But Baruch was already reseated and starting up the engine so I climbed on and, as we lurched off down the street, proceeded to fall backwards, whack my back on the top case and kick both legs up in the air comically.
‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed when he slowed down and looked back at me doubtfully.
‘You need to hold on,’ he said, taking one of my hands and pulling it to his waist.
He drove the exact route I had taken the day before, only ten times faster. It was all quite exhilarating. I quickly came to suspect that he was taking me to the very same beach. This was unsurprising really, as the beach had been Baruch’s suggestion in the first place, but I didn’t really mind at all.
Riding pillion felt lovely. The countryside sped by, the bike throbbed beneath us, and being seated so high up, the views were even better than before.
When we got to Perivolos Beach, Baruch led me to the grandest of the beach bars. It was the exact opposite of the choice I had made with Mum the previous day but it turned out to be great fun.
It had these huge four-poster bed affairs – like king-sized beds for giants, with suspended, flapping canopies to filter out the sun. Smooth electro beats were wafting from a sumptuous sound system.
Some friends spotted Baruch and beckoned us over, so we joined them on their ‘bed’ and propped ourselves up on the oversized pillows that were scattered around. I was impressed with the accuracy of the lie I had invented for Mum’s benefit. For we were doing exactly what I had told her.
Baruch’s friends – two pretty girls named Iona and Agatha plus a podgy young man called Damon – were instantly welcoming towards me. No one asked why I was there or where Baruch had dug me up. I suppose that with Santorini being tourist central they were simply used to such random appearances.
Damon produced a joint, which I must say shocked me a little as he didn’t really look old enough to even buy cigarettes, and we all ordered drinks from the bare-chested waiter. I was surprised to be the only person ordering alcohol – the Greeks all chose chilled coffees – but when I asked Baruch about this he told me they simply couldn’t afford anything else. ‘We’re on Greek wages, here,’ he said. He nodded at my pina colada and said, ‘That cost what I earn.’ I wasn’t sure if he meant per hour, per day or per week but, feeling guilty for my extravagance, I vowed to buy them all a drink before leaving.
The day slipped by gorgeously. We smoked, we drank, we chatted (they all spoke perfect English) and we ate snacks that Baruch had brought from the minimart – packets of crisps and out-of-date sandwiches, because once again the beach food was simply too expensive.
Whenever we got too hot, we swam. And it was after one of these swims that Baruch and I ended up sitting side by side at the water’s edge.
‘So, do you like Santorini?’ Baruch asked. He was sifting the wet black sand through his fingertips and letting it drop onto his beautiful feet. It had turned out, now Baruch was in swimming trunks, that there was nothing disappointing about any part of him.
‘Oh, I do!’ I told him. ‘It’s beautiful. You’re so lucky to live here.’
Baruch laughed. ‘I live in Athens,’ he explained. ‘I only come here for the summer. To work for my uncle.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, you’re very lucky to live here in the summer. What do you do in Athens?’
He shrugged. ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Whatever I can find. Things are hard at the moment, you know? So I’ve been a delivery guy, a motorcycle delivery guy, taxi driver . . . I finished my philosophy degree last year but there aren’t so many jobs for philosophers these days.’
I nodded. ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘That must be a bit hard to deal with.’
Baruch shrugged. ‘I’m philosophical about it,’ he said.
I laughed. ‘Very good! So, do you think things will get better? Now the bailout has ended and everything.’
‘Who knows?’ Baruch said.
We sat in silence for a moment and it made me wonder if I had said something wrong. But then he asked, ‘Is it your first time on the island?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
‘I was conceived here, in Oia,’ I told him, wiggling an eyebrow suggestively. ‘My mum had a holiday romance here twenty-four years ago and got pregnant. So in a way, I suppose I have been here before. I just wasn’t born yet.’ I was trying to get the concept of a holiday romance into Baruch’s thoughts, I think. So far, the day had been lovely but entirely platonic.
