by Mandy Baggot
Beth swallowed as she read the words. What was this? This was work-related but somehow not. When had Charles ever needed to run anything past her? He was the boss. James Graves was her client, but only because Charles had passed him to her when he started to thin down his role in day-to-day dealings and use his time to get out and grow the business into a super-sized, taking-over-the-world conglomerate. And he’d asked about Greece. As if she were someone he chit-chatted to regularly about what she posted on her Instagram feed. Her Instagram feed. She had posted a photo of the rolling sea on Almyros beach when she’d been standing knee deep in it earlier. Had Charles seen it? Was he tracking what she was doing? For what purpose? There had to be a motive. Was there some fine print in the divorce papers that had been overlooked? Was he going to be able to snatch her house back?
‘Well?’ Heidi asked. ‘Is it Tilly? Some emergency at the office like… Dave and Mike taking over the boardroom to play Splatoon?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Beth said, dropping her phone back into her bag. She wasn’t ready to divulge Charles’s message to Heidi yet, not until she’d had a chance to work out what it meant. If anything.
‘Right, well, I reckon this gyros grease is probably going to be the best chance we have of getting off your wedding ring.’ Heidi lurched forward, all grabby.
Beth moved her hands away from Heidi’s swiping. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘After the builder’s been. Let’s think about where we want to go on the island.’ She smiled. ‘Let’s see about hiring a car.’
‘Ooh, yes,’ Heidi said, sitting back again and elongating her legs. ‘We can drive to Sidari. Check out all those bars we used to go in, lay prostrate on the beach and eat more of these.’ She held up the empty paper wrap of her gyros.
‘I was thinking something more cultural. There’s a guide book in the house and a whole host of castles and churches and… places ITV filmed The Durrells.’
Heidi sighed. ‘Is this my penance for eating meat and drinking wine? Or have I bored the tits off you talking about goodness coming from within and looking after your spiritual self so much some of it has finally sunk in?’
‘That entire sentence was a contradiction. I don’t even know what to say.’
‘I say we go back to 2009,’ Heidi said, a crazy glint in her eye.
Beth smiled, shaking her head. ‘Shall I call the waiter? Order a time machine?’
‘Oh, Beth Martin-formerly-Mountbatten-formerly-Martin, it’s a whole lot simpler than that.’ Heidi’s hands went to the leather-look hair clip on her head, a wooden prong holding her blondeness in place. ‘It’s just a state of mind.’
‘And there we go… back in the Buddha palace.’
‘Like I said before we stepped into Paralia View…’
‘And the roof came down.’
‘This holiday we’re going to be twenty-one all over again.’ Heidi pulled the stake from her hair and let her locks tumble down onto her shoulders. She shook it about for good measure, looking like the very best of Meg Ryan. ‘Absolutely no deep analysing or worrying what other people might think. We are going to do whatever we want. Drink whatever we want. Eat whatever we want. Dirty dance like we’re partnered with Gorka not Anton. Go to bed late… or early… or not at all. Sleep on the bloody sand if we feel like it! Forget being thirty-one. On this break we’re twenty-one. One last Greek summer being…’
‘Free,’ Beth said. She shivered, the idea of everything Heidi had said both scaring and thrilling her.
‘I was going to say “crazy”. Crazy in Corfu.’ She leaned right across the table and took hold of Beth’s hands. ‘Yes?’
‘There is only one right answer here,’ Heidi said seriously. Where had she heard that before?
‘Yes,’ Beth replied with certainty. ‘I say yes.’
Eleven
Alex and Margalo Hallas’s home, Almyros
‘Alex!’
It was a whisper rather than a shout, but the desperate tone had Alex opening his eyes and waking rapidly, like an earthquake had disturbed his sleep. Bolt upright, wearing nothing but his underwear, his eyes went to his bedroom window, the glass open, the wooden shutters closed. ‘Elektra?’ he queried. ‘What time is it?’
