Pablo stared at me for a few seconds, before looking into the main body of the hotel, then turned back to me.

“You cannot do this”

“I can, and I have already paid the man at the desk, and it was less than I would have paid your friend with the taxi. The car taxi, not the twat with the horse”

“Twat?”

He was clearly puzzled, and I found my cheeks burning.

“A rude word in English”

“What does it mean?”

“Oh, um…a lady’s, um. Her private parts. Not the rudest word for them, but not polite”

He barked out a laugh, shaking his head.

“What time? We cannot be out late in the night, as Rita has school”

“Er… half past six? Six thirty? In the bar here, this one by reception?”

“Six thirty, then. You do not need to do this”

“It is done. If you can’t make it, I have other friends, so I won’t be alone”

That brought a sharp memory of Laurent’s confusion over the English word, and with a wave, Pablo was off on his scooter, and I was left wondering exactly how stupid I was being. It was a done deal, though, unless he didn’t turn up. Sod it: I had time enough for a quick swim in the pool near my block, and then a shower. I found myself walking straight past both, though, as I walked across the mown grass to where a sudden downslope gave me a view of the lagoon, as a green woodpecker worked up a tree to my right. My newly educated birder’s eye picked out two sorts of kingbirds, some mockingbirds, grassquits and no fewer than six emerald hummingbirds moving from flower to flower, as if each fresh blossom held something the previous one had lacked.

No. Away with the maudlin. I quickly ticked off four sorts of herons, two types of cormorant and the anhinga I had seen from the beach, and then forced myself to turn on my heel and take the lift to my room. Into the swimming cossie, and splash into the pool, even though it would have been polite to have showered the grime off first. I slumped in the water for half an hour, making some desultory gestures towards ‘swimming lengths’, but I couldn’t keep enough focus on things. Out of the pool, padding barefoot along the concrete path, and back up to my room to lose the smell of chlorine. I only had forty-five minutes of privacy remaining.

I was at the little bar early, just as Nicole and her children passed me on their way to the dining room.

“Caroline! You dine with us? Laurent is late, as he was asleep, and the children, they would eat soon”

Salvation, in a sense.

“I would love to eat with you again, but I will have guests”

She stopped dead in her tracks.

“Guests? You have met other English people here?”

Oh yes, but no way would I ever wish to dine with them.

“No. He is a local man”

Yves was grinning happily just then.

“Maman, ask Caroline if he may be called perhaps Pablo?”

Once again, I felt my cheeks burning as I nodded.

“And his daughter. We had a small problem during the day, so I thought, well… Nicole, I remembered what you and Laurent said about how many jobs they each do, so it is a thank-you for a very good day. That is all”

She sent the two children on, with some words in French that I assume meant ‘Find a table for seven’, and stepped over to me, her voice much softer.

“And now you wear the skirt, and those shoes? Be careful, my little friend. Perhaps not drinking too many mojitos?”

I tried to make a joke of it, mentioning her bottomless wine glass, and she gave me the full eyebrows and shrug French experience.

“Wine is food, not drink! We eat soon”

I watched her walk off to catch up with her children, knowing that my fate had been sealed as soon as I had invited him, for there was no way I could have avoided being seen with him in the open spaces of the dining room. Laurent hurried past a couple of minutes later, with a little wave for me as I simply pointed to the tables, and then Pablo was coughing for attention, a skinny semi-teenager with an explosion of curly black hair standing just behind him, her eyes wide as she tried to take in every detail of the building. I rose carefully to my feet, far too conscious of the different stance the heels lent me, and made myself smile as warmly as I could for the girl’s benefit.

“You must be Rita. Welcome. Are you hungry?”

Her father whispered something, and she grinned, teeth startlingly white against the milky coffee of her skin, and nodded, asking something in Spanish. Pablo squeezed her shoulder, and she tried a few words on English.

“Yes, hungry! There is the music here?”

I had been so wound up I had missed the arrival of the band and dancers, but I just nodded and smiled again, before addressing Pablo once more.

“I have friends here to eat with. Will that be okay for you?”

His smile was a little abashed, but at least it was there.

“You are still sure about this?”

“Told you: I’ve already paid, so too late for that. Drinks?”

I was surprised when he ordered a Cuba libre for himself and a Coke for Rita.

“You aren’t riding the scooter?”

He grinned, a little more at ease.

“My friend with the taxi owes me the favour”

“What, the one whose car broke down?”

“No. A man with a horse, that received an explanation of the facts from me. I was quite persuasive, and so was your hotel manager. He has a Hyundai car as well as the carriage with the horse. As long as we are not here too late, we have the ride home”

“Fine! Um, yes---food?”

