The Holiday by Erica James

and confused anger, as yours is. Mine comes from confidence.’
    Now Theo poured himself some more orange juice from the iced jug on the table and stared at the lovely view. Just as yesterday, the sea was as smooth as glass and a hazy early-morning mist hung languidly over the horizon. It was unusually calm, this narrow strait of water between Corfu and Albania. Normally it was a wind-surfer’s paradise, especially in the afternoon when the breeze really whipped up. Sometimes the water became dangerously rough and the tourists who innocently hired boats in the morning, expecting a pleasant day of cove-hopping, got rather more than they had bargained for. One saw them all the time, low-powered motor boats struggling against strong waves, the men pretending they had it all under control, and the women slipping on their life-jackets and worrying whether they would see home again.
    He shifted his gaze to look along the hillside towards Villa Petros. There was no sign of movement on the terrace or the veranda, and he guessed that its occupants were still asleep. He pictured Max and Laura lying together, Max with one arm placed protectively around his wife’s pale, freckled shoulders, and Laura, her auburn hair fanned slightly across the pillow. They were a couple made for each other, perfectly in tune with the other’s needs, and still perfectly in love after so many years.
    A twinge of envy crept up on him. Not ugly, covetous envy for another man’s wife, but a gentle twisting yearning that one day somebody would love him with the constancy with which Laura must always have loved Max.
    He pushed the thought away.
    It was futile to think along those lines. He could never expect somebody to love him with the intensity he craved, not when it seemed unlikely that he would be capable of offering the same in return. His track record, of which Mark had once been envious, proved that he simply wasn’t cut out for long-term monogamous commitment. And almost certainly it was too late for him to change the habit of a lifetime.
    His thoughts turned to Izzy. It had been pure idle amusement on his part to tease Laura that he could help her friend to enjoy her holiday, and it had touched him to see her concern. He would never do anything to upset or annoy Laura. Though that first glimpse of Izzy last night had made him wonder: there was no denying that he had felt the irresistible pull an attractive woman always exerted on him. It was the freshness of her face that had appealed. There was no artifice to her. No elaborate hairstyle. No ostentatious jewellery. No makeup. He couldn’t even recall if she was wearing any perfume. But she had moved with a beguiling grace that made her unconsciously lovely. She was without pretension, and from her sombre grey eyes, which were both gentle and enquiring, he had guessed that a lot was going on inside her head, and not all of it happy.
    She was very different from the women he usually felt attracted to. In fact, she was the complete opposite.
    Just as he and Mark had once been. And still were, in many respects: resisting polarities, but with a very real synergy between them, was what Mark said of them.
    He leaned back in his seat, stretched his arms over his head, and smiled at the coincidence. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said aloud. ‘We shall just have to wait and see what the Fates have in store for us.’
     
    Mark didn’t like coincidences. As far as he was concerned he had experienced too many of them just recently, and none had been good.
    But the woman in the seat beside him was not of the same opinion. She was rather drunk and seemed to think that because he was bound for the same holiday destination as she and her husband, some high priestess of fate was at work.
    He put her at somewhere in her mid-fifties, and decided she was undergoing a serious identity crisis, kidding herself that she was still in her twenties. She was wearing a pair of Christian Dior sunglasses, a tight cream lace