Prologue

It was always the same. She was standing beside him, there was a warm breeze blowing, their faces were lightly tanned, and they were both smiling and looking up the street. Stretching ahead of them lay a row of classical villas, square-fronted, porticoed, palely painted. Lying ahead of the villas on the horizon she could see a sky, distanced and pale, in parts very slightly pink, and yet the light that she could see around them was definitely that of midday on a sunny morning, and they were both in shirt-sleeves. And they were very happy. Sometimes she thought that they were expecting someone, or it might be that they were merely waiting to go towards what lay so invitingly ahead, waiting to round the corner of that street which had no cars and no people, which was empty of everyone but themselves.

Because of the light breeze she could feel on her face she sensed that they must be near the sea, that if they rounded that corner ahead they might perhaps find an endless expanse of bright water, a tantalizing mixture of turquoise and azure, of cerulean and isamine blue, and yet she could not say why, because there was no smell of salt in the air and no sound of the nagging cries of seagulls, no shells adorning the stone decorations around the porticoes of those classical square-fronted houses, no trees blown into the dwarfed and cowed shapes that seaside trees so often assume. And yet she was always so sure that the sea was very near.

Just as she was sure that when they did eventually reach the corner of that street and turned to the left they would find a house facing the water, and palm trees and flowers and a green sward running down to a pebbled beach. And there would be the constant sound of gentle waves running up towards the garden, reaching out towards the grass, trying to touch its lush green edge before falling back once more with a sigh as if saying, ‘If not this time, next time I will reach you.’