'You'd better come up.'

Suitcases gaped open on her floor, some half-filled with clothes. Felix skirted round them. She'd closed her shutters again so the room was dim.

'It's a glorious day, you know.'

'Is it?'

'Absolutely. I'd planned to go bargain hunting in Porta Portese as distraction therapy. But then I thought, no, b.u.g.g.e.r the market. What's the point of haggling over more bric-a-brac that I don't need? Why not head for the beach?'

'The beach?'

'Sure. It will do you good the tang of sea air.'

He hadn't mentioned the suitcases. He hadn't asked her how she was or why she had started a flurry of packing at two o'clock in the morning. She'd been tramping about in a torment of indecision with armfuls of clothes until collapsing in a heap at 4 a.m. She was never good-humoured after a rough night, but Felix knew that she rarely refused an invitation, even when her head was pounding. He'd argue she could catch up on her missed sleep, lying in the sun.

'How long will it take you to get ready?' he said. 'I'll go for a coffee, shall I? Wait for you outside.'

He hadn't given her any option. Still, maybe he was right: a change of air could be a real tonic. Cities were always claustrophobic in summer, whereas even a small sea like the Mediterranean appeared to promise infinity. Gina kicked the cases out of her way, prowling the room with far less delicacy than Felix as she sought towels, bikini, sandals, sun cream. She filled a large straw basket with everything she thought she might need, including paracetamol and indigestion tablets, and pulled an equally large straw hat onto her head. She suspected she looked like a holiday advertis.e.m.e.nt and was quite prepared to snap at Felix, should he mock, but all he said was, 'Not sure you're going to fit into my car, darling.'

The car was not air-conditioned. As they crawled towards Ostia with thousands of other Sunday sun-seekers, Felix's idea seemed less attractive, less spontaneous. His complexion darkened with annoyance when the engine over-heated in the traffic jam for the second time and he had to top up the radiator with expensive rations of mineral water. As he climbed back into the driver's seat, Gina exhaled a long sibilant whistle through her teeth.

'Christ, what's the matter now?'

His agitation might have amused her if she'd been feeling better. 'I was wondering,' she said, 'what is the point of being here?'

'Well then,' he said, 'perhaps you should have told me an hour back: Listen, Felix, you know you'd far prefer to go shopping for antique crystal than get your rocks off with a rentboy picked up at the seaside. Or you could have insisted we took the train. And don't give me that hangover nonsense you always have a hangover. You know why you get so sick all the time?' Recently she had thrown up, spectacularly, over one of his Moroccan rugs. The dry cleaners had done their best, but the rug's colours had shifted into a different spectrum and it had to spend much of the day over the railings, soaking up the fresh air. 'You have a drink problem, that's why.'

'f.u.c.k off. Who said anything about a hangover? Anyway, if we'd taken the train we'd have had miles to walk and it's too hot for walking. But what I was trying to say was, well, I'm thinking of leaving.'

'What, Rome?'

'Italy.'

'Why?'

She was feeding the brim of the hat through her hands, revolving it on her lap; the straw felt dry and brittle. 'I have to think of the future. I don't know what's going to happen to my career... I need to decide whether I should do something different altogether.'

'Don't I recollect an excited phone call? Weren't you, a few weeks ago, limbering up for the contract of a lifetime?'

'And was I completely trashed when I told you that?'

He changed into third gear, easing his foot off the clutch as the queue gathered speed. 'Jewellery, you said. Because you had the longest bra.s.s neck in the business.'

Gina put her hands around her throat and squeezed. 'Yeah, well, it'll probably never happen. And I was so looking forward to it. Flaunting my baubles in the Trevi Fountain like Anita Ekberg.'

He began to hum the Sinatra tune. Gritty gusts of hot air blew in through the windows along with blasts of music from competing car radios. A pair of drumsticks tapped vigorously on the membrane of her skull. She resisted the urge to scratch at a mosquito bite on her wrist and to scream at Felix for dragging her out of bed. She said, 'I might go back to England. Or America.'

'America?'

'My mother's over there, remember.'

'I thought you couldn't stand your mother.'

'In particular I can't stand the man she's married to, Mountebank Monty. But I think they're splitting up.'

'Talking of splits... this is about Mitch, isn't it?'

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He never checked, you know, to see how I was. Out of sight, out of mind. We used to have these long conversations at crazy hours because we were in different time zones. Now I'm dead meat.'

'You're nothing of the sort.' He took his right hand off the steering wheel and stroked her arm. 'Please don't go. I'd miss you if you left.' Then he swung onto the coast road, bordered with low-lying sand dunes, and pointed through the windscreen and the heat-haze. 'At last! Now to find somewhere to park.'

