Desperately Seeking Summer

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘I hope so,’ Jackie answered. ‘You never really realise how much you miss family until you’re all back together again.’ She sighed. ‘Well, not quite all of us, but …’

  Spyridoula slipped an arm through the Englishwoman’s. ‘This is a time for celebrating, Jackie, not a time to reopen sad wounds.’ She stared at Theo warningly. ‘Or to talk about using ovens.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jackie agreed.

  ‘New beginnings,’ Spyridoula said. ‘And a toast to your new white paint.’ She drew in a contented sigh. ‘The council, they will be very pleased.’

  ‘Have you got the basket of raffle tickets?’ Abby asked Melody. It was time for the draw and she was really excited. It was a little bit of an outlay but she was combining it with a treat someone special deserved. Everyone had enjoyed the hilarity of the Donald Trump lookalike and taking selfies wearing the Tom Hanks mask – Melody had even drawn a face on a football to make a ‘Wilson’ prop – as well as the Greek flavour George, Theo and Leon had brought to proceedings.

  Melody’s response was a loud hiccup and a heavy arm landing around Abby’s shoulders, the party spirit having been liberally indulged in now the work element had subsided.

  ‘Did you know that Leon had abs, Abs?’ Melody burst into a fit of giggles then, one hand stifling her mouth. ‘Did you get that? Abs, Abs!’

  ‘I got it,’ Abby answered. ‘Where are the raffle tickets? You were going to rip the rest up and put them in the basket.’

  ‘I did,’ Melody replied. ‘Ages ago. They’re in the office. Next to the photocopier.’

  Abby practically skipped inside. Having worried about the raffle prize all day – when she hadn’t been worrying about her ovaries exploding every time she looked at Theo – she couldn’t wait to pick a lucky prize-winner.

  ‘Abby.’

  She caught her breath, hand going to her chest as a figure appeared in her sightline. ‘Gosh, George, you almost gave me a heart attack. I didn’t think anyone was in here.’

  ‘I am just collecting my trays from the food,’ he answered, indicating the platters in his hands.

  ‘Oh, the food, George, it was heavenly, everyone said so, well, not Diana, but I’m learning she rarely has a good word to say about anyone.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you so much for making it and at such short notice. You must let me know how much we owe you.’ Hopefully it was going to be somewhere in the region of not more than a hundred euros or she was going to have to make a bigger dent in her notice money. ‘And the music! The wonderful Greek bouzouki. We must pay you for that too.’ She swallowed. Hell, entertaining was costly.

  ‘Money is no matter,’ George said, waving his free hand.

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ Abby said. ‘I know it is. The summer season doesn’t last forever, does it?’

  He smiled. ‘For the winter, I make soup from the summer leftovers and freeze this. Sometimes this can last until March.’

  Abby fanned her face. ‘It’s so hot I can’t even think about soup right now.’

  ‘Abby,’ George said, his tone serious.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would … like to take out your mother.’

  It took a second for Abby to process the way the sentence was worded and realise that George was not Aleko wanting to scupper a business rival. ‘Take out my mother,’ she repeated. ‘On a date?’

  ‘I think of a picnic,’ George stated. ‘I think she would like. Maybe to Kaiser’s Throne … there is a nice view.’

  Abby’s mind flooded with images. Her mum on a blanket, kicking off her high heels, George feeding her sweet lemon drizzle cake, drinking retsina under a cloudless sky … Dad. She swallowed. Her mum and dad had had a wonderful, perfect marriage, blighted by nothing but his illness. They had loved each other deeply for as long as they had been together. Jackie was still young, years of her life ahead of her, years to enjoy working at the business but also, relaxing, really, fully living again. It was something Abby couldn’t see her mum had had the opportunity to do before. George wasn’t a man with too many hats (that she knew of) and he wasn’t a Russian millionaire. He was just Taverna George. But Taverna George was kind, good-hearted, and funny. She also noticed Jackie lit up – or rather acted like a nervous never-been-kissed schoolgirl – whenever he was around.

  ‘Signomi,’ George said, his hand shaking a little as he steadied the trays. ‘I should not have asked.’

  ‘No,’ Abby breathed quickly. ‘No, don’t be silly.’

