In-Flight Entertainment [antikvár]

up at a Villa THEY WERE WOKEN BY THE DEEP-CHESTED BAWLING OF AN angry baby. Wrenched from wine-dark slumber, the four of them sat up, flustered, hair stuck with pine needles, gulping awake with little light breaths of concentration. They weren't supposed to be here, they remembered that. They could see the baby by the side of the pool, not twenty yards away, a furious geranium in its parasol-shaded buggy, and the large pale woman sagging above it in her bikini. Half an hour ago they had been masters of that pool, racuig topless and tipsy round its borders, lithe Nick chasing sinewy Tuia and wrestling her, an equal match, grunting, snaky, toppling, crashuig down into the turquoise depths together. Neither of them would let go underwater. They came up fighting in a chlorinated spume of diamonds. Joe, envious, had tried a timid imitation grapple, but Charlotte was having none of it. 'Get off!' she snorted, kind, mocking, and slipped neatly into the pool via a dive that barely broke the water's skin. Joe, seeing he was last as usual, gave a foolish bellow and launched his heavy self into the air, his aimless belly slapping down disastrously like an explosion. After that, the sun had dried them off in about a minute, they had devoured their picnic of pissaladiere and peaches, downed the bottles of pink wine and gone to doze in the shade behind the ornamental changing screen.