by Mandy Baggot
Beth had no answer for that. ‘I wonder if they do prawn saganaki,’ she breathed, eyes on the list of food in her hands.
‘Is that your name for a baby? Saganaki Martin… hmm, not sure. What’s the DJ’s surname again?’
‘Hallas.’ She didn’t really know why she was joining in with this idiocy.
‘Saganaki Hallas.’ Heidi laughed. ‘It sounds like a character out of a Jackie Collins book.’
‘I’m not naming anything after fried cheese. Not even a cat,’ Beth told her. ‘Now, you’d better tell me more about this parasailing before you drink any ouzo.’
‘Oh, I’m not drinking tonight,’ Heidi declared. ‘I want to be fresh for the morning so I’m going to be the chauffeur.’
Beth felt immediately fearful about Heidi’s driving ability – thirty minutes, in the dark, up and down winding bends back to Paralia View where she was hoping more hunks of the ceiling plaster hadn’t descended. At least she would be suitably numb to it all if she had wine with dinner. But perhaps they wouldn’t stay too late…
‘And I need to know more about kumquats. Didn’t Alex say he was going to bring us a sample of his health juice?’
Beth smiled. ‘You called him Alex.’
‘Well, if you’re going to practise making fried cheese babies with him, we’d better get less formal. OK, so, what am I going to have for a starter?’
‘Good evening, ladies,’ a rather hot waiter greeted them, putting down fresh bread and an array of delicious-looking dips in the middle of their table. ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘I’ll have a Rock Star, please,’ Heidi answered. ‘That’s the cocktail, not… you know… Bono.’
‘I thought you said you weren’t drinking tonight,’ Beth said.
‘Just one,’ Heidi answered. ‘It has mandarin puree in it and pink grapefruit. Two of my five a day.’
‘I’ll have a half litre of white wine…’ She paused, trying to recall the snippets of Greek from ten years ago. ‘Parakalo.’
‘Poli kalo,’ the waiter replied. ‘Very good.’
‘Show off,’ Heidi directed at Beth. And then she turned to the waiter. ‘Tell me, what do you know about kumquats?’
Twenty
Cargo Bar, Sidari
‘Here we go,’ Alex’s friend Ugo said, coming back to the table. ‘Another beer, my friend.’
Alex really couldn’t recall the last time he had been out for a drink like this. It was probably back in the winter, when the need for hire cars lessened and he spent most of his time looking for casual work to pay the bills – usually restaurants and bars in Corfu Town where things stayed open, unlike here where the majority of establishments closed down until the Spring. But winter had given him and Elektra all the time they needed to put in the research for the kumquat business. What had started out as a crazy idea over beers at Tales Bar in Acharavi had turned into a below-ground chemistry set that resembled something from Stranger Things’ Hawkins Lab. They had a limited budget, so every piece of equipment and ingredient had to be carefully thought about, but on a shoestring, they had somehow amassed everything required. And Elektra knew science like Graham Norton knew Hollywood A-listers. There wasn’t a chemical reaction she didn’t know the end-game of. It had been trial and error to begin with, a lot of testing and unsatisfactory results but now things were taking shape. And Alex really hoped that making these health products was going to expand both their horizons and, with a bit of good fortune and his determined sales skills, make them both a lucrative business they could be proud of.
But now, here, sitting in a white wicker chair, facing out onto the strip, lights flashing, up-tempo music coming from other bars, the babel from holidaymakers on the street, it felt good to be away from absolutely everything.
‘I shouldn’t be here, you know,’ Alex said, taking a drink from his full pint of beer.
‘You are not leaving, are you?’ Ugo said, settling down in the seat next to him.
Alex shook his head. ‘No. I am enjoying myself too much.’
Ugo laughed. ‘That is what life is about, no?’ He smiled. ‘Work hard, play hard.’
‘Is it?’ Alex asked. ‘What are you working for, Ugo?’
‘To pay for my home and my beer,’ Ugo said, holding aloft his pint glass as if to prove a point.
‘There has to be more to life than that,’ Alex said. ‘Doesn’t there?’
‘I am happy,’ Ugo stated. ‘I would like a girlfriend, but you cannot make these things happen.’
