by Mandy Baggot
‘Over my feet,’ Heidi said, lifting her leg and inspecting her toes. ‘I don’t sign petitions for that.’
There was a giant of a man carrying at least three tiny goats in each hand and a shorter, older woman who had one under each of her arms.
‘We need to get past!’ Heidi shouted at the pair of them.
‘Greek, Heidi,’ Beth suggested. ‘Not everyone speaks English.’
‘Do you know how to say, “We need to get a fucking move on” in Greek?’
She didn’t. But she did know ‘please’ and ‘wine’ and oddly ‘police’.
‘You want to move?’ the woman called, putting the goats she was holding back into the van.
‘Yes!’ Heidi replied. ‘Yes, we do!’
‘Help with the goats!’ the woman replied, picking up another two escapees. ‘Because we do not move until we have them all.’
‘She’s joking, right?’ Heidi asked, looking at Beth with fear-filled eyes.
‘I don’t think so,’ Beth stated, eyes roving to see where the furthest goat had bounced to. If she could somehow shepherd them back towards the van like a sheepdog – goatdog? – then maybe the others would follow. Or they could entice them with some sort of treat. What did goats like as a treat?
‘She wants us to touch them?! Pick them up and carry them?’ Heidi’s eyes were only on the dress she was wearing, already pre-empting the hoof marks and eau-de-pygmy…
Beth checked her watch again, even though she knew what time it was. Late. It was almost fully dark and once it was fully dark there was less chance of finding the goats at all. If she had sleeves on her dress she would be rolling them up. She needed to get to the club for Alex. She would never forgive herself if she missed it.
‘Heidi,’ Beth said calmly. ‘Please google what goats like as treats then see if we have anything like it in the boot of the car.’
‘There’s nothing in the boot of the car except some carrier bags and… ooh, there might be a nectarine I bought when I was on the wagon… could definitely be bruised though.’
‘Here, goat! Come on, goatie! Here, goatie!’ Beth called, trailing after a group of six who were more wandering than bouncing.
‘You sound like you’re calling a beard,’ Heidi told her.
Beth looked over at her friend. ‘Right now, I don’t care if I sound like I’m calling the Dalai Lama. We need to get to Sidari!’
‘OK,’ Heidi said, seeming to recognise the look in Beth’s eyes. ‘I’m looking at Google now and… I’ll touch one if I have to… oww, but not you!’ She glared at a little pure white goat who had skitted past brazenly kicking at her shins. ‘You, my friend, should be on a spit.’
Fifty-Six
The Vault, Sidari
It was 10.45 p.m. and Alex’s stomach was at least spin-cycle-on-a-washing-machine pace, his heart keeping the same insane rhythm. He was standing at the back of the main room, near the spiral steps that led all the way up to the mixing turret, looking out onto an ocean of people being entertained by a low-key mix of popular hits to warm the evening up. There were already approximately a hundred or so revellers packing out the main dancefloor and he was on in fifteen minutes. He took another sip from his bottle of water. At the moment he was wondering whether or not he could control the decks whilst he was puking into a bucket…
‘You OK?’ Elektra shouted above the music.
‘Do I look OK?’ Alex called back.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘You still look like shit.’
‘Thank you!’
‘They will be here,’ Elektra said, as if reading his mind.
He shrugged. He hadn’t meant the shrug. He was by no means blasé about Beth being here. He wanted her here so badly. It was almost like his life had gone full circle and, in some ways, he liked that. He just needed to make sure that this time he stayed strong enough to take the chances.
‘If Heidi doesn’t come, I will never forgive her,’ Elektra stated, dark eyes darkening.
‘Yes, you will,’ Alex answered, smiling. ‘Because if she does not come there will have been a very good reason and… you really like her.’
Even in the dim lighting of the nightclub he could see the rouge creep onto his cousin’s cheeks.
‘She is annoying,’ Elektra shot back. ‘And she does not really have her life together.’
‘Like we do!’
‘You and I have plans,’ Elektra reminded. ‘Heidi has a job she does not enjoy and no ideas for her future.’
