The House on Lake Como – Part 2: The Jetty

By Thursday, they had stopped checking their phones. By Friday, they had stopped checking the time.

They rowed to a hidden cove, swam in the cool green water, ate bread and peaches on a flat rock. In the afternoons they slept, shuttered and warm, and woke slowly, laughing. In the evenings they cooked together, badly, and ate on the terrace by candlelight with a bottle of cold white wine.

On the last night, the heat hung heavy, and the lake lay glass-flat under a full moon.

They swam off the jetty, in the dark, silent as otters. Elena floated on her back, looking up at the stars, and felt fourteen years fall off her like water. When she climbed out, Marco was waiting with a towel, his face open in the moonlight.

"You look like the girl I met," he said.

"I look like a drowned cat."

"The most beautiful drowned cat on Lake Como."

She laughed, and he wrapped the towel round her, and then his arms, and held her. The planks were warm underfoot. Frogs sang in the reeds.

"Can I ask you something?" said Marco.

"Yes."

"May I kiss my wife?"

"Yes," said Elena. "And if I say stop, you must tell the children we stayed an extra week."

"That would be a terrible lie," said Marco, delighted. "I would do it gladly."

He kissed her slowly, a damp hand sliding up to her cheek, tasting of lake water and wine. She kissed him back with all the unhurried tenderness of a long marriage, one hand spread over his heart. The moon silvered the water, and no one in the world needed them.

When they parted, both of them were smiling.

"Green?" he asked.

"Green," said Elena. "Very green."

They flew home the next day. In October, with the children at school for the afternoon, they borrowed the house again, in a way, for an hour, in the living room, with the curtains drawn and a bottle of white.

More married couple romance: The Cruise · Couples Retreat · The Second Honeymoon