Along the beach, oiled bodies were laid out in rows like seals basking. A parade of muscular beauty wandered up and down the sh.o.r.eline. Few swimmers were tempted into the water, opaque and murky beneath a glittering surface. Gina settled their belongings around the chairs and umbrella they had hired and lay back, topless. Felix set off to the bar for a couple of beers. He was wearing a loose cotton shirt with the collar turned up to protect his northern skin from the sun, and a very small pair of swimming trunks. Most of the other men wore even scantier versions; the sheer ma.s.s of tanned and toned b.u.t.tocks cresting the sun-loungers was eye-watering.

Gina sat up again when he returned and took one of the proffered beers. They'd been opened by the bartender and Felix had carried them with such circ.u.mspection he hadn't spilled a drop.

'Thanks.' She swallowed a mouthful, then tucked the bottle in the shade of her basket.

Neither of them could see the other's eyes behind their sungla.s.ses. In fact nearly everyone on the beach was masked by dark lenses a covert tool of inspection and examination.

'Such a feast of flesh,' he said. 'Surely you can enjoy just looking?'

'Not as much as you, evidently.'

'I met Maurizio here, you know.'

'Oh G.o.d, did you?'

Two lean young men sauntered by, close enough to touch, their arms entwined, their profiles sharp against the light. One wore a gold crucifix, the other a silver. Maurizio had been a homespun una.s.suming type. It was hard to imagine him flirting in the manner of those on the beach.

'Perhaps some of us are destined for the single life,' Felix said, a trifle mournfully. 'Or perhaps we get exhausted by our mistakes. So much easier, don't you think, to divorce the two?'

'What two?'

's.e.x and companionship.' He tipped some more beer down his throat.

'You've left out love,' said Gina, picking up her detective novel. The words danced on the white page, undermining her concentration.

He turned his head and looked along the rows of sun loungers as if searching for a familiar face. He moved his watch to admire the white strap mark it had left. He drank some more beer, wiping the neck of the bottle each time. He picked up the copy of Vogue Gina had brought and put it down again. He returned one or two bold stares with a faint lift of his chin. His long upper lip folded over his bottom one in a sly smile, giving him the look of a refined goat. 'It doesn't seem to me that you're in the mood for a chat,' he observed after a while.

'I guess not.'

'Are you feeling all right?'

'Touch and go, to be honest. But I've brought my medicine chest so I'll be fine.'

'I think I might take a walk along the sh.o.r.e. If you don't mind?'

'Of course not. You go along, bag yourself a hunky new set of c.o.c.k and b.a.l.l.s.'

'Will I look pathetic if I keep my shirt on?'

'Like you're afraid of exposing yourself, you mean? Yes, you will.'

Reluctantly he took it off and she slathered high protection suncream across his neck and back. She gave him a little push to send him on his way and then closed her book again. She was no more in the mood for reading than she was for gazing at nearly naked men. So many people were pa.s.sing up and down the sh.o.r.e that the sea itself could only be glimpsed in patches. A couple of North Africans in vivid kaftans were walking at the edge of the water. They were strung with ropes of carved wooden beads, leather belts and sprays of exotic plumage. They stood out among the sunbathers and were, for the most part, completely ignored as they tried to access one private stabilimento after another. A handful of young men were playing a ball game ch.o.r.eographed to display their physique rather than service the ball. There were no children squabbling, wheedling or wailing, in sight. Gina closed her eyes.

'Ciao, carina.' A young pretty woman was perching on Felix's abandoned cushions.

Gina peered through her sungla.s.ses. 'I'm with someone,' she said.

The woman, a girl really, with a bountiful ma.s.s of black hair, said, 'Yes, I saw him.' And it was all she needed to say, to point out that she knew perfectly well what kind of man Felix was, what kind of relationship he had with Gina.

The woman was small and evenly bronzed. She wore white sandals, four triangles of tight white bikini and white-rimmed sungla.s.ses. These, she took off. She had tigerish eyes flecked with gold, matching the bangles that clinked on her arms and the chain fastened around her ankle. 'Stefania,' she said, holding out her hand so that Gina could not ignore it.

'I'm Gina.'

'I know.'

'You do?'

'We met before, a brief introduction only. You don't remember?'

'No, I'm sorry.'

'You're a model, I think?'

Gina couldn't rid herself of the suspicion that the woman was lying, that she'd simply seen her photograph somewhere. Somehow that was more palatable than total blacked-out memory loss. 'And you?' she said politely.

'I'm a swimming instructor.' She flexed her biceps so they rippled in her upper arms. 'There are too many people in this country who can't swim. So I have plenty of work.'

'That's great, Stefania, but actually '

She interrupted. 'My friends call me Fani.'

