Free The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

and Penelope turned up her toes and died. Which, Olivia devoutly hoped, would not be for years.
     
    She mentally abandoned Nancy and let her mind move on to other, more attractive concerns. That clever young photographer, Lyle Medwin. Brilliant. A real find. And perceptive, too.
     
    "Ibiza," he had said, and she had, involuntarily, repeated the word, and perhaps he had caught some question in her voice or expression, for he had at once made an alternative suggestion. Ibiza. Now, she realized, squeezing her sponge so that hot water trickled like balm over her nakedness, that memories had stirred and stayed, hovering around at the back of her consciousness, ever since that small and apparently insignificant exchange.
     
    She had not thought of Ibiza for months. But, "Rural backgrounds . . ." she had suggested. "With goats and sheep and hardy peasants tilling fields." She saw the house, long and low, red-tiled, hung with bougainvillaea and trellises of vines. Heard cowbells and cocks crowing. Smelt the warm resin of pine and juniper, blown in from the sea on a warm wind. Felt again the nailing heat of the Mediterranean sun.
     

3
     
    COSMO
     
    On holiday with friends during the early summer of 1979, Olivia met Cosmo Hamilton at a party on a boat.
     
    She disliked boats. She disliked the close quarters, the claus-trophobia caused by too many people crowded into too small a space, the constant banging of shin and head on davit and boom. This particular boat was a thirty-foot cruiser, moored out in the harbour and reached by means of a power dinghy. Olivia went because the rest of her party were going, but she did so reluctantly, and it was just as bad as she had feared, with too many people, no place to sit, and everybody being dreadfully jolly and bluff, drinking Bloody Marys, and discussing with much noisy laughter the momentous party they had all been to the previous evening, and which Olivia and her friends had not.
     
    She found herself standing, hand clamped around her glass, in the cockpit of the yacht, along with about fourteen other people. It was like trying to be sociable in a very crowded lift. And another awful thing about being on a boat was that there was no way you could leave. You couldn't simply walk out of the door and into the street and find a taxi and go home. You were stuck. Jammed, moreover, face to face with a chinless man, who seemed to think that you would find it fascinating to be told that one was in the Guards, and how long it took one to drive, in one's fairly fast car, from one's place in Hampshire to Windsor.
     
    Olivia's face ached with boredom. When he turned for a moment to get his glass refilled, she instantly made her escape, stepping up out of the cockpit and making her way forward, passing en route an almost totally naked girl sunbathing on top of the cabin roof. On the foredeck, she found a corner of empty deck and there sat, her back propped against the mast. Here, the babble of voices continued to assault her ears, but at least she was alone. It was very hot. She stared despondently at the sea.
     
    A shadow fell across her legs. She looked up, fearing the Guardee from Windsor, and saw that it was the man with the beard. She had noticed him as soon as she stepped on board, but they had not spoken. His beard was grey, but his hair was thick and white, and he was very tall and spare and muscular, dressed in a white shirt and faded, salt-bleached jeans.
     
    He said, "Do you need another drink?"
     
    "I don't think so."
     
    "Do you want to be alone?"
     
    He had a charming voice. She did not think he looked the sort of man who would refer to himself as "one." She said, "Not necessarily."
     
    He squatted beside her. Their eyes came level and she saw that his were the same pale, soft blue as his jeans. His face was lined and deeply tanned, and he looked as though he might be a writer.
     
    "Can I join you then?"
     
    She hesitated, and then smiled. "Why not?"
     
    His name was Cosmo