Finally, Romilly has stopped arguing and accepted what I am saying.
I can see it in her body language; as she sits on the rock, almost coiled in the foetal position.
Cowed.
She has stopped battling it.
And that is the crucial step.
Now, we can go home. Move on with our lives. Get out of this limbo.
I stand up.
‘It’s getting late,’ I tell Romilly. More than anything, I could do with a beer. ‘We should head back. Have some sleep and tell Loll and everyone it’s all okay and get Fleur back into her cot.
‘Then we can sit up and have a look at what flights we can get home in the morning. Get back to normal.’
She nods her head but when she looks up, she appears beaten.
‘Can you give me a hand?’ she says. She gives me the hint of a smile, pliant.
I walk over and slip Romilly’s tiny hand into my own, twice the size. I can feel a roughness; her skin parched. God, Romilly. Another woman, so sexy, so recently and now exposed for the mess she is.
‘Thank you,’ she says, weakened, quiet.
I help my wife up, then turn to begin the walk back to the house.
‘God, that view.’ I stop and stare out at it.
Take a tentative step closer.
But something odd happens, and suddenly the move I am making is different.
Not a tentative step.
More a stumble.
A flailing.
And then I am no longer looking at the view and the lights but I am falling, falling from that beautiful viewpoint; the one people drive all the way up to, the one people like to enjoy their picnic at, the perfect spot, with their garlicky olives and their local cheeses and their cured fucking meat, and I am going down, down, down, nothing but air, then, until the violent rocks below.
The last thing I felt can’t really have been the two small hands of my broken, weakened wife, can it? Pushing, decisive, no warning.
Stronger than you would think.
The last thing I heard can’t really have been a voice, can it, shouting one word: YES?