‘No one is the same,’ Alex said. ‘Perhaps Heidi has fallen into a routine she cannot break from. Life is expensive, Elektra, we all know that. Why do you think I work three jobs?’
‘Because Aunt Margalo is pretending to be ill and is lazy.’
He let his cousin’s words hit him. She was right in some ways but after their last conversation today he had seen a definite change in his mother. He wanted there to be an altering of their relationship and he really did want to find out more about his father.
‘Sorry!’ Elektra blurted out quickly. ‘I did not mean to say that out loud!’
‘It’s OK,’ Alex insisted, waving away her protests. ‘Things with my mother are complicated.’
‘Alex, come up!’ It was his liaison at the club, calling him from midway down the stairs. He was shot with a thump of reality. Whatever family issues he had to deal with, right now it was all about this next hour…
‘You have to go,’ Elektra said, excitedly. ‘My cousin the famous DJ.’
Your cousin, trying hard not to throw up. Alex smiled at her and took an edgy breath. Vale ta dhinatasu. Do your best. He was hearing his mother’s voice when he was younger working on maths homework. She hadn’t quite given her blessing to his being here, but she knew. It was out in the open and she accepted there was nothing she could do to stop him.
‘Good luck,’ Elektra said. ‘Do your best.’
It was time.
*
‘What time is it?’ Beth questioned. She was sprinting from the main car park in Sidari where they had ditched the car, already out of breath and sweating with the humidity of the night. Why was it when the past few nights had had a welcome breeze, that tonight, when she had to run in wedges, wanting to look her best, it was hotter than The Good Place’s Bad Place?
‘I can’t look at my watch,’ Heidi stated. ‘If I do that I’ll have to stop running, and if I stop running this certain way I’m running to keep my feet in line in these shoes, then my face is probably going to plant on the pavement.’
They had hit the strip now and Beth took to the road to avoid the throngs of holidaymakers all strolling at vacation-pace, browsing the shops selling olive wood, beaded bracelets, straw hats and beach towels. They should be at the club now. She should be kissing Alex good luck, not navigating hair-braiding and henna tattoo stalls. And she smelled like goats and earth. As the night had darkened, the little critters had been even harder to track down. She had rugby-tackled one particularly slippery sucker and ended up with fig juice all over her bare legs. With only a supermarket carrier bag to wipe it down with she felt like Heidi’s half-crushed nectarine her friend had pushed into the mouth of a brown goat who had tried to get into the boot of the Jimny. She would be quite pleased if she never had to set eyes on another goat again…
‘I can see it!’ Beth exclaimed, weaving past a man she knew was about to ask if they would like to peruse the menu for his restaurant. Starving as they were, they didn’t have time to stop now. ‘I see it!’
‘Thank fuck for that! Shall I look at my watch now?’ Heidi breathed.
‘No,’ Beth called back over her shoulder. ‘I don’t want to know how late we are. I feel bad already.’
They barely had time to catch their breath before they were past the doormen and into the corridor that led to the depths of The Vault. Beth fought the soundproof cladding in the entrance to hear what was going on. Only the bump of the bassline was giving anything away, but she knew it was Alex. Instinctively. A s
hiver ran over her perspiring skin and she tried to calm and cool down.
‘Come on!’ Heidi urged. ‘I have to find Elektra and it smells busy.’
They pushed the double doors together and the wall of sound almost knocked them both over. There were people everywhere. It was packed out, dancers writhing, palms up to the ceiling, flashing colours, white strobe and dry ice creating a buzzing atmosphere. It was a song Beth recognised, ‘Electricity’ by Silk City and Dua Lipa but a remix, one she definitely hadn’t heard before.
‘There he is,’ Heidi said as they tried to move down into the pit. ‘Your DJ.’
Beth looked up towards the ceiling and the second she caught sight of him her stomach did all sorts of flips even an Olympic gymnast would be hard-pushed to replicate. There he was. Her Lex. One headphone on his ear, the other positioned at the back of his head, hair springing over his face a little as he moved round, body shifting in time to the music he was controlling. God, he was so sexy.
