“It’s Adam. We only dated for a couple of months and it wasn’t a major love affair or anything.” She shook her head, trying to convince herself, too.

“Good, or else I might feel jealous.”

A question itched on Carla’s tongue and she decided to let it out. “Did you ever date Sara?”

“Ah...” Tom started, followed by a short cough. “Only for a year or so and nothing came of it. We were both too dedicated to our work.”

Carla had expected him to say no. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, darkening the sky, and she took off her sunglasses. One whole year? She’d thought her fiancé was in Denver with a lot of games fanatics, not an ex-girlfriend. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned her before,” she said, forcing a smile when the waiter brought her omelet.

“I didn’t think it mattered. Do you really want to know about my exes? I’ve never asked about yours.” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “There’s nothing to worry about. Sara and I are just good friends.”

As Carla assembled her thoughts, readying herself to tell Tom more about Myrtle’s prediction and the tarot cards, a woman’s muffled voice appeared on the other end of the line.

“Tom, Tom. You’ve got to come and see this... Oh, whoops, sorry, didn’t see you on the phone.” Giggling followed.

“Five minutes...” Tom whispered to this other person.

Carla bit the end of her straw, chomping it flat. “Is that Sara? I thought you were waiting for eggs and bacon...”

“I’ve ordered room service,” Tom said. “Sara’s shower isn’t working properly and I said she could use mine. We’re grabbing a quick bite to eat before a meeting this morning. It’s an important one for both of us.”

Carla’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t she call the hotel maintenance people?”

“She did, last night, and they’re fixing the problem this morning. It made sense for her to use my bathroom and order brunch and, oh...” Tom trailed off, as if only just realizing how things might appear. “You don’t think that...? Honestly, Sara’s only been here for ten minutes. I’ve been looking out my window, talking to you.”

Carla cut a piece of omelet with her fork and pushed it around her plate.

“You can trust me, one hundred percent,” Tom said. “Just like I trust you.”

“I know that, but—” Carla’s words were interrupted by a knocking noise sounding on the line and Sara’s voice again.

“Tom, hun, our food has arrived.”

“Sorry, I’ve got to dash,” he told Carla. “Wish me good luck for this morning. Love you.”

“Love you, too. I need to tell—”

The phone clicked before she could finish her sentence.

Carla ground her teeth and glared at her phone screen. She quickly checked out Tom’s social media again and saw he’d added several photos of him in a bar with colleagues. In a couple of them he stood next to the pretty blonde woman again and had tagged her as Sara Jenkins. The photographer had caught them midconversation, gazing at each other and laughing.

Carla shoveled a piece of omelet into her mouth, hardly bothering to chew it before swallowing.

She should be pleased Tom was doing well in the States, but all she could picture in her mind was Sara in the shower, crooking her finger and asking Tom to pass her the soap. She tried to drink through her flattened straw and made a slurping noise so loud a woman at the adjacent table threw her a stare.

Carla returned it and felt even more lost and confused, as if her parachute had failed and she’d dropped onto a desert island with no sign of habitation.

More people gathered at the tables around her, ordering cocktails, laughing together and talking until the noise seemed to crescendo around her. She stood up and threw too much money on the table to cover her bill.

Leaving her food and drink half-finished, Carla set off back walking to her hotel, feeling very much alone.

Thirteen

Roses

Carla spent the next morning traipsing around Carvoeiro town, dropping into boutiques to browse gemstone rings and white linen dresses edged with broderie anglaise, with no intention of buying anything. Her conversation with Tom had taken the veneer off her holiday and she ate an ice cream with two chocolate flakes stuck in it without really tasting it or thinking about the fit of her wedding dress. Fortunately, Babs’s leopard-skin-print dress she was wearing was comfortably spacious.

In the afternoon, Carla lay around her hotel pool, trying to read a romance novel she’d picked up from the hotel library. Her thoughts were still with Tom rather than the lovelorn couple in the book and she had to keep rereading the pages.

As her day progressed, her worry about her circumstances gave way to irritation. If her fiancé was hanging out in his hotel room with an ex, why should she feel guilty about going to see Adam perform? She hadn’t been to a gig in ages and she decided to throw herself into the opportunity.