‘It is almost six,’ the anxious hushed tones continued. ‘I have a few hours to work on the cream, but I have forgotten my key to the lock.’
He swiftly moved the sheet away from his body and got up out of bed, his skin glistening a little with perspiration. They had no air-conditioning in the traditional little cottage and, despite its thick walls, there wasn’t much you could do about the July heat. ‘I’m coming out. Go into the barn in case my mother wakes up.’
‘Aleko!’
Right on cue was the call from his mother’s bedroom, followed by one of her rattling coughs. She had been coughing right the way through the night.
‘Go, Elektra,’ Alex urged through the wooden slats while wrestling with a T-shirt.
‘Aleko!’ Margalo called again. ‘I think there is someone in the garden!’
He cursed as he hunted for his Vans. Being woken up after too little sleep and having to deal with this was not a good way to start the day.
When he was dressed and had splashed his face with cold water, he rushed into Margalo’s bedroom to find her rooting around in the huge, walnut wardrobe that took up the majority of the space in her domain. He watched for a while, standing quietly in the doorjamb, appraising her movements. There was definite agility to her, her legs and arms all coordinating perfectly. Fingers prised apart dresses, deftly choosing one then another, all digits working independently without any sighs of pain or exclamations of distress. And then his mother noticed he was there.
‘Oh, Aleko!’ Margalo said, hand flying to her chest, a guttural hack quickly following. ‘You are here!’ She made a grab for the solid wardrobe door as if her feet were going to slip from under her on the flagstone flooring. ‘My hips are seizing. Help me to a chair.’
He pushed his tongue into the top row of his teeth in annoyance. Was his mother making her condition look worse than it was? Should he say no? Suggest she find her own way to the chair? He thought about it for a beat, but then remembered something the doctor had told him. Spasms and arthritic problems could come and go. One minute here, the next eased…
He stepped forward, taking her by the forearms and guiding her to the dresser and the old white-painted chair she had once sat at to paint on soft make-up in front of the large gilded mirror. He could not remember the last time she had worn make-up.
‘I saw a shadow come round the house,’ Margalo said, taking laboured breaths as she looked at their reflections in the glass.
‘Mama, it is not yet light.’
‘I know what I saw.’ She turned to look directly at him. ‘And you must have seen it too, otherwise you would not be awake at this time.’
He was usually awake at this time, it was his mother who was not. By this time, he was ordinarily feeding the animals before going to the car hire office and checking messages for the maintenance work… or answering a text from Elektra about their kumquat schedule.
‘I am going outside,’ he said, in a tone he hoped would appease her. ‘I will check everywhere while I feed the animals.’
‘I will come with you,’ Margalo said, attempting to get to her feet.
‘No,’ Alex said, quickly. He took a breath, made it less urgent. ‘No, Mama, you rest here. Get yourself dressed and I will make breakfast.’
Margalo smiled at him. ‘You are a good boy. You look after your mother well.’ She gripped his arm, holding him there for a moment. ‘Perhaps tonight, we can talk about a time for you to visit your Uncle Fotis’s garage. He has many problems with one of the workers. I think that, with a little training you could…’ Another cough stopped Margalo from continuing and he was glad. Any guilt he had felt about hiding the kumquat enterprise or the possibility of the DJ gig from her evaporated the second she began to talk about his uncle’s garage. She wanted full c
ontrol of everything he did. She would want control of the kumquats if she knew about them… then where would the entrepreneur status he had sold to Beth be? It was currently a lie. He had sold Beth a lie and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that all night. That fact, and the way seeing her again had made him feel.
‘Listen, I won’t be long,’ Alex assured his mother. From outside, the goats began to bleat hysterically.
‘There is someone!’ Margalo exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘They are taking our goats. Aleko, I need the goats.’
‘Stay here,’ Alex urged before heading out of the room.
*
‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ Elektra said as he arrived in the barn, the keys in his hand.
‘What was wrong with the goats?’ he asked, helping his cousin shift the lawnmower and the bench.