Alex smiled. ‘Is there someone you like?’
Ugo shrugged, a wry grin on his face. ‘There is someone at the hotel who is nice, but she is older than me. I do not think she looks at me in that way.’
‘Have you asked her for a date?’
Ugo laughed. ‘You are crazy.’
‘Is that a no?’
‘Alex, these matters have to happen naturally.’
‘Come on,’ he replied. ‘You spend all day serving drinks and clearing plates at the restaurant. When do you have time for things to happen naturally?’
Ugo leaned forward in his chair. ‘You think I should ask her on a date, while we are scraping plates clean and running to and from the kitchen?’
‘Why not?’
Ugo shook his head, unconvinced, and Alex laughed. The alcohol was loosening him. It felt good to feel free.
‘How about you, my friend?’ Ugo asked. ‘There is someone you like?’
Immediately he thought of Beth. Beth and her dead husband. She had married someone, committed to him for life and had him taken from her. What had he been like? How long had they been married? She still looked like the girl he had romanced all those years ago… It was then he realised he hadn’t replied to Ugo’s question and his friend was studying him like he was a young Gerald Durrell wondering about the mating rituals of a rare species.
‘There is someone I used to like,’ Alex said. ‘She is back on the island again. For a holiday.’
‘A tourist,’ Ugo said, grinning. ‘Very good, my friend. All the fun and none of the hard work.’
Alex shook his head. ‘No… it isn’t like that. I…’
‘At my hotel, if we are caught with a guest, we will lose our job,’ Ugo informed him. ‘But,’ he said with a grin, ‘we have to be caught.’ He waved away a mosquito. ‘Though it is not for me any more.’
‘You must like the older woman very much,’ Alex replied.
‘While you have a week or so of fun with a holidaymaker.’
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘We did have fun, ten years ago, but…’
Ugo’s eyes bulged. ‘She has come back for you? After all this time?’
‘No… I mean… I do not think so.’ He hadn’t actually thought of that. It was coincidence, wasn’t it? That Beth was back on Corfu? Or was this the first place she had thought about coming after her husband had died? Had she come back for him? To see if there was still a connection? Was that why she was staying in Almyros?
‘She is married,’ Ugo surmised, pointing a finger at Alex. ‘She is one of those ladies who leave what happens in Corfu in Corfu.’
‘She was married,’ Alex admitted, finding the sentence uncomfortable to say for some reason. ‘He died.’
‘Is she rich?’
‘Ugo! What difference does that make?’
Ugo sucked his lips in. ‘I am just saying, you are talking about “what do we work for?”, “where are our lives going?”, I am thinking of opportunities.’ He picked up his beer glass. ‘You cannot miss out on opportunities.’
Ugo’s words hit hard, but not in connection with how financially secure Beth was, more to do with the kumquat business. And then he thought about The Vault and this set on Saturday night. Whilst being back behind the decks had scared him, he couldn’t work out whether it was because he thought his skills weren’t up to the challenge, or whether it was because the chance of a new beginning meant stepping out of his enforced comfort zone and daring to make a change.<
br />
‘Does she have a sister?’ Ugo asked, laughing. ‘This maybe-rich-maybe-not old love of yours?’
‘She has a best friend who dances like an…’ He thought about it before replying. ‘An enchanted wolf.’
‘I am now curious to find out where the enchanted wolves live.’
Alex’s phone erupted, vibrating across the table. He had switched it to silent that afternoon when his mother had begun to phone. He knew none of her communications were an emergency. If there was an emergency, if her health really did fail her, there was no way she would not make contact with her brother, Fotis, Elektra’s father. And it was Elektra’s name on the screen now.
‘Give me a moment,’ Alex said, taking his phone and standing up. He stepped out of the bar, onto the pavement and made his way up the strip to find a quiet spot away from the performing tribute acts and quiz nights. Ducking in next to a street-vendor selling sweet-smelling corn-on-the-cob, he answered the call.
‘Hello.’
‘Hey, Alex,’ Elektra greeted. ‘We have a problem.’
There was something wrong with the face cream. The free water issue was more complex than she had thought. This was going to take a lot longer than anyone had anticipated. He steeled himself for the bad news, planting his deck shoes to the pavement, pulling in his core and shoring up his determination…
‘What is it?’ Alex asked.
