Page 152 of Where Do We Go From Here?
‘Yes!’ Wendy says. ‘That island we were on with the mini mountain in the middle?’
‘Exactly,’ Harry says.
‘You don’t remember the name, either, then? That makes me feel a bit better about my failing memory.’
‘I know it ended in “os”,’ Harry says. ‘Paros or Kos or Ios or something.’
‘That’s the airport, over there,’ Wendy says, leaning her head against Harry’s shoulder and pointing to the runway where it juts out into the sea.
‘And there?’
‘That’s Antibes.’
‘Where you went walking with Fiona? She said it was amazing.’
‘Yes. It’s really nice.’
‘If I’m good will you take me there, too?’
‘Yes, if you’re good, I might,’ Wendy says. Then, ‘This, over here, is my rock.’ She moves, almost skips in fact, to ‘her’ rock, and then stands on top of it to take the panoramic photo. ‘I took a photo of this view every time I came up here. I thought it would look cool if I got them all printed up on a single poster, but I never got around to it. Let me take one with you in it.’
‘And then I’ll take one with you,’ Harry says. ‘It’s a shame there’s nowhere to lean the camera. We could have—’ He’s interrupted by the arrival of other hikers.
So Harry asks the couple, in surprisingly passable French, if they mind taking the photo, and once that’s done – once the image of Wendy and her husband side by side with the magnificent backdrop of blue sky and sea has been recorded to Wendy’s specifications – the newcomers smile and wave and start to head back down.
Wendy leads Harry a little further up the ridge where they sit in a hollow to eat their sandwiches.
‘… very low-maintenance Christmas dinner,’ Harry says, speaking through crumbs. ‘You’re slipping.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Wendy says. ‘I’ve a surprise in store for tonight.’
‘You have?’ Harry asks.
‘Uh-huh,’ Wendy says mysteriously.
‘Only, we did the shopping together,’ Harry says. ‘So maybe not so surprising. Unless you ordered pizzas?’
Wendy laughs at this. ‘Almost,’ she says.
‘You booked a restaurant?’
‘Nope,’ Wendy says. ‘Now stop before you spoil the surprise.’
The girls arrive at 7 p.m., and Harry is so surprised when Manon raps on the window that he jumps and spills his drink.
‘Jaysus!’ he says, as Wendy crosses to open the door. ‘Now I get why you kept putting off the cooking!’
Manon is the first to step into the cabin, her arms laden with foil-covered trays, closely followed by Celine with a bottle of Champomy and a ribboned box from the bakery.
Once introductions have been made and the table set, once the pre-roasted veggies have been heated up and the salmon roulé sliced, they sit down to eat.
‘So how is lovely Mittens?’ Wendy asks. To Harry she says, ‘He’s?—’
‘… the cat you adopted, I know.’ To the girls, he adds with a wink, ‘She thinks I don’t listen, but I do.’
‘Mittens is fine,’ Manon says. ‘But now we call him Pattex. It’s more French. It’s because he is very… erh… sticky?’
‘Sticky?’ Wendy says. ‘Oh, you mean, clingy?’