‘Wow,’ Baruch told me. ‘And your father?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe just some local guy. I don’t know the details, really.’
Baruch grinned.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘My uncle could be your father,’ he said. ‘He was, you know . . . how do you say this? He liked the girls. You know?’
‘A bit of a Romeo?’
Baruch laughed. ‘Yes. Yes, a bit of a Romeo.’
‘But no,’ I explained. ‘Unfortunately not. He died. Whoever my father was, he died just after they met. In some kind of car crash, I think, while they were still here in Santorini. So we’re definitely not related.’ I wanted to get that one out of the way. I couldn’t have him thinking we were cousins.
‘God,’ Baruch said, his smile fading. ‘That’s a sad story.’
I shrugged. ‘I’m philosophical about it.’
He laid one arm across my shoulders and because it felt good, and because it was the first time he had touched me that day, I bit my bottom lip and nodded dolefully. It felt a bit naughty to be exploiting such a subject but it’s not as if there are that many advantages to having a dead father. If I thought I could get a cuddle out of it I was certainly going to try.
My acting seemed to do the trick, because he pulled me in towards him so I could rest my head against his shoulder. His hand gently caressed my bare arm. He sighed gently. ‘You know . . .’ he said.
‘Yes?’ I asked.
He cleared his throat. ‘I think . . .’ he started.
And at that precise instant we were showered with water. Baruch jumped up immediately and sprinted athletically across the beach to catch and dunk the culprit. It was Damon. He was laughing like a hyena.
‘Damn you, Damon,’ I mumbled.
By the time we left the beach at five, I’d got no further with Project Snog. With Baruch’s friends constantly present there hadn’t been any opportunities to make such a thing happen. But I was sure, at least, that I wanted to try. He’d been friendly and funny and considerate all day. And if anything I now found him even easier on the eye than at first glance, which, in my case at least, is quite a rare thing. So often the cute ones seem to become less and less cute the more you get to know them.
Baruch had explained that he needed to get back early to take his grandmother to the doctor. Though this said something reassuring about his values, I felt gutted to find myself back outside the minimart at six in the evening.
‘So, when are you off next?’ I asked him, handing back the crash helmet.
‘In a week,’ Baruch said. ‘Just one day a week, I’m afraid.’
‘But I’ll be gone in a week,’ I moaned, sounding uncomfortably like a whiny child.
Baruch shrugged. ‘That’s life, huh?’ he said.
I looked into his eyes. I did my best to beam the image of what I was hoping for from my brain into his. And this apparently seemed to work because he said, ‘I could come around to yours later. At ten o’clock or something?’
‘Mum will be there,’ I reminded him.
‘Of course.’
‘And yours?’
‘Here in Santorini I stay with my uncle,’ he explained. ‘In Athens I have a place, but here I live with my uncle. And his wife. And their kids.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow I can get off a bit early. We could go for ice cream if you want?’
‘Ice cream?’
‘Yeah. You don’t like ice cream?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Sure, I love ice cream.’
‘About eight?’ Baruch asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Maybe nine? So I can eat with Mum? Otherwise she’ll feel abandoned.’
‘Nine, then,’ Baruch said. ‘Meet me here?’ He leaned in to kiss me. It was just a peck on the lips but his grin seemed to promise so much more. ‘OK,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Now I really have to go or she’ll miss her appointment. We have to be in Fira by six thirty.’
‘You’re not taking her on that thing, are you?’ I asked, nodding in the direction of the bike.
‘Sure,’ Baruch said. ‘Why not?’
As I zigzagged down to our room, I asked myself for the first time just what I thought I was up to. Because there was clearly no future to be had with Baruch. Not when I was returning home to Margate and he to Athens. Was I being slutty, I wondered, for wanting to have a holiday fling? Or liberated? Or stupid? Was I following some genetic predisposition: the same thing that had led to my conception? Was I somehow trying simply to understand what had happened – using the idea of a holiday romance with Baruch to work out by what process I had come into being? Or was it more simple? Was it just that he was so very, very good-looking?
