Chapter 5
Toby and Filippo had named their first business venture Sul Tetto, which was Italian for ‘up on the roof’, and when Kate was led out onto the hostel’s large roof terrace by her proud brother, she immediately understood why. Hvar Town, in all its higgledy-piggledy beauty, tumbled down the hillside towards a sea turned molten gold by the steadily setting sun. Kate gazed out, speechless with awe, and watched as a light evening breeze carried a flock of birds west towards distant clusters of land.
‘Those are the Pakleni Islands,’ Toby told her, smiling as she continued to gape. ‘Well worth a visit for the beaches and restaurants, or to wander off the beaten track for a bit.’
‘I can’t believe this is where you live now,’ said Kate. ‘I know you sent photos, but I must not have been paying proper attention. I had no idea Croatia was this . . . well, look at it.’
‘I know.’ Toby put an arm around her shoulders. ‘I fell in love with this place as soon as I set eyes on it.’
‘The same as he did with me,’ drawled Filippo, who had just appeared behind them carrying a bottle and three small glasses.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Kate, as he eased out the cork. ‘Alcohol will only make me maudlin.’
‘Nonsense.’ Filippo handed her a small glass that he had filled to the brim with the amber liquid. ‘It is a Balkan tradition to toast a new guest with rakija.’
‘What is rakija?’ she asked nervously, bringing it up to her nose for a sniff and promptly recoiling.
‘Grape juice,’ put in Toby pragmatically, tapping his own glass against hers. ‘Come on, Nims – one shot won’t kill you.’
‘Fine.’ Kate steeled herself. ‘But I am doing this purely for you two.’
‘One, two, three – živjeli!’ the men chorused, and before she had time to demur further, Kate swallowed the lot.
The rakija burned, but she found the sensation oddly galvanising. It was as if someone had fed her an elixir of courage; she felt switched on – awake suddenly for the first time in more than a fortnight.
‘Shall we have another?’ asked Filippo, and Kate nodded just as Toby shook his head.
‘You’re sure?’ he checked. ‘All right then, if you say so.’
The second shot lifted Kate’s spirits even higher and she emitted a small ‘whoop’ as the fiery liquid dribbled through her insides. Having eaten nothing but a limp croissant all day, she knew there would be no barrier between the alcohol and her bloodstream – but Kate didn’t care. She wanted to feel reckless, to be reckless. When she took her phone out of her bag and asked for the hostel’s Wi-Fi password, however, Toby pulled a face.
‘Later,’ he said. ‘First, I want to give you the tour.’
They left Filippo grilling whole fresh sea bream on the built-in rooftop barbecue and made their way back down the outer stairs. Toby had insisted that they go straight to the terrace when they arrived, because it was the only part of the hostel they had finished, so Kate had yet to see inside. Like many of the buildings she had glimpsed during their journey from the airport, the hostel was a large stone townhouse. But unlike the detached properties on either side, this one had been converted for purpose, with the ground floor consisting of an open-plan reception area complete with small lift.
‘We’re one of the only hostels in Hvar to have disabled access,’ Toby explained, as he pushed open a door that was peeling paint and led her into an enclosed stairway. The first floor housed the largest of Sul Tetto’s six dormitories, plus a kitchen and lounge area that contained little more than piles of rubble and beams of wood.
‘Now you see what Mum meant when she told you we were running a bit behind schedule,’ Toby said, pushing his foot through the dust only to begin coughing in earnest.
‘There are two female dorms, two mixed and two for the boys,’ he explained, opening another door on the next floor up and revealing partially constructed bunk beds and a newly installed basin unit below a filthy mirror.
‘It’s . . . great,’ Kate offered lamely. ‘I mean, I can see the potential. How long have you got until you open again?’
‘Oh, we hope to be ready in a few weeks,’ Toby said airily. ‘Plenty of time to get everything done.’
Kate pictured neat patterned curtains fixed to bunks, hidden shelves for guests to store their valuables and individual lights for bedtime reading. There was an air-conditioning unit trailing wires in a top corner, but how much better it would be to have a large ceiling fan in here. She wondered how much Toby and Filippo had already planned, and how nice the three of them could get these rooms looking with just a little time and effort.