'Really?'

The tiger eyes glinted. A pink tongue flickered across her lips. 'Really.'

Gina tried to wriggle into a better position and turned towards the sun.

'I think you will burn,' said Fani.

'Oh, I tan easily enough.' When she'd been at school in England, her cla.s.smates had envied the natural way she shaded to brown; she was never pasty. Here, though, among Romans who took the cultivation of colour so religiously, she lagged behind.

Fani picked up the bottle of suncream. 'Let me help you,' she said.

Gina didn't move. Her indigestion was getting worse, not better, and she wanted the woman to go away. She gave a sigh, which Fani misinterpreted. A stream of Ambre Solaire landed on her chest. She shot upright. 'Hey! What was that for?'

'You will burn,' Fani said again. A packet of menthol cigarettes was trapped against her hip by the cord of her bikini bottom. She offered one to Gina, who shook her head, and lit her own with the composure of someone who has no intention of moving.

'I had a late night,' said Gina. 'I was hoping to nap.'

Fani exhaled with unruffled a.s.surance. 'It's dangerous to sleep in the sun, you know.'

'Look, I don't want to seem rude, but I honestly don't remember ever having met you...' Her voice rose irritably. 'Am I not speaking your language? What part of Go Away and Leave Me Alone do you not understand?'

Crinkles of worry cl.u.s.tered on Fani's forehead. 'Are you quite well?'

Gina clutched her book, thinking what a pity it was only a paperback and how much she would like to aim it at her tormentor's head, when a fist slammed into her stomach, cutting off her breath. The book fell to the ground; her mouth opened silently. Once more the fist crashed into her gut, winding her. She stared at the other woman as if she were holding her down under water, gripping the tops of her arms and kicking her mercilessly below the waist.

Fani gouged a small hole in the sand and buried her cigarette stub. Then she laid her hand lightly on the gentle swell of Gina's abdomen and said: 'It hurts here?' And Gina finally found sufficient air to scream. A few heads turned, but not many, because half the sounds on the beach were shrieks and bellows and catcalls and the sheer expanse of air and water absorbed them.

Felix, returning unrewarded from his stroll, had not recognised Gina's cry among so many others, but as he approached their pair of hired chairs and their blue-and-white beach umbrella, he noticed something odd in the way she was sitting: no longer a languorous siren, but splayed as if she'd been dropped from a height. Bending over her was a woman with a bush of black curly hair and strong sinewy legs like a gymnast.

Felix walked awkwardly in flip-flops. He needed to protect his feet from the searing heat of the sand, but he couldn't run in them. He could only lengthen his stride and focus on his target. Although it was after two and the sun had pa.s.sed its climax, he'd been going to suggest they escaped it for lunch. A seafood risotto, a mixed salad and plenty of mineral water would be his choice; it was important not to dehydrate. He was not as fit as he should be, so when he reached the parasol he had to hold onto its pole for a few seconds to catch his breath. Then he said: 'What's going on?'

The bracelets on the woman's arms rattled, her sungla.s.ses glared at the sky. 'You are her friend, I think?'

'Yes. What happened? Gina, are you all right?'

Gina lay back, her head resting at an angle, her body damp and crumpled as a used towel. 'Tell her to p.i.s.s off,' she said in English.

'What?'

Before she could answer her limbs jackknifed again. Felix looked at the woman. 'Do we know you?'

Her manner was brusque, impatient. 'I am Stefania,' she said. 'Gina has become very ill.'

He knelt down beside her. Her face was alarmingly white, her eye sockets a dark purple. She winced when he touched her. 'I'll go to the bar and call a doctor.'

'It is Sunday,' said Stefania. 'Finding a doctor could take time.'

'Gina, do you think you could walk to the car?' He started to pick up the debris of their outing: books, magazines, fruit, bottles, towels, a large sun hat, packets of pills. He counted the empty foil cartridges. 'You always eat too late.'

'Not so,' said Stefania.

'Excuse me?'

'This cannot be indigestion, it's too severe.' Again she tried to probe and again Gina yelled. 'I think it's probably the appendix.'

Gina bit so hard on her bottom lip her teeth left their imprint.

'Are you a nurse?' Felix asked Stefania. 'Or medically qualified in any way?'

'No.' She folded her arms, pulled at her twisting curls. 'But we Italians are very experienced in mal di stomaco. Also, my cousin was sick like this, a few months ago. It was lucky he got to the clinic in time. If the appendix bursts the results are serious. You can get, what's it called, peritonitis.'

'I hate being ill,' muttered Gina.

'They gave him only a very small scar,' Fani said. 'Very discreet. He can still wear his preferred bathing suit.'