One thing was for sure, my desire for him wasn’t fading. He was starting to make me go quite weak at the knees.
When I reached our room it was all locked up. I opened the door with my key and found a note from Mum saying she was down at the bottom of the ‘Dreaded Steps’ having a swim, and that I should come and join her if I got home early. So I picked up my bag again, and headed straight back out.
TWELVE
LAURA
As we rode down the western side of the island, around craggy headlands and on further south, I wondered what Leif had in mind for my birthday. When we came to a tatty sign indicating a bar/restaurant, Leif took the turning, and rode along the gravelly dirt track until we came to an ad hoc car park. He locked the bike and led the way down a coastal staircase.
The bar had been built on what appeared to be a natural balcony, a flat expanse set in the middle of the cliff face. There were only three people in the bar when we got there, and even these people turned out to be employees. They all jumped up when we arrived.
Still uncomfortably aware that, birthday or not, I had no money, I ordered a single Mythos beer and Leif followed suit.
‘It’s lovely here,’ I told him. ‘How did you find out about this place?’
‘Olav told me,’ he said. ‘They came here the other night.’
I leaned over the balcony and watched the sea as it lapped against the rocks below, and then, when my beer arrived, I sank back into my canvas chair and looked out at the view. The sun was heading towards the horizon and the sky was beginning to flame red.
The waiter brought us a dish of olives and some incredibly salty peanuts, and for an hour we nibbled at these and sipped very slowly at our beers as we talked.
‘Do you know which island that is?’ I asked Leif at one point, indicating a land mass to our left.
‘I think it’s Ios,’ he said. ‘But I’m not that sure, to be honest. Olav is better with that stuff, though only because he’s the one with the compass.’
‘I’m so sorry about spoiling your holiday,’ I said again.
Leif laughed. ‘Do I look as if I’m having a bad holiday?’ he asked.
I wrinkled my nose. ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But all the same.’
Leif pointed to a house in the distance. Like the bar, it looked as if it had grown organically from the rock face. ‘Imagine living there,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It makes you want to never go home, doesn’t it? It makes you wonder why you actually live where you do.’
Other people started to arrive: a young Italian-sounding couple and two American women. And as the food they ordered began to appear, food that looked delicious, Leif started trying to convince me that we should eat there as well.
Because the money issue was playing heavily on my mind, I resisted this idea for some time, but eventually Leif pulled the trump card that it was, after all, my birthday – and so, still hoping I could pay him back at some future date, I caved in and let him order what the menu rather quaintly called ‘Grandmummy’s Plate For Two’.
It was enormous, when it arrived, and delicious. It consisted of rice-stuffed vine leaves and cheese-stuffed tomatoes. There were also deep-fried cheese croquettes, calamari in olive oil, aubergine caviar, and sardines and fried okra . . . It was, without a doubt, the tastiest meal I had ever eaten. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that, to this day, it’s still up there, still probably in my top three meals ever.
With nothing between us and the horizon, the sunset was spectacular, and by the end of the meal I was feeling almost tearful at how Leif had managed to turn the day, which had begun so inauspiciously, into such a beautiful moment. I hadn’t had that many beautiful moments in my life until then.
Leif paid the bill, which he insisted wasn’t in the least expensive, and we began to climb back up to the car park.
‘That was the best birthday surprise ever,’ I told him. ‘Thank you!’
Leif laughed. ‘This was not the surprise,’ he said. ‘The surprise is where we go next.’
At the top, we climbed back onto the scooter and bumped off along the winding coastline. The wind had died completely by now and even in shorts I didn’t feel cold.
Eventually, Leif pulled off onto another dirt road and we followed it as far as it went.
‘Now we have to walk a bit,’ Leif said, handing me my bag from the top case.
