AT around ten o’clock, breakfast finished, the house tidy and the garden plants watered, Ana walked up to the covered market in the old town to buy food for the beach party and for all of the holiday period. During Fiesta week the shops only opened for a brief time each morning, and most would be shut all the next day, when her parents were coming for lunch. The sun was strong and the heat struck her as she walked out of their drive, so she crossed to the shady side of the road, a wide brimmed hat covering her head. Their house, although rural in its lush greenness and absence of urban noise, was only a seven minute walk from the centre of the old town. She thought they had been lucky that Lynette had found them such a perfect place. 

As soon as she entered the market, the wave of sound hit her, as neighbours exchanged daily gossip in loud voices, their words echoing back from the iron beams high in the roof above. The clink of the cups and plates at the coffee stall, the shouts of the stall-holders to each other across the aisles, the cries of the children playing in the central space, and the sharp admonitions of their mothers when they strayed too near the steps beyond the open door; all of these sounds meant home to her. The singing grocer gave her a special song as she stopped at his stall to buy cheese and ham for the picnic, the song and the smile advertising how beautiful he thought her.  On her first shopping trip after her return he had told her how well he remembered her as a child, “una guapissima niña, Ana, always the most beautiful in your Quinta, your year in school”. She had blushed at the compliment, pleased he remembered her.

Ana almost collided with Jonathan Locke as she came out of the bread shop on the corner opposite the market. They were always delighted to meet each other, and he quickly proposed a coffee. One of Daniel’s oldest friends, they had first met in Brussels, where he had stayed overnight with them several times, after meetings in the European Commission. Ana now saw Jonathan as a kindred spirit, someone with whom she could share ideas and someone who, she thought, also felt himself an outsider. He was, he had told her, increasingly feeling that a Costa Blanca expatriate community was perhaps not the ideal spot for a left-of-centre intellectual homosexual and, single once again, was beginning to think longingly of cosmopolitan cities like Barcelona or Bilbao. In the rather claustrophobic expatriate society, relationships were complicated. Couples breaking up and new partnerships forming could have repercussions for everyone.  

 “Are you coming to the beach tonight?” Jonathan asked as their coffees arrived. 

Ana looked around at the shops and cafés, busy with the townsfolk that holiday morning. Mi pueblo, my town, she thought, with an affection that caught her by surprise. “You guessed I was a little doubtful? I must admit I did find it difficult to decide because I really did want to jump the fires in the town tonight, and if I am honest I do find the idea of the beach party a bit daunting. But Daniel won’t go if I don’t, and you will be there, and so the beach won”.

“I wondered how you would cope with your return,” he reached over and touched her hand, “it can’t be easy for you Ana, or for Lynette either, for that matter.  I imagine everything is different for you now, so many changes here, so many more foreigners, especially the English ones.  I should say British but I see mostly English, I must say.”
Ana laughed. “You know Jonathan, some of my favourite people in the whole world are English, apart from Daniel, and anyway he always says he is half Welsh!”

Her memories of encounters with her first expatriates were sweet: George and Juana Rutherford, the old couple she called ‘tio’ and ‘tia’, uncle and aunt, were almost ninety years old now and she had known and loved them since she was a small child. The Rutherfords had arrived in the town in the early 1960s, and her aunt Filo, her mother’s oldest sister, had gone to work as a housekeeper and cleaner at their ‘casa del ingles’.  In those days foreigners were still quite rare and rather exotic, but even then this couple had stood out. 

“When I was old enough, I used to go to the house with tia Filo. And tia Juana, well, she taught me English and she used to read The Wind in the Willows to me. That’s how I came to love all her favourite children’s books, to love books in English in fact, and although I know it is completely unfair, I just can’t help comparing some of the people I meet now to George and Juana.”

“I’m rather fond of them myself,” Jonathan said, “so I do know exactly what you mean. Though I suspect they are so special that they were a bit of a rarity, even in those days.” 

“Do you know, Jonathan, just thinking of that time reminds me of when I was young and I can’t even remember what it felt like to be eighteen, it could be a hundred years ago.”

 “My dearest Ana, it’s even longer for me. I turned fifty this year, although on a good day I don’t feel a day over sixty.”
Ana smiled at his open face, the blue eyes which were so often wrinkled by a smile, and the slightly too long, soft fair hair which fell over his forehead.

“Tell me more about the crowd who will be there tonight, and what the form is”.

Jonathan proceeded to give a brief and affectionate description of each of the three couples who, together with Lynette, would form the rest of the party. When she had met them previously, Ana had found it quite difficult to distinguish between the men, to know who they were and who went with which partner; Jonathan laughed at her confusion.
“Well, I think Jeff and Holly Guy are the least complicated, to describe anyway. Physically, they are very similar, tall, slim and fair, although Holly’s amazing hair is redder, and sometimes they wear similar clothes, although I am sure it’s accidental. I am not so sure they think alike now though.”

“Yes, I remember them now, well her anyway, more than him.” Ana remembered thinking how much energy crackled from this woman with light auburn strong hair, whose name she had forgotten.  “I had the feeling she might have been a teacher, she had a presence that you listen to.”