‘Did you mean it when you said you wanted my advice on colour schemes and stuff?’ she asked, pausing to catch her breath as they reached the third floor.
‘Of course I did. I told you, Nims, this isn’t simply a pity party. We need you.’
There was one final dorm room on this level, plus a handful of private bedrooms – one of which Toby proclaimed was for her.
‘Where do you and Filippo sleep?’ she asked, taking in the pale green walls, clean white sheets pulled taut across a double bed and a wardrobe that she could tell had been purpose-built.
‘We have a small apartment over the road. You don’t mind staying here, do you?’ he checked. ‘I would offer you the sofa at ours, but Filippo has started sleepwalking lately – I think due to the stress of getting this place finished – and he prefers to sleep na––’
‘Yes, yes – I get it.’ Kate raised a hand. ‘Say no more. And I really like this room, so don’t worry.’
‘You do?’ Toby sounded proud.
‘Yes. I mean, you’ve made a good start on it. A few finishing touches might be nice, though, to make it a bit more homely.’
‘Finishing touches?’
‘Some art on the walls, a few plants, maybe? A selection of complimentary toiletries in the bathroom.’
‘It’s a hostel, not a hotel.’
Kate felt herself deflate.
‘Did you make this?’ she asked, running an admiring hand across the wardrobe doors.
Toby laughed. ‘Yeah, that was me. The man who can’t even build a sandcastle. No, our local carpenter did it,’ he told her. ‘I say carpenter, but he’s a decorator as well. And a pretty good fisherman. He also put a new clutch in the jeep last month, which saved us a fortune.’
‘Is he on the payroll, this multi-talented individual?’ Kate asked, opening the door of the bathroom cabinet and peering inside. ‘It looks to me as if you still have rather a lot of bunk beds to build.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Toby agreed, ushering her out into the stairwell before shouldering ajar the door that led through to the terrace. A delicious aroma of grilled fish wafted out.
‘Alex is away at the moment, but he’ll no doubt be back soon.’
‘You don’t sound very sure,’ said Kate, recalling the time she and James had booked a local ‘friend of a friend’ gardener to come and dig their flowerbeds, only for him to continually cancel for the best part of three months. In the end, Kate had borrowed a pitchfork and trowel off the neighbours and done the job herself.
‘Alex is a casual sort of bloke,’ Toby told her with a shrug, as they followed their noses across the rooftop. ‘He’ll show up and do a few days’ hard graft, then he vanishes for a while.’
‘Just like that?’ Kate frowned.
‘He is a man of mystery,’ explained Filippo, passing Kate a plate piled high with fresh tomato salad. ‘He was here only yesterday, finishing the bedroom for you, so my guess is that he will not return for another week – perhaps longer.’
‘Doesn’t that frustrate you?’ she asked.
‘That is just his way,’ Filippo said, busying himself with filleting the sea bream. ‘We do not argue because he is the best. We prefer to give him the work if we can; he’s a good man.’
‘He had better be a bona fide miracle worker,’ Kate told them. ‘Otherwise, there’s no way you’ll have
this place ready to open in a mere few weeks’ time.’
‘Ye of little faith,’ tempered Toby, conjuring up some cutlery from a pot beside the barbecue as Filippo began to top up their shot glasses for the third time. ‘Don’t you start stressing about it on top of all your other woes – if Alex says he’ll get the work done in time, then he will.’
Kate must have allowed her incredulity to show on her face, because her brother rolled his eyes as he raised a toast.
‘To Alex the carpenter,’ he said, looking directly across at her. ‘The most trustworthy man I have ever met.’
Chapter 6
It was long after midnight when Toby and Filippo finally began to make noises about heading off to bed. Kate could tell her brother was against the idea of leaving her alone and it took some earnest convincing on her part to shoo him away. How many times could a person claim to be fine inside a single half hour? Kate may easily have set a new world record.
The truth, which she would not so much as contemplate telling him, was that she wanted more than anything to have some time by herself. More than wanting it, she needed it. Thanks to the combined efforts of Toby, her parents and Robyn, Kate had spent the majority of her time since that fateful night in the pub being looked after by one or all of them, and as much as she appreciated their efforts, she was also fatigued – tired of being strong, tired of making jokes, tired of holding back the truth.
