She was cutting mimosa from the garden trees when he came along the beach from the Crescent Hotel, dressed informally this time in light trousers and an open-necked shirt. It was very hot, and even the wind which blew up with unfailing regularity each afternoon at that time of year had failed to disturb the silvery eucalyptus leaves above her head. ‘I’ve given you time to be less busy,’ he pointed out. ‘I want to talk to you.’ ‘I can’t think what we have to discuss.’ A spray of the mimosa she had gathered fell at his feet and he picked it up before he answered her. ‘Several things,’ he said. ‘If it’s tennis ’ ‘No, it isn’t tennis.’ He fell into step beside her as she turned back towards the villa. ‘I’d like you to come to Paphos with me to look at a flat.’ ‘Why me?’ She could hardly believe that he had made such a personal request. ‘Surely you are able to make that sort of decision for yourself.’ ‘I need a second opinion—a woman’s opinion, if you like—and you know Paphos very well.’ Her mind flew back to the times they had spent there as children and, later, when they were growing up, to the memory of a dawning awareness that they were, after all, not brother and sister but two impressionable adolescents responding unconsciously to their romantic surroundings on this magic island where legendary Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, had come up from the sea.