After quickly eating a pizza around the hotel pool, Carla retreated to her room, where she applied smoky eye makeup and coral lipstick. She wore her hair long and curly and put on one of Babs’s flouncy black lace dresses and matching flat pumps, a look Carla might have sported back in her early twenties. She made sure she took her list of Logical Love questions along with her.

Adam was performing at the Conquistador hotel, farther inland. It was a seventies concrete cube of a building, the kind of place that served fries with every meal, including breakfast. A big poster in the lobby featured Adam with a purple-and-green aura, as if he’d been snapped in front of the Northern Lights. He pointed a finger, and his eyes followed Carla around the lobby like the gaze of the Mona Lisa. His majestic hair looked exactly the same as it had twenty-one years ago and Carla nervously ran a hand over her own.

There was a hum of excitement as other tourists waited to be admitted to the entertainment lounge. Sundresses showed off peeling pink shoulders and rose tattoos, and when the doors opened, there was a rush for the bar and the best seats. The stage at the far end of the room was already set up for Adam’s act, with a microphone and a piano strewn with red silk roses on top of it. Carla’s heart thrummed at the thought of seeing her ex again and she bought a glass of sangria packed with ice and pressed it against her hot cheeks.

She took a seat at a round table on her own, but was joined instantly by a group of women on a bachelorette party. The bride-to-be wore a white veil, a very short wedding dress and a plastic ball and chain around her ankle. “Adam, Adam,” the group chanted.

When the lights dimmed, whistles rang out and Carla sat bolt upright. Music struck up and then, there he was, holding both arms in the air, the coolest man she’d ever met in her life, Adam Angelino.

A delicious flush enveloped her body and Carla couldn’t help smiling to herself, knowing he was going to be meeting her afterward.

A couple of hundred women in the audience cheered and sang along as Adam belted out hits by Coldplay, Bruno Mars and Robbie Williams, without delivering any of his own tracks. He still had the same commanding stage presence and rich baritone voice that she remembered. Nothing much else had changed except he was a little thicker around the waist. In fact, Carla thought, his moves, patter and good looks appeared frozen in time.

Adam performed a series of big rock numbers until the lights dimmed and he sashayed to the front of the stage. “Obrigado. Thank you, my friends, you’re very kind.” He wiped his brow with a red satin handkerchief. “This next song is for a long-lost friend of mine, who’s joined us this evening. We once shared some very special moments together.”

It slowly dawned on Carla that he was talking about her, and a smile stiffened on her lips. Was he really calling her out in public? Her body became so rigid she could only move her eyes.

The first bars of “Purple Rain” rang out, and dry ice billowed onto the stage, instantly transporting Carla back to the first time she’d met the singer.

A few fellow travelers had invited her along to a local music festival where Adam had been performing. He’d asked for an audience member to join him onstage, and Carla and her friends had jumped up and down on the spot with their hands raised. Adam had pointed to Carla and held out his hand, helping to pull her through the crowd and up onstage beside him. Her friends had whistled and catcalled her.

Dry ice had puffed all around them, stinging Carla’s eyes and catching in her throat. She’d coughed until tears streamed down her face. Adam had knelt down to serenade her, and all she could do was stuff a fist to her mouth. She’d wished a trapdoor would appear so she could drop down into it and disappear.

He’d stopped his performance midballad and mouthed to her Are you okay?

Carla had shaken her head, and when Adam escorted her offstage, his band had played on. She’d felt stares of pity and disgust from the audience piercing into her, and now Carla wanted to flee the room all over again.

When Adam finished singing “Purple Rain,” he plucked a handful of roses from the top of the piano and stepped down off the stage. Women waved at him frantically. “Me, choose me,” they hollered.

He handed out the flowers, fixing his eyes on various audience members, until he stood in front of her holding out a rose. “Hey, Carla,” he said with a warm grin. “Meet you outside at ten thirty.”

“See you later,” she managed to croak, astonished he’d recognized her after all these years—and underneath so much makeup.

Adam was deluged by a rush for selfies after his show. One woman begged him to autograph her thigh. “I’m going to get his signature tattooed on,” she cried out.

Carla kept an eye on her watch, her nerves cantering as their rendezvous time grew closer. She stepped out of the room, sped through the lobby, and paced up and down in front of the hotel. The warm evening, the sangria and the rose made this feel more like a date, something that left her throat feeling tight. This is a fact-finding mission only, she reminded herself.