Jonathan told her that she was spot on, that Holly had been a teacher and that he rather thought she missed it, that she didn’t find creating their perfect garden quite enough to occupy her. Jeff, he told her, was a scientist who had taken early retirement and then worked as area manager for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau before they moved to Spain. 
“I suppose they are old lefties really, a bit like me.” He smiled, “if you know what I mean.” Ana didn’t. She found British politics complicated and she and Daniel had rarely discussed politics in Brussels as they were living in a country to which neither of them had any real links. Now of course she was home and perhaps Spanish politics might concern her. She rather hoped not. She wondered whether Daniel would get involved in discussions with these friends about what was happening in Britain. She realised she had no real idea which, if any, political party he had supported. Time will tell, she thought.

“Then comes Carole and Ivan Hepworth, who couldn’t look less like each other if they tried – Ivan so tall and thin and Carole so small and, well, plump, I suppose. A bit like “Little and Large”. It was a comedy show a long time ago, on British TV” he said, seeing the puzzled look on her face.

“I do remember Ivan – well, yes, most women would” Jonathan had raised an eyebrow “ and although I can see he is attractive in an upper-class English kind of way, I thought he was a little arrogant.” Ana had been annoyed at the way Ivan had spoken to her briefly in fluent and colloquial Spanish, just to show he could, before switching back to English before she could reply.

“Ivan can do an upper-class twit act when he wants to but don’t be fooled for a minute. He is half Russian, on his mother’s side, and has a double first from Cambridge. Financially he is as sharp as a tack, and makes lots of money advising former Soviet governments about the ways of capitalism.”

Ana wished Daniel had told her some of this before she had met his friends for the first time but she accepted that, unlike Jonathan who loved talking about everything and everyone,  Daniel  kept much of himself private; but perhaps that was part of the reason she loved him, there was a still mystery there, for her to uncover.
“Carole is the warmest, friendliest person you could imagine. She has had her share of bad luck, her first husband Tom left her and that pretty much devastated her, but then she met Ivan and she just adores him. She told me the other day that she couldn’t believe he had chosen her and she simply couldn’t stop touching wood.

And then we come to Sarah and Mark Harris. More complicated still. She is blond and beautiful and sometimes I think she is being played by Kate Winslet. Mark is dark and serious and looks every inch the civil servant he was, who would never, ever do anything improper. But you can’t always judge a book by its cover, as they say.”

Ana waited to see if he would say more but he didn’t so she said
“I think the person who really interested me at the party the other week was Sarah, she is the woman you are talking about, the beautiful blond woman? But I never really found the opportunity to talk to her, I was staying so close to you, for safety!"

“Sarah certainly is stunning, isn’t she, if you go for the ice maiden type?  She has been a bit off form lately, so I hope she’s in a good mood tonight. Actually, she told me how much she liked you too, after the party. Said she thought Daniel was very lucky to have found you.  So perhaps you’ll have time to get to know each other on the beach. She is a first-class swimmer, so I expect she will go for a swim before the meal. I know I will. Why don’t you swim with us?”

A few minutes later he kissed her goodbye and she watched with affection as he walked off towards the church square. To the bodega, he’d said, to practise his Spanish and buy a couple of bottles of decent wine for the party that evening.

Returning home, she opened the door of their kitchen to see that Daniel was putting the telephone back on its stand on the wall. When he saw her beamed. 

“What a lovely smile, cariño, what nice thing has happened to light up your face?”

He took the shopping bags from her and they put the chicken, ham, cheese and eggs away in the fridge. “Two things,” he said, as he deposited the fruit and vegetables in the pantry. “Your return was the second. The first was Tony; I have just been talking to him. He and Dominic want to come and stay with us next month.”

“I’m so pleased.” She was aware how much Daniel worried that his relationship with his sons had been harmed when they married, and was relieved that, as far as she could tell, things were going well. “Guess who I just had coffee with?”

 She told how she’d bumped into Jonathan and how much she enjoyed his conversation and his sense of humour. It was, she said, so British and so different from the Spanish way. “He is definitely the person from your crowd that I like the most, I am so glad he will there tonight.”
 She described how Jonathan had given her the lowdown on all Daniel’s friends. “To be honest,” she said, “he confirmed what I felt about Ivan. From what I’ve seen of him I didn’t like him much. I certainly wouldn’t trust him. He speaks pretty near-perfect Spanish, and yet I don’t feel the kind warmth from him that I do from Jonathan.”

She went through the list, telling him what Jonathan had said about his friends; Daniel smiled but remained silent.  She told him how she had felt most drawn towards Sarah. “Now she’s someone I have a sense I could be friends with. But you know, cariño, I feel she has such a mark of sadness on her.”

Daniel’s silence served to emphasise the history each of them carried, and she realised how Daniel’s break up from Lynette affected the way she saw them and the way they all thought about her “Daniel’s new Spanish wife”.

“But not Jonathan, though; he is such an innocent, almost like a schoolboy still. I love the way his hair falls over his forehead when he gets passionate about something.”

He said nothing about Jonathan either and she was sure that he decided to leave much unsaid. Instead he told her to stop worrying about the evening ahead. “We’ve made our decision to go, so go we will. I’m sure you’ll find them a good crowd, once you get to know them and get over your embarrassment at being my new wife. An evening on the beach with good food and wine and even better company. What could possibly go wrong?”

What indeed, she thought.