  ‘It is still not right,’ George continued. ‘Even after all this time.’

  ‘George, honestly, I really think my mum would love to go on a picnic with you.’ Why hadn’t she spoken up sooner? She was in Greece now, not Romsey. And when in Greece you spoke from your heart and you didn’t hesitate. You ate the baklava and you drank the ouzo and you worried about the consequences later. Theo came to mind again. Of all the Dolan women only Melody seem to be acting fully Greek …

  ‘I am sorry,’ George said, bowing like he was paying a penance, heading towards the door.

  ‘George, wait!’ Abby ordered. She was caught between chasing after him and grabbing the basket of raffle tickets and, as she moved, her elbow caught the container and hundreds of small oblongs of paper scattered all over the tiled floor.

  Forty-eight

  ‘Wasn’t there going to be a raffle draw?’ Diana bleated at full volume. ‘Or is the actual draw as big of a mystery as the so-called mystery prize?’

  ‘Coming!’ Abby called, shaking the basket of quickly swept-up tickets. She was hot and bothered now, desperately scanning the petering out crowd for George. She needed to let him know that asking her mum out on a date was completely the right thing to do. Her mum needed this in her life. It would give her something more than Desperately Seeking, a social life of microwave meals and the re-boot of Dynasty. Abby coughed. Not that there was anything wrong with that when you were between periods of your life, or just enjoyed salty meals and over-the-top feel-good drama.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, approaching Jackie. ‘You should pick out the winner.’ She offered her Stathis’s basket.

  ‘What’s the prize?’ Jackie asked. Then her hands went to her mouth. ‘We didn’t get a prize!’

  ‘There’s no prize?’ Diana queried, her ears as sensitive as a bat’s.

  ‘There is a wonderful prize,’ Abby assured. ‘Everyone is going to want to win it, I promise.’

  ‘Aleko is giving away a flagon of tsipouro,’ Diana stated.

  ‘Well,’ Abby said. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you please all get out your raffle tickets ready to check, my mum is going to pull out the winning number.’

  ‘We don’t have any tickets,’ Diana informed.

  She smiled at Diana. ‘They are white, just like our new branding. Melody should have given you all a ticket when you came in to the party.’

  ‘No,’ Diana stated loudly. ‘She just told us our number.’

  This could not be happening. Hyperventilation felt imminent as she searched the party for her sister. Melody was coiled around Leon, hands smoothing over his still-exposed chest. Striding over, she hissed. ‘Melody, a word.’ Then she grabbed her sister’s hand, pulling her over to the shade and quiet of the olive tree.

  ‘What’s going on? Did you get a bottle from the supermarket for the prize?’ Melody asked.

  ‘What did you do with the raffle tickets?’ Abby asked frantically. ‘Why has no one got any?’

  ‘Ugh, is that all? Leon was just telling me all about this great club in Corfu Town—’

  ‘Melody!’

  ‘I just told them their number,’ Melody responded with a sigh. ‘That way we didn’t go through as many tickets. There’s a list somewhere. I noted them down.’ She smiled as if she were a genius. ‘And, I used up the books we had from when we did the last prize draw before I started on the new ones.’

  Abby felt the creeping sense of dread growing bigger and stronger as every second ticked by. She had to ask the question, but she fel
t fearful that she already knew the answer. ‘So, what did you do with the matching strips?’

  Melody giggled. ‘Are you talking about my pole work again?’

  Abby rushed to the table where a raffle book was laying open, grabbed it up and brought it over to her sister. ‘Look! Two strips! Both with the same numbers on. One for the basket. One meant for the customer to keep. What did you do, Melody?’

  The alcoholic bravado seemed to dissipate then as reality hit home and her sister’s tan turned a shade of pearl. ‘I put them all in the box.’

  ‘My ladies want you to dance Pappas at the panegyri,’ Spyridoula informed Theo. While everyone waited for the draw to take place, he was packing up the cocktail bar as proceedings started to come to an end. He had been busy all day, people complimenting him on the drinks. Despite everything being free, he had even earned some tips. Ordinarily, such was his need for cash now he wasn’t tapping into his trust-fund account, he would have pocketed the euros and spent it on beer. But he was going to do something else with it and hope it hit the right note.