‘We have a rival,’ Elektra blurted out. ‘I met this woman on the beach today and she is in the same business! She makes exactly the same products we are making. The juice! The health bar! The face cream! Exactly the same!’
Alex’s breath was leaving him, all control diminishing. This couldn’t be happening. They had invested so much time and money in this. It had to work. It was his only chance to ensure his mother’s security for the rest of her life so he could go out and find a life of his own…
‘What woman?’
‘She was English. Her name was Henrietta. She said she was the owner of Kumquat Crusaders. They are new, so nothing official yet, but they intend to sell the products internationally and give some of the profits to charities.’
Alex didn’t know what to say. He felt instantly defeated. So much for this half day of freedom. It had gone from bad to worse. He couldn’t bear to touch the futuristic equipment in the nightclub and now someone was going to steal his business idea out from under him. And Beth had loved someone enough to marry them. And he had died. And everyone knew you could not compete with the cherished memory of a dead person…
‘Alex,’ Elektra shouted. ‘Say something!’
‘I do not know what to say.’
‘We need to do something!’ Elektra continued. ‘Did you speak to Spiros about the branding today?’
He hadn’t. He had been too busy running away from his mother and being completely selfish. ‘No.’
‘Alex, come on, we need action!’ Elektra said.
There was nothing to do. It was a disaster. Something he should never have started in the first place. Who was he trying to fool? Perhaps his mother was right. Maybe he was just like his father, good for nothing and always wanting to run from responsibilities…
‘Alex!’ Elektra squawked. ‘We need a plan.’
‘What is the point? This woman will corner the market, not just on Corfu – which is most probably why she is here, to speak to the kumquat farmers. Then she will take the whole world.’
‘Well, we cannot let her!’ Elektra said, passionately. ‘I am not going to let someone steal this from us in this way. I am not going to have risked everything sneaking down into our cave for months to have this woman walk all over us.’
This was a speech he should have been giving to his younger cousin. Why wasn’t he being the strong one? Why was Elektra thinking ‘fight’ and he was thinking ‘give up’? He swallowed. ‘What do you think we should do?’
‘We need to pitch this right now!’
‘What?’ Alex exclaimed, turning away from the street and putting a finger in his free ear to be able to hear her better. ‘Elektra, we do not have any finished products.’
‘The juice is good enough,’ Elektra informed. ‘I know I am a perfectionist but, it is tasty, and nothing will harm anyone, we have sample bottles, we need to go forward with it as it is.’
‘But—’
‘The health bar could be a few days away if I work every hour I have. The cream still needs work, but we know what it can do…’
‘Elektra—’
‘No, I am not having you giving up on this, Alex. I need this.’ She let out a loaded sigh and he could imagine the expression on her face. She had given him so many hours, time out of her studies and her life, literally risking his mother’s wrath every single day.
‘If we succeed… when we succeed… I will be able to use all the experience to count towards my studies… and a job, hopefully a great job, not here in Corfu, maybe not even in Greece.’ She spoke with conviction. ‘I want a bit of international for myself.’
She was right, of course and she deserved it. Elektra was such a big part of this, the biggest part of this, the brains behind the whole make-up. ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘You need to think of a name and get the branding done,’ Elektra stated. ‘And you need to make appointments with the hotel. And, unless they give you a very good deal, you do not give them exclusivity. You make appointments at other hotels.’
‘Elektra, we agreed that—’
‘It needs to be bigger, Alex,’ she said seriously. ‘Now, with another company on our tail, it needs to be a whole lot bigger.’
Twenty-One
Sidari Strip
‘I wanted to do this last time we were here!’ Heidi laughed, waving her hands in the air more like she was sat on a rollercoaster than in a carriage attached to a dappled grey horse.
They were comfortably sat in a red pleather clad seat and, thanks to pony power, gently bumping along the road lined with bright bars, shops and restaurants of the vibrant village. The temperature had dropped a little to a comfortable balm and the sky was a dark, but clear, star-filled ink. Beth was feeling both fuzzy and warm from the delectable food she’d eaten at The Hive and the cool, fresh white wine she’d finished half a litre of. Heidi had stuck to her promise of one cocktail but had insisted on them eating a dessert neither of them had really needed. The chocolate element seemed to still be making a rich, satisfying nest in her stomach.