‘There’s so many people here,’ Heidi remarked, performing a dance-walk to try and get them into a better position. ‘How the hell am I going to find Elektra?’
And how was Alex going to know she was here? She needed him to know she was here. She was caught, fizzing with energy but not knowing what to do or where to go. She wanted to dance but equally she wanted to look at Alex, watch him getting off on his magical handiwork with the mixing desks. Then her eyes caught on something at the other side of the sunken dancefloor, standing tall above almost everything and everyone on this level. She grabbed hold of Heidi’s hand and began to sway them against the tide of party-goers.
‘So, this holiday has all been about getting outside of our comfort zones, hasn’t it?’ Beth shouted over the pumping music. ‘Behaving like we’re twenty-one and haven’t got a care in the world.’
‘Why am I suddenly scared?’ Heidi called back.
‘I want you to remember that now,’ Beth told her, shimmying against the wave of dancers. ‘Remember,’ she carried on, ‘that you started us on this Greek adventure and everything that went with it. The parasailing… that you didn’t do… the caves…’
‘I never wanted to do the caves,’ Heidi reminded her. ‘I want it on record that I definitely didn’t want to do the caves.’
‘All the ouzo-drinking and the mad driving and the horse-riding…’
‘Where is this leading?’ Heidi wanted to know, squeezing past a woman in shorts, long socks and a bra for a top.
‘Here!’ Beth announced, pointing just ahead of them. She watched Heidi’s eyes bulge and her mouth gape open as she took in the two steel poles rising up from wooden platforms. Writhing round on a pole would definitely be outside Beth Mountbatten’s code of conduct but the new Beth Martin? Well, the new Beth Martin would do practically anything to let Alex know she was here supporting him…
‘You are out of your mind,’ Heidi stated firmly. ‘Have you caught something from those goats?’
‘Come on, Heidi,’ Beth said, smiling. ‘It’s just dancing. But we’ll be high up. We’ll be able to see Alex and find Elektra and… if you’re really not enjoying it, we can get down again.’
‘I’m worried about getting up in the first place!’
‘So, you’re thinking about it,’ Beth stated, grinning.
‘This is crazy,’ Heidi told her. ‘You know there are YouTube videos of people our age making total fools of themselves doing stunts like this.’
‘I thought that about the horse-riding,’ Beth answered. ‘And… we survived.’
They were being bumped and jostled by other dancers as they stood round the base of the metal poles that went all the way up to the ceiling. One step up and a bit of a climb and they could be up there… Beth couldn’t wait any longer.
She stepped up, then grabbed hold of the platform, pulling herself up onto the base of it in the most ladylike fashion she could manage.
‘Beth! Come back!’ Heidi screamed. ‘I haven’t decided yet!’
There was no going back now. Particularly as heading down again looked like it would be much harder. She looked up towards the DJ booth. She was a lot higher now and had a much better view of Alex’s ‘office’ but she was still a way off from getting his attention. But attention was all she seemed to be getting from the people dancing below her. It looked very much like they were expecting her to do something. Dance. She had to dance.
She had seen people dance round poles before and, although the professionals made it look effortless, she had never been fooled about its true complexity. And she didn’t have to do it quite like that. She could be a little amateur. But she had to do something. She had climbed up here, she didn’t want to look like the biggest idiot in the nightclub. She leaned slightly backwards, letting the pole line up with the centre of her spine and shimmied up and down a little to the beat of the music. It was changing now, to Jay Pryor’s version of ‘Make Luv’. The drum section was rising and so was her nervousness. What was she doing dancing by a pole in the middle of a club?
‘Fucking hell!’ Heidi exclaimed as she dragged herself up from the base of the pole platform. ‘This is the maddest thing you’ve ever suggested.’