I walked in front of them towards the sizeable table that I assumed Yves had selected, spotting a knowing look between the adults as Laurent took in my choice of shoes. Introductions all round, along with the usual handshakes, and this time a kiss-kiss-kiss to my cheeks from the Canadians, all of them in turn. I took my seat, Yves to one side and Rita to the other, and did my best to explain. Yves was as forward as ever.

“This is the bird man with the motorbike, then?”

He turned to Pablo.

“Caroline can walk, then, as well as spend all day lying on her front in the water?”

Laurent almost lost it then, a mouthful of wine only just retained without being sprayed all over the table, and Pablo turned to smile at me.

“Did you not suggest these people were your friends, Caroline? Perhaps you might rethink that”

I shrugged.

“Perhaps, if we fill his face with food, then I won’t need to. Rita? Food?”

A happy smile, and in pairs and threes we started the process of inflicting serious harm on the buffet. I settled down with a mixed salad to open proceedings, and Pablo indicated his daughter attacking a similar selection.

“I had to explain that she doesn’t have to have everything at once, that she can go back as many times as she likes. It is very strange for her. She also wants to know about the music”

Yves surprised me then, leaning past me to speak to Rita in what was clearly broken Spanish, and once again I caught his word ‘animation’, that time twisted a little, and Rita was tugging at her father’s arm, rattling off much faster words.

“Caroline, what is the dancing?”

I swallowed a mouthful of mixed salad.

“I have no idea. I am not a dancer. Nicole? You do that stuff, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Yes. My man and I, we like to dance. It is mostly the salsa, sometimes a rumba, but occasionally, we get our favourite”

Yves snorted.

“That is when my sister and myself, we leave with the red faces. My parents, they like the tango. I am grateful it is not from Cuba, so we don’t have to watch them look silly”

Nicole fixed him with a stern look, but there was still amusement behind it.

“One day, young man, you will gain the understanding of why we dance the tango. Or perhaps you already understand, but find embarrassment at the thoughts of your own parents----ah! I have it right, then. Who is it that you have danced with? Could it be---”

“Maman!”

He rushed off for more food, towing a giggling Amelie, and Pablo sent Rita along with them, sighing as he took a sip of his posh rum and coke.

“Thank you all. We do not have many chances for an evening like this, Rita and myself. It is a pleasure to meet people who can still smile with sincerity. May I propose we salute that?”

He lifted his glass.

“To real smiles and open hearts”

I could drink to that, and as I did, I was counting back through my own glasses. Three mojitos and a beer—slow down, Nelson. We paced ourselves through the various tasty items on offer, and my drinks changed to straight coke rather than minty sandbags; I realised with real surprise that I wasn’t missing the extra servings of alcohol. All three of the children seemed to be getting on extremely well without more than the hint of a common language, as Rita was only slowly starting to discover the physical limitations of her stomach. As for the notional adults, I had slipped all three of my cameras into my bag, and I was talking the others through my pictures. Pablo only knew some of the fish by their English names, but he wrote down the Spanish ones as we flicked through, while Laurent did the same in French. The children were back in time for my bird pictures, and there was a rapid-fire exchange of names in three languages, especially when we arrived at my shots of the pygmy owl.

I hadn’t realised, in my monolingual ignorance, that the French word that best translated as ‘sweet!’ or ‘cool!’ also literally meant ‘owl’. The picture that brought the biggest reaction, however, was very different. Pablo had led the way across a clearing in the trees, on a search for what he called ‘nighthawks’ and I thought of as ‘nightjars’, and when one had erupted from where it had lain almost perfectly camouflaged, I had started snapping away, and one moment of wonderful luck had caught Pablo from behind, standing with his legs apart as another Antillean nighthawk took flight, and it looked as if his head had sprouted two long, pointed and white-flashed wings, almost like some mythical Viking helmet. Rita, in particular, was ecstatic, gabbling away in Spanish, and Yves nudged me.

“She wants a copy, Caroline”

I shrugged.

“I can’t e-mail it, though, can I? I don’t have access here”

Pablo looked slightly embarrassed .

“If you let me take the little card, I can put the photo onto my own computer, but you must tell me there are no personal pictures”

“They are all personal pictures—oh! I see! Not to worry; they are all pictures from Cuba. It’s a new card”

“Then I must also ask if you will let me use the photograph. I have a page… No. I have a friend in Germany, he has a page for me on the internet, so that tourists can find me. Would you be happy for that? I can ask him to put your name to it. It is a very good picture”

I started to laugh at that compliment.

“Do you know what technique I used for that picture, Pablo?”

“No. I am not a good photographer”

“Neither am I! I just set the camera to take multiple shots, press the button, tack-tack-tack, and hope. Then I delete all the rally bad ones”

He laughed again, and his face crinkled into true delight.

“It is not just me that can’t, then. Can I make an offer in return?”