‘You never said,’ Beth said. ‘Back then. You never said “Beth, I really want to go in the horse and cart”.’
‘I’m sure I did.’
‘You didn’t,’ Beth insisted. ‘You said things like “I really wish drinking vodka at ten in the morning was a British custom” and “is sex really a good hangover cure or was Derek from Pontefract lying to me”.’
Heidi’s face went red, mouth agog. ‘I definitely did not ever say that!’
Beth laughed. ‘OK, I might have lied about that last one.’
‘And the vodka one.’
‘No, you definitely said the vodka one.’
*
Beth knew one thing Heidi hadn’t said on that first Greek holiday. That she was gay. She remembered when Heidi had told her. They had been at a birthday party for Antonia from college, about three weeks after they got back from Corfu. Heidi had been raving about the job at Mountbatten Global she hadn’t started yet and Beth had been wondering when to break the news to her friend that her mum had cancer. For those first few weeks Beth had been drowning the awful news in bottles of the cheapest wine and keeping everything locked in.
Strippers had arrived at Pizza Express. Three hunky cops looking all firm in the truncheon department – much to Antonia’s delight – and Beth had picked up on Heidi’s lack of excitement as the first bars of Mousse T’s ‘Horny’ started up.
‘The blond one looks like Leo DiCaprio,’ Beth had remarked.
‘If he’d had a face transplant.’
‘What about the brown-haired
one?’
‘What about him?’
‘Nice abs,’ Beth had said, as the dancer removed his shirt.
She’d looked away from the strippers to her best friend, only to find Heidi’s attention not with the performance, but on someone across the room. A dark-haired girl in leather jeans.
‘No one you fancy?’ Beth asked her.
Heidi had turned to her then, as if sensing that something unspoken had passed between them. Her best friend had seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, the corners of her mouth upturning a little. ‘What do you think her name is?’ Heidi had asked, indicating the leather jeans wearer. ‘Because, Beth,’ she’d begun with a sigh. ‘All of The Chippendales could walk in here and I wouldn’t be remotely interested.’
Beth hadn’t said anything. She’d waited. Wanting it to come from Heidi. Sensing something was coming this time. Knowing what was coming. Beth had placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently, encouragingly.
‘I’m gay,’ Heidi had said finally. ‘I like girls.’
Beth had wrapped her up in the biggest of hugs and held her tightly. ‘I love you, Heidi,’ she whispered, swallowing back tears.
‘I love you too,’ Heidi had answered, voice giving away all the emotions. ‘Now, let me go before the hot woman in leather thinks we’re a couple!’
*
Now, Heidi snuggled up to Beth, breathing in and resting her head on her shoulder. ‘I do like Corfu Beth,’ she admitted. ‘She’s much looser than London Beth.’
‘I’m just making the most of every moment… in case I die parasailing tomorrow.’
‘Have you made a will?’
‘I had to,’ Beth replied. ‘When you divorce it immediately makes your current will null and void.’
‘God,’ Heidi said, sitting up. ‘I was only joking!’
Charles had insisted she saw their lawyer to prepare it. At first, she thought he and his solicitor were up to something shady and half expected her wishes to be wrapped up in legal jargon she didn’t understand so the effect was completely turned on its head by the time the second draft arrived. But that hadn’t happened and, if death came, everything she had would be split equally between Heidi, Cancer Research and The Armed Forces charity. Cancer had claimed her mum, but it was the Gulf War that had claimed her dad. Although she barely remembered him at all, her mum had always tried her very best to paint a full, glowing, technicolour picture of the man he had been. Her parents’ love had apparently been instant – a chance meeting at the pub followed by staying up all night, talking until the birds sang at first light – and a whirlwind romance had turned into something strong and dependable. That’s what Beth had wanted. The whirlwind passion and the strong, enduring love, like her mum and dad. It just never seemed to come together for her. Perhaps it rarely did for everyone. Maybe she was expecting too much. But, surely, fidelity wasn’t too much to expect, even if your life wasn’t as perfect as you’d hoped it would be.