We walked for about ten minutes along the ragged coast. The sun, by this time, had vanished beneath the horizon, but the red sky still lit the path just enough to see where I was putting my feet.
Some nesting birds squawked and took to the air as we passed them, startling me, and when I yelped Leif briefly took my hand.
After a few more minutes, we clambered down onto a tiny secluded beach.
There were no bars or restaurants here. There were no other people, either. And the only light on the long, smooth beach was from the just-rising moon, a distant streetlamp way up on the clifftop, and the final vestiges of the day, which were still illuminating the horizon with a vague honey-coloured band of light.
‘I’ve never been swimming at night before,’ I told Leif as we pulled off our shoes and began to cross the beach.
‘This is good,’ he said. ‘You will like it.’
Back to back, we changed into our bathers and then, crossing the wet sand, I joined Leif at the water’s edge. I glanced back at where our footprints mingled in the sand and turned to face out to sea. There were no waves at all and the surface was like a gently undulating mirror. It looked viscous, as if it was made of something much thicker than water, and because of the reflection of the strange sky it crossed my mind for an instant that it looked like it was made of honey.
‘It’s so pretty,’ I said quietly.
‘The stars,’ Leif said, pointing upwards.
I leaned my head back to look up at them. ‘Gosh, yes,’ I said. ‘How amazing.’
‘Come,’ Leif said, striding forwards into the darkness.
‘I’m scared,’ I admitted. ‘I’m scared there are monsters in there.’
Leif laughed heartily. ‘No monsters,’ he said, ‘only fish.’
‘Fish that bite?’
‘No. But they might give your toes a bit of a suck,’ Leif said.
He reached back for my hand and I let him take it and slowly we edged our way in. The sea was warm and, because the day was now cooling, it felt even warmer than the air. Thinking that I was still scared, Leif tugged at my hand again, urging me to go deeper, but in truth I was just mesmerised by the ripples emanating out from my knees and the way they reflected the night sky.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in in a minute. I just want a moment to look.’
‘Sure.’ Leif let himself fall to one side and
slip beneath the surface of the water.
I waited, motionless, until he had swum away, until the sea had returned to its undulating smoothness. I looked out at the horizon, which by now was almost black with just a hint of sapphire blue remaining.
I listened to the silence of the night surrounding me and discovered that it wasn’t silent at all. In addition to my own breath I could hear the lapping of the tiny wavelets on the beach. I could hear some chicks somewhere in the distance clamouring for their mother, and I could hear the rhythmic splash-splash-splash of Leif’s inelegant crawl. Somewhere to my right a fish briefly surfaced with a plop then vanished into the depths.
‘Come on!’ Leif called. ‘It’s lovely.’ I could barely see his head by now, bobbing in the distance.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’m just . . .’
‘Just what?’ he asked.
‘Just . . . taking it in,’ I said.
I couldn’t think quite how to explain what was happening. Because something was breaking. And something else was beginning. I felt as vulnerable beneath the night sky as those chicks alone in their nest, but also there were stirrings of something like optimism deep within me, perhaps for the first time in my life.
I looked down at my knees again and felt the softness of the sand beneath my toes and the silky water nudging against my legs. And when I looked up and out, once more, the feeling, still nameless, washed over me.
It was as if I had been living in my head ever since I was born; as if I had been this little person sitting in a control seat, looking out at my life rather than actually inhabiting my body. I had been experiencing my life as a series of thoughts and fears and expectations. I’d been worrying about my mother and sin and my career and paying bills, and Conor and my passport . . . The list went on and on.
But suddenly, standing in the seemingly infinite sea of Santorini and beneath that quite-literally infinite sky, it all fell away, leaving me feeling fragile and raw, and scared, and ecstatically in love with everything and everyone – with the essence of life itself.
Conor, I suddenly saw, didn’t matter. My passport didn’t matter. My money didn’t matter.
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