Kate ventured back downstairs to her room at the same time as Toby and Filippo departed for the night, but she had no intention of going straight to sleep. Having finally persuaded Toby to give her the Wi-Fi password, Kate immediately opened Twitter and checked on the status of #WannabeWife, discovering that in the space of just a few hours, the retweets were up by several thousand. She had yet to discover who it was who had posted the original clip of her proposing but had believed James when he denied all knowledge. Kate had called him as soon as she’d seen the video, near hysterical with mortification, and he had sounded genuinely angry on her behalf.
Rubbing her eyes, she went through the now-familiar routine of checking all her ex-boyfriend’s social media accounts followed by his WhatsApp, so she could see what time he had last been online. It had been recently, she noted. Who had he been messaging long after his usual lights-out time of eleven p.m.? She watched the grey line of text below his name, willing it to turn blue and switch to the word ‘online’. It comforted her to see it, made her feel connected to him somehow, even if the two of them weren’t exchanging messages anymore. She was gratified to find that his profile picture was still the same one, taken by her in Athens the previous September, of James holding up an ice cream, the Acropolis rising grandly out of the dust behind him.
Again, she was struck by how unfair this situation was, and how wrong. How could they have shared that moment – all those moments of such joy and hope – only to have them amount to nothing? How could he have thrown away everything they’d shared? Kate felt the pain of that loss again, as she did every time she thought about him, and forced herself to stop and breathe deeply
It would not do to sit and dwell – there were too many thoughts clamouring for attention in her head and too much throat-crushing anxiety coursing through her body. To lie down in the dark now would allow all the things that lurked in the shadows to take hold, and she was not sure if she had the energy to fight them, not after so many days of pretence. Instead, she fetched a cardigan from her suitcase, swapped her flip-flops for slippers and headed back up to the roof.
There had been so much to take in since she arrived in Croatia – new sights, new scents, new faces, a new home for however long she decided to stay – that the day felt to Kate as if it had passed by in a blur. Here she was in a different country to the one she had woken up in that morning, yet the sense of being so far away from her everyday life was yet to register fully. She had not given it the space to do so, but now she knew she must try.
The rough stone wall on the far side of the terrace felt warm under Kate’s fingers and she pressed her palms flat against it. Faint sounds of chatter were drifting up from the town and the lights from the larger yachts moored down in the harbour were reflected in the water, each one dazzling every bit as brightly as the stars far above. The elements were all in place to soothe her, but Kate could feel agitation knocking from inside her chest, demanding attention from her embattled heart.
Of course, it wasn’t just the humiliation with James, and his hostility. There was also the secret she’d been guarding for months now – a truth that she had only shared with James. She hoped he would honour his promise not to mention anything about it to anyone they knew. If he had ever loved her at all, then surely he would do the decent thing.
Kate had been staring at the harbour lights for so long that spots of colour were floating behind her eyes. Tilting her head, she squinted out across the dark expanse of water, over to where the Pakleni Islands rose like slumbering sea beasts from the gloom. Toby had explained that there were beach clubs on some of them, and Kate thought she could just about see signs of life on a few distant shores. Straining her ears, she listened for the thump of bass coming out from a speaker, or the shrill cry of a sozzled group of friends stumbling home from a bar – but there was nothing now. All she could hear was the dan-cing wind; the whisper of the waves as they kissed the shore.
Loneliness gripped her then, taking hold of her so fast and with such potency that Kate took a few steps backwards, her hands clutching her chest. It felt as if the enormity of everything that had happened was suddenly consuming her, rising like bindweed to choke her resolve. Turning, she slid steadily down into a sitting position, her back pressed against the wall and her head resting on her knees. She tried to focus on the floor below, but her breath was becoming shallow, small gasps in place of measured gulps.
Acknowledging the fact that she could not breathe did nothing to steady her frantically racing heart, and Kate rolled her head back, her eyes darting in desperation for something steady and unmoving, a fixed point upon which she could anchor her fear.
I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want it to be just me.
She could feel the tears streaming down her cheeks but could not unclasp her fingers to wipe them away. A bright star burned high above her, a constant and beautiful sight, and Kate forced herself to focus on it as she tried to steady her breathing.
In and out, in and out.
It was in this position that she remained, marooned in the darkness and motionless save for the slow rise and fