Lovers and Newcomers by Rosie Thomas

remodelling himself as a traditionalist barrister and upholder of family values, which was much more remarkable and amusing to them all.
    One day, when most of them were too sunburned and hungover to do anything but lie in the shade beyond the pool, Colin and Stephen whiled away the siesta hour by dressing up.
    Miranda remembered waking up from a nap. Done up as Carmen Miranda, ‘As a tribute to you, of course,’ he had told her, Colin was kneeling precariously on a lilo in the middle of the pool. He was wearing a flamenco skirt, a bra top, gold hoop earrings, full make-up and a hat made out of a laden fruit bowl topped with a crest of bananas. He wobbled to his feet and began to strum a guitar. He managed a passable samba rhythm and a warble of ‘Bananas is My Business.’ But even with this apparition in front of them, it was Stephen they were all gaping at. He was arranged on a second lilo, two legs crammed into one leg of a pair of lime green trousers and two feet into a single swimming flipper. He was slowly combing the strands of a very old and matted long blonde wig to tumble over his hairy chest and looking at Colin with a parody of adoration that very clearly had real devotion embedded in it.
    That was the first inkling that Miranda or any of Colin’s friends had of the extreme contradictions in Stephen’s nature. There were, they understood, all kinds of warring elements concealed under the solid exterior. It suddenly became much less surprising that Colin found him so interesting.
    It was only a few seconds before Carmen Miranda very slowly and with great dignity tilted sideways into the water. Stephen neatly caught the guitar as it fell past him. Miranda’s actor cine-filmed the whole sequence.
    ‘I wish I had that film,’ Miranda sighed. ‘I’d give anything to see it again.’
    ‘Do you ever see whatshisname? The actor?’ Katherine wondered.
    ‘No. What was his name? Although in fact, I did see him about three years ago. In an episode of Holby City .’
    ‘Any good?’
    Miranda laughed delightedly. ‘As a psychopathic father on the run while his teenaged daughter haemorrhaged in casualty? Absolutely excellent. I’ve probably got some photographs of the Carmen Miranda event in a box somewhere.’
    ‘We should get the old pictures out.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    Katherine said, ‘It’s good to have these shared memories. It’s historic glue.’
    Miranda considered for a moment, and then asked, ‘Do you ever feel that you’re only inhabiting your life, K?’
    Katherine studied the patch of turf framed by her knees. There were ants busy between the blades of grass. Then she lifted her head. The archaeologist had descended into the trench once again.
    ‘I did. Sometimes. I think being here has changed that.’
    ‘Has it?’ Miranda was pleased. ‘Has it really?’ She seized on any confirmation that the Mead collaboration was working as she hoped.
    Katherine said quickly, ‘Of course, I had Amos and the boys, and work, and people coming to dinner, all those things, so I wasn’t exactly lonely, but I did feel that I was sort of watching from the sidelines rather than pitching into the scrum myself. And I would use a bloody rugby metaphor, wouldn’t I, as if even the language for framing my own experiences has to be borrowed from my menfolk?’
    She attempted a laugh at this, while Miranda only raised her eyebrows.
    ‘But I feel different here, being with you and Colin and Selwyn and Polly. It’s old ground, yet new at the same time. There’s a sense of anticipation, definitely hopeful anticipation. It’s not all to do with the glass house, although of course that’s exciting.’ She made this dutiful nod out of habit, and consideration to Amos and Miranda herself. ‘It’s almost a rebirth, isn’t it? A completely different way of living, and that leads to general crazy optimism, which is rather at odds with the reality as far as Amos and I are concerned.’
    There was a pause. This was quite