  ‘What are you doing for the panegyri, Spyri?’ Theo turned the question around.

  ‘Not cooking,’ she blurted out. ‘Or spending any time with the Widow Alexakis. I know black is tradition and there should be time to mourn, but she has been mourning for more than a hundred years. And,’ Spyridoula began again. ‘The way she talked about her husband you would think he was the god of all husbands, when really he could not even catch a fish! Here! In San Stefanos! Where the fish almost jump into your lap!’

  ‘We could catch fish,’ Theo said suddenly.

  ‘What?’ his aunt inquired.

  ‘For the panegyri,’ he continued. ‘We could catch some fish, like we used to, and Stathis could sell them on his grill.’ He shrugged like it didn’t matter. ‘Perhaps it will buy him a new bicycle.’

  Theo slipped another bottle into the box he was preparing, followed by some of the glasses he had gone back to borrow from Hera. When he looked up it was to see his aunt’s eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Spyri …’ he began.

  ‘Do not talk to me,’ she ordered, opening her handbag and putting her whole face inside as if searching for something. ‘Do not even think about talking to me.’

  Classic Spyridoula – shouting and not wanting to show emotion. It was a Pappas trait. He could do one of two things. He could give her a moment, or he could brush off the sentiment he knew she had absorbed. Instead he passed her a serviette. ‘Sometimes,’ he began. ‘The fumes from the tequila makes my eyes water.’

  She snatched the offering and blew her nose loudly.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Abby’s voice rose above the happy chatter and background laiko. ‘The prize is … a trip to the beautiful island of Erikousa where you will be able to spend the day either soaking up the sun on Porto beach or visiting the clifftops and delighting in the panoramic views.’

  There was an excited intake of breath.

  ‘My latest novel involves a clifftop chase followed by romance on the sand. What fantastic research that would be,’ Diana stated.

  Erikousa. It was an island just eight miles off the coast of Corfu and he had never been there. Never really thought about it. Melody had told him a number when he’d arrived and suddenly, without any concrete reason, Theo found himself really wanting to win.

  ‘Erikousa,’ Spyridoula stated wistfully. ‘I have not been there for more than forty years.’

  ‘And the winning ticket is …’ Abby began.

  Be a high number. Be a high number. The higher the number the less chance Abby thought there was in the ticket being a duplicate. A quick sweep of the office had not produced Melody’s list. She just had to hope the guests were going to play fair. There was always the chance they would all claim they had been given whatever number came out. She had to hope for a little good will. She couldn’t have the whole raffle called into question with Diana already scrutinising everything.

  Jackie dipped her hand into the basket. Abby could hear the swirling around as her mum swished the tickets from left to right, mixing. It seemed to go on an age until Jackie removed her hand, a white ticket in between her fingers. Abby held her breath as she watched her mum unfurl the paper until finally …

  ‘And it’s number … fourteen!’

  It was a low number. This wasn’t good, but how bad could it really be? Abby began to pray under her breath, well, not pray exactly, but force words of encouragement to the heavens. Please! Please! Be nice! Remember how I never actually told Miranda how stupid she was for not knowing the difference between a paperclip and a staple …

  ‘That’s my number!’ Diana exclaimed excitedly.

  Abby didn’t know whether to cry or introduce manic laughter into the situation. The noise that left her lips was somehow a combo of both. ‘Congratulations, Diana!’ It was over. One winner. Just one extra boat fare to pay.

  ‘I was given number fourteen also,’ another voice spoke. ‘Well, not me, my uncle George. See, he got me to write it on my hand.’ George’s tallest nephew proffered forth the knuckle of his thumb joint, a ballpoint number 14 clearly visible.

  ‘Wanging hell,’ Melody exclaimed loudly. ‘Where’s the list?’

  ‘I am sorry, Daughter-of-Jackie, Abby, but I am sure I also have the number fourteen.’ It was Spyridoula now. Abby wanted to hide, run off the terrace, down the street and find the nearest bottle of Fix again. Why had she left Melody in charge of the tickets? Why hadn’t she written blow-by-blow instructions? The answer of course was because she thought a child of three could probably work out what you did with a simple book of perforated slips.