“Go ahead”

“I have another friend, he is a marine biologist. If you let me also take the underwater card, he can identify the fish for you”

“Ooh, yes please! I know sod-all about them”

“We have an arrangement, then. Now, Nicole? You are… ah!”

She had been fumbling in her bag once more, as the band started to tune up, and once more it was into her heels and ready for the dance. Rita was chattering away once more, and Pablo turned to the rest of us.

“My daughter loves to dance. Will you forgive me if I stay past the meal, so she can have some fun?”

Amelie prodded her brother.

“He thinks he can dance, but it is always with me. Yves…”

Rapid French from her, and in reply he gave what was clearly intended to be a brotherly put-down, but the only reaction from his sister was a shrug of pure Gallic eloquence, and the comment, “There is chocolate cake, and I wish to eat some. Dance with Rita”

He looked a little awkward, and then in a rush, I understood what was going on in his head. A teenage boy, brash and cocky to everyone around him, except with any young girl that wasn’t actually his sister. The band was playing by then, and Amelie gave her brother another nudge; a sigh, a nod to Rita, and an unspoken but obvious invitation followed from the boy. The girl’s grin was so wide that I half-expected the top of her head to fall off, and the two were off to the terrace outside and almost straight into a passable effort at the dance his parents made look so easy and elegant.

The three of us were left sitting at the table, Amelie grinning away as she settled into an enthusiastic attack on two slices of the chocolate tart she had spotted, and waving at the two of us still sitting by her.

“Go! Dansez! Do not laugh at my brother, though; he is very reticent with girls”

I shook my head.

“I can’t dance, love”

“Then you must learn. If this man cannot teach you, ask Papa. And I can see your shoes, like Maman’s. Go!”

Pablo was laughing yet again, and as he rose to his feet, he drew me to my own.

“Her brother may be shy, but this one, eh?”

He muttered some quick Spanish, and then led me, trembling, to join the others. Taking me in a sort of ballroom hold, he murmured, “The thing is in the sway. You step, and the feet stay, but the knee, it rocks back, and…”

Somehow, I managed to make it through a dance he said was ‘salsa’, and he then suggested that as I had managed one, then surely a second might go more easily, and that dance had a friend, so it was some time before we sat down, Rita and Yves already draining a fizzy drink each as Amelie wiped chocolate from her lips, then frowned.

“Oh merde!”

Yves looked up sharply at his sister, and she pointed out of the window, where Nicole was talking to the band, several of the musicians grinning. I was a little lost, still coming down from the high of actually dancing and not falling over, and with someone who could still find a smile afterwards. Amelie was shaking her head, and Yves turned to me with a frown.

“Could you please shelter us in your room tonight? I think Maman has requested a tango; I know that look she has on her face”

I knew less than nothing about the mechanics of the dance in question, but of course I knew the half-joking description of it as ‘the vertical expression of horizontal intent’, and some perverse part of me was anxious to see exactly how rude it could get.

Five minutes later, and I was in shock. Laurent and Nicole hadn’t been the only couple who were familiar with the dance, and dear god it was rude. Nicole was forever doing little flick things with her lower legs, and when the right one flashed out and hooked itself behind Laurent’s thigh, I really didn’t know where to look. There was absolutely no way I could ever behave like that in public, and I fully understood Yves’ discomfort. He must have felt like I had, the only time I had heard my own parents having sex.

Wrong. So wrong, but the two in question that evening were certainly not my parents, and I realised I was actually enjoying their performance despite the burning sensation in my cheeks, Rita was laughing at Yves’ grumpiness, and passing multiple comments to her father that were probably something like the scores held up by judges in figure skating: five nine, five nine, six…. Pablo was shaking his head, and yet again laughing.

“She asks why I am not dancing a Tango with Caroline, young man, and also if you know the steps”

Yves just shook his head, cheeks glowing, and once more I could read his thoughts. Such a dance, embarrassing to watch when performed by his parents, would be utterly terrifying for him if it involved a girl close to his own age, poor boy.

Another broad grin from my new friend, as he replied to a comment from his daughter.

“She asks what time we must leave, as I warned her she must be ready for school tomorrow with sufficient sleep, and she says that the foreign music is now replaced by our own, and that if Yves and Caroline are not too tired?”

He led me through two more of the dances, as the two other couples stayed near us, and I watched how Nicole’s arse and hips moved with her skirt, something subtle in the way her knee seemed to rock back over her planted foot with each step of the dance, and I did my best to imitate her artistry, until at last the evening was over for my guests. A last cold drink for all of us, two memory cards popped out of my cameras, and a round of hugs and cheek-kisses before Pablo and Rita strolled off hand-in-hand to the exit and, I hoped, a suitably chastened taxi driver.