Beth laughed then as Heidi clapped her hands to their audience, wiggling her hips and moving her willowy body from side to side. Her friend beside her gave her the confidence to grip the metal bar with both hands. What was she doing? She couldn’t spin round this? How did you even begin? But if she swung round and climbed up a bit, she would be closer to Alex, catch his eye. And if she and Heidi made a bit of a show, he was bound to look down to the crowd…
Taking a deep breath and saying a silent prayer, Beth gripped the pole and threw her body at it. Every sinew burned as she swung round, legs swirling like some sort of drunken ostrich… This was horrendous! It killed! She could feel her skin searing like a steak in a hot pan and her joints collecting bruises like they were desirable POP! figures. But, somehow, she managed to land on her feet and the people below were clapping in appreciation. Beth looked to Heidi, still swaying to Alex’s music. Heidi shook her head at her but put her hands to the pole too and swished round far more easily than Beth had. A cheer rose above the pumping dance sound and Beth felt warmth fill her whole body. Who would have thought it? Ten years on, her and her best friend still being hardcore crazy in Corfu.
Egged on by Heidi’s collaboration, Beth used every bit of core strength she owned – not a great deal – and dragged herself up the pole like an enthusiastic contestant in Ninja Warrior UK. She didn’t know what manoeuvre she was going to try and replicate next, but she was going to do something, and where she was coming in to land was anyone’s guess.
*
It was going well. It was going really well. It was all coming back to Alex, slowly, not as perfectly smooth as he might have liked in an ideal world, but the world wasn’t always ideal and this was… better than he could have hoped. He only needed to keep this going, keep the energy in the crowd then, nearing the end of his set, ensure they pushed harder into full-on exhilaration, ready for the headline act.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead and his wayward hair out of his eyes he looked out over the bouncing dancers all moving simultaneously as one. Then he saw her, and his heart surged. Beth was wrapped round one of the poles, halfway up it in fact, waving hard at him. What was she doing? He smiled, waving a hand and then blowing her a kiss. A microsecond after, she seemed to lose traction and skidded down the metalwork landing on the platform with a bump. He leaned over the parapet a little, checking if she was OK. He watched her stand up, one hand on the pole, the other pumping the air skywards, eyes on him.
He had this. From now on it was all about taking opportunities and dancing with them.
Fifty-Seven
Sidari Beach
Beth was running again, Alex squeezing her hand tight. Her chest was bursting with adrenaline and excitement and a couple of ouzo shots when she and Heidi had finally managed to get down from the poles and to the bar
at The Vault. Her feet hit sand and then Alex suddenly stopped their travel, pulling her towards him. She needed no further encouragement to deepen their connection. She kissed his mouth, hot and hungry and dying to show him exactly how his performance had made her feel. She wanted to wrap herself round his body the same way she had got intimate with the nightclub pole.
‘Yassou,’ Alex greeted, finally breaking away.
‘Hello,’ Beth replied, blinking in the half-light coming from strings of bulbs round the canopies and awnings of the beach bars. ‘I am so sorry I missed the start of your set. Stathis made us late and then there were…’
He stopped her continuing with another hot kiss she wasn’t going to talk over.
‘You are sure you did not want to stay for the headline act?’ Alex asked, smiling at her, brushing her hair away from her face.
‘I’ve already seen my headline act,’ Beth breathed. ‘You were amazing, Lex. Absolutely amazing. The crowd were in the palm of your hand… Heidi and I loved every second. It was new. It was old. It was… everything.’
He paused, looking down at her and she wondered, for a moment, if she had said something out of place. He smiled then nodded. ‘I know.’
‘You know?’ Beth queried. ‘But you were so worried you wouldn’t be good enough. I told you not to worry.’
‘I should have listened to you, Beth. But… the reason I know I was good tonight was because… I have this.’
From the pocket of his jeans he pulled out a small rectangular card. It was dark and glossy and looked classy.
‘What is it?’ Beth asked as Alex handed it to her. She read the name out loud. ‘Club Monarch.’ She looked up at him and his eyes were shining bright.
‘When I came down from the booth, before I found you, this guy stopped me. I had no idea what he was going to say. For a second I thought he might be someone who had not enjoyed my set.’ He smiled. ‘But it was the complete opposite.’ He took a breath. ‘He owns five nightclubs on the mainland and… he wants me to perform at them.’