  ‘We could draw it again,’ Jackie suggested.

  The loudest shriek of a ‘no’ came from Diana. ‘You cannot draw it again. Drawing again would be against every rule of competition etiquette there is.’

  ‘I’ve found the list!’ Melody exclaimed, hair bouncing as she appeared to wipe a sticky purple substance off a rather scrunched-up piece of notebook. ‘We’ll get this sorted, find out exactly who has number fourteen and wins the prize.’

  Abby watched her sister’s eyes scanning the paper as everyone seemed to focus on her, waiting for the answer to the cliff-hanger like it was the season finale of Riverdale. But then Melody started putting her fingers out in turn, like she was counting. Abby then knew this was really bad and there was no way out.

  ‘How many?’ she asked, voice wobbling.

  Melody looked up, eyes wide. ‘Five.’

  Forty-nine

  The Blue Vine

  ‘Signomi, Old Fashioned.’

  Theo put the glass of orange-coloured liquid in front of Abby and slipped down into the chair opposite her. She had been sat at one of the tables closest to the water for the past hour. One of his colleagues had brought her a drink and complimentary crisps and she had broken each piece up into crumbs and thrown them into the water for the fish. Now her fingers were wrapped around the glass tealight holder on the table, smoothing over every ridge and bump in the pattern, her eyes appearing to be watching her trail of movement but not really paying full attention. She hadn’t seemed to notice the arrival of another drink … or him.

  ‘Abby,’ he said gently. ‘The trip to Erikousa …’

  ‘Is a bloody disaster,’ came the reply.

  He swallowed, instantly knowing she was in a bad place. ‘Please, have another drink.’

  ‘Yes,’ Abby agreed, swiping up the cocktail. ‘Let me have another drink to drown away the fact that I’ve successfully screwed up my mother’s business by getting Desperately Seeking into more debt because now I have to pay for five winners to go on the Erikousa trip!’ She practically inhaled the alcohol. ‘Not to mention my sister has to do a spot of lap-dancing to pay off Donald Trump and goodness knows how much George’s catering fee will be!’

  ‘I am sure Spyridoula will not want her prize,’ Theo suggested. ‘I will talk to her.’

  ‘No!’ Abby spoke quickly.
‘That’s the last thing I want. As Dolans, we pride ourselves on our integrity. We always have. If you promise something you see it through and deliver on that promise, no matter what.’

  ‘OK,’ Theo said. ‘Then what are you going to do?’

  She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘I have no idea. Pay, I guess, on my credit card if I have to. I really thought that a nice prize would be the perfect end to the perfect party but Melody was right.’ She sighed. ‘I should have just bought a bottle of something from the supermarket. Then I would only be looking at five bottles of plonk, not five expensive boat tickets.’

  ‘This is not your fault, Abby,’ Theo stated. ‘Melody was in charge of the tickets.’

  ‘But it’s been me who has taken charge of everything since I got here.’ She took a deep breath, as if emboldening herself. ‘I said they had to rebrand. I said they had to paint and put on a show and … what do I really know about anything? What have I ever, really been in charge of my whole entire life? Lists!’ Abby blasted. ‘Bloody, stupid, pointless lists! Itemising my world like I’m clicking things into an Amazon basket!’

  ‘Abby.’ Theo reached for her hands, swiftly removing the tealight holder and replacing it with his fingers, interlocking their digits as tightly as he could. For a second Abby seemed to still, her skin placidly comfortable next to his and then she shivered.

  ‘You feel so nice,’ she said, voice a lot softer.

  ‘You feel nice too,’ he replied, squeezing her hands.

  She looked straight at him then, those beautiful, if slightly sad eyes, locking with his. ‘I’ve never been in this situation before,’ she whispered.

  ‘This situation?’ he queried.

  ‘I have no axis.’ She whispered the words even more quietly. ‘I’m not anchored to anything.’

  ‘This is a good thing,’ Theo responded. ‘It means you are as free as those birds out there.’ He nodded towards the swallows, dipping and diving over the ocean then through the eucalyptus trees that surrounded the cove.