, fatigued by queues
and queasy from serial snacking, maybe get a takeaway, open a bottle of wine,
have an early night, a ‘nice night’.  He could say he’d arranged
beforehand to meet a colleague for a quick catch-up at the pub – the
timings would make sense – but Monique would expect him to put her first,
as invariably he would.  And sod’s law, if he went to ‘meet’ someone
– the nominated person would no doubt phone their house that very same
night.  It had even happened once before, and he’d surely played his joker
at that particular game.  What a fool he’d have looked if he’d begun to
relay some non-existent sending of regards.  He shudders a little at the
memory – if Monique had had any inkling of suspicion, and had wanted to trap
him, he would have walked right into it.
     
    ***
     
    ‘So I gather your beautiful
daughter thinks I’m a gypsy lady.’
    Adam cringes, ducking for cover
into his wine, as if to buy a moment to gather his wits.  So she was awake
all along.  If she heard gypsy she heard fat .  But he
takes comfort in her untroubled tone and generous description of Camille.
    ‘Sorry about that – she’s a
bit obsessed with gypsies right now.’
    She gives a little
self-deprecating laugh.  ‘Oh, don’t worry I took it as a compliment, being
Irish.’ 
    But probably not being
overweight, thinks Adam.  He looks around, as if to check if anybody is
listening-in, as though he’s going to make a point he doesn’t want
overheard.  It’s the delegates-and-partners dinner, a noisy, lively affair
being held in the alfresco section of the hotel restaurant, near the
pool.  The seating plan, to his irritation designed by someone with a mind
selectively to divide and mix couples, has placed him between the sister of the
Irish representative (his erstwhile poolside neighbour), and the somewhat
taciturn French-speaking wife of the Belgian representative.  Apart from
distancing him from