TRAVEL TRIBES

Lallie swills the dregs of her piña colada around the coconut shell and drags her sun lounger a little closer to the family from Manchester on their 10-day trip of a lifetime.

“Mummy thought I should go straight from school to university in Bristol, but Papa agreed I needed to see more of the real world first,” she says, carelessly tossing her iPhone XS Max into her Bottega Veneta tote. “Attend the ‘school of hard knocks’.”

The polite mum of three beside Lallie smiles, and applies sunscreen to her six-year-old daughter’s nose.

“I just think it’s important to get more actual life experience before uni,” Lallie continues. “I want to be a traveller. Someone who knows the Four Seasons in Rome and not just the one in Hampshire.”

Lallie slides her Chloé sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, glares at a waiter and orders guacamole and cassava chips.

“So I’m passing through St Lucia briefly, before joining the fam in St Moritz for Christmas, and after that I’m on to Aspen by myself,” Lallie says. “After New Year, I’ll detox at Chiva-Som in Thailand. I’ve heard the people and the food are amazing.”

She reclines and spritzes more Sisley sunscreen on her arms. “There’s nothing like travel to help you reassess your priorities and work out what you really want from life, what’s truly important, don’t you think?” she murmurs, turning to gaze at the young mother beside her, who has failed to stop her toddler tossing one of Lallie’s shoes into the swimming pool.

Lallie sits bolt upright, and her jaw turns to steel. Her voice turns to ice. “That espadrille was CHANEL.”

To read more articles by Anna Hart, see telegraph.co.uk/travel/team/anna-hart