‘They started eating my new jacket. I had to give them some of my tiger bread. It’s the really good stuff from the bakery. Still warm.’ She huffed a sigh. ‘Of course, it was not enough, so they go crazy.’
‘My mother is close to going crazy because she now thinks someone is trying to steal them.’ He put down his end of the bench and bent down towards the padlock. ‘I know they are our source of milk and eventually meat, but sometimes she acts like they are precious artefacts.’
‘My father is like that with his new car,’ Elektra said, rolling her eyes. ‘You know how most cars are on Corfu.’
‘Held together by sheer determination and not a great deal else.’
‘His new car is the opposite to that.’ She helped Alex pull back the door and followed him down onto the internal ladder, stepping confidently into the dark. ‘When he is not working, he is now cleaning and polishing. I think he aims for a job of driving dignitaries when he retires from the garage… if he does not get a job playing rock music with Queen.’
‘That is what he wants?’ Alex asked her.
‘This week,’ Elektra answered. ‘Who knows what he will want next week.’
Perhaps Fotis would sell the garage. That would definitely put paid to his mother’s maniacal mechanic plans…
Alex switched on the light and continued to descend into the once dusty cavern that had been transformed into a laboratory. He had no idea what half of the equipment was, but Elektra knew exactly what she was doing with every one of the test-tubes and bubbling conical flasks.
‘You said you had worked out the issue with the cream,’ Alex said, watching his cousin set down her rucksack and pull out her laptop.
‘Free water,’ Elektra announced. ‘I spent last night researching it all over again.’
Alex was oblivious. The only free water he knew about was handed out at nightclubs to stop patrons dehydrating. Elektra was the mastermind on the products’ make-up. He was the salesman and project coordinator.
‘I need to reduce the amount of water or we’re going to end up with microbes reproducing. That’s what’s making the bacteria grow and shortening shelf life.’ She opened the lid of her computer. ‘It’s either that or we have to add a preservative and…’
‘No,’ Alex said determined. ‘No preservatives. Completely natural. Or we lose our hook.’ He was also Chief PR… and Manager of Heavy Lifting.
‘I was just going to say a natural preservative like grapefruit seed.’
Alex sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’re the scientist.’
‘Alex,’ Elektra said, putting her glasses on. ‘This was your idea.’
It had been – after a conversation with Toula, his boss at the hire car company. She had been moaning about the number of kumquats she had in her garden and how, if they weren’t harvested and sold soon, they would either go to waste or her husband would make them into the island-famous liqueur she said he certainly didn’t need more of. Alex made the discovery that as well as the little orange fruits having high vitamin-C levels and the capability to aid digestion and support a healthy immune system, they were also good for the skin, hence the beauty cream.
‘I know,’ he replied, his eyes flicking over Elektra’s workspace and the months of effort she had put in to something that still wasn’t moving forward as quickly as either of them would like. ‘Listen, I know I keep asking and I know science is not… an exact science… but how long before we have perfect samples?’ He already knew what he was going to do. Approach the biggest hotel in the area and offer them an exclusive for twelve months. Hopefully that would bring in enough money in the short term and give him and Elektra time to source manufacturing on a much bigger scale. He didn’t have a five-year plan, he had a two-year plan. Start with Almyros, move throughout Corfu in twelve months, then look to capture international attention. Then, and only then, once the business was viable, doing well, growing, he would bow out. Before he was thirty-three. Before it was too late to recapture his musical dreams.
‘I don’t know,’ Elektra answered with a rough sigh. ‘It has to be right.’
‘I know,’ he assured her.
‘If we rush it and the trial is a disaster then we have to go back to the start and…’
‘I know, I know,’ he said again.
Elektra took a breath. ‘Are you going to take the set at The Vault at the weekend?’
The name of the club in Sidari had enthusiasm mixing like an over-powered Kitchen Aid. That opportunity had been another thing rattling round his brain throughout the night. Together with Margalo’s coughing, it had made it impossible to switch off.
‘How did you know about that?’ he asked, his answer a complete non-commitment.
‘Alex, I go in The Vault all the time. It’s the coolest place in Sidari. Dimitri told me about the set he offered you.’
Alex shook his head. ‘I haven’t accepted yet.’
‘Alex, you must!’
‘How can I?’
‘It is easy! You get in the car, you drive to Sidari, you spend an hour mixing music like you used to. You make everyone happy, you earn money and then you drive home again.’
‘And when my mother finds out?’ he asked, raising his eyes to look directly at her.
Elektra pushed her glasses up her nose and folded her arms across her chest. ‘What would you rather? She shouts at you a little and tells the village what a disappointment you are? Or you have no shouting, but you miss out on the best night you will have had in months?’
Years. It was definitely more like years.
‘The chance is,’ Elektra continued, ‘Margalo will find a reason to shout at you anyway.’
Elektra made a good point. And he was thirty years old. A grown man. He might not be able to leave the island, or even leave the house he shared with his mother yet, but he could do this. He had to have something for himself some time. Perhaps the time was now.
‘Please do it,’ Elektra begged, reaching forward and squeezing his forearm. ‘Do it for me. I have not heard you play for so long and you are sooo good!’
Alex smiled, his cousin’s praise settling on his heart. ‘I will think about it.’
‘Two weeks,’ Elektra stated boldly, hair bouncing round her shoulders as she hopped up onto a stool and placed her laptop down like it was NASA’s Mission Control.
‘What?’ Alex asked.
‘You play the set at The Vault and I will have the cream and bar samples ready in two weeks.’
Alex felt an intensity boiling like one of Elektra’s mixture-filled beakers. Two weeks. Two weeks and he could be on his way to something that could change his life.
‘I will chase Spiros about the branding,’ Alex said with excited eyes. His business moving on and music planned for the weekend. It was almost enough to stop his mind returning to the beach house in Almyros and the only woman he had ever been in love with… almost.
Twelve
Paralia View, Almyros Beach
A swarthy Greek builder called Stathis had arrived at the beach house before the sun was properly up and he was still taking his time examining the ceilings of each room of the property like he was looking for hairline c
racks in a Ming vase. Every so often he would make a clicking noise with his tongue then make heavy-handed pencil notes in a dirty pad he was carrying round with him.
‘If he doesn’t go soon, I’m going to be forced to drink coffee.’ Heidi said ‘coffee’ like she meant ‘radioactive waste’. Beth had watched her friend drink three large glasses of lemon-infused water already in a bid to re-establish good gut health after last night’s wine and kebabs.
‘It’s only eight o’clock,’ Beth answered, sipping her cup of tea, then returning her pencil to the pad she had open as they relaxed on the outside terrace. ‘Let’s find our zen.’
Heidi responded with a choking noise and Beth smiled to herself, the early morning sun not only warming her face but filling her whole body with feel-good. The scene outside their beach shack was all calm and fresh beginnings – a perfectly smooth parcel of sand dipping down into an azure sea, the sky that pale-blue morning as the sun started its slow ascent. It was revitalising, but did she feel twenty-one years old like Heidi was proposing? Not really. She hadn’t woken up with really good skin like she’d had back then but, equally, there also wasn’t a cocktail umbrella stuck to her inner thigh. But there was no doubt, she did feel… hopeful. Perhaps this holiday could be a turning point in her life. Except nagging at the back of her mind was that text message from Charles and the worry that maybe there had been something in the settlement she had skimmed a little too lightly over. Like Heidi and her ‘be good’/ ‘be bad’ dilemma, Beth had attempted to counteract her concerns about Charles’s text with sketching. The pebbles from the beach she had picked up yesterday had given her inspiration for some jewellery ideas – a brooch with one and a wide-bangled bracelet dotted with tiny shards of shells for another.
‘Oh, fuck me,’ Heidi said, re-establishing a sensible breathing pattern. ‘You using the word “zen” is funnier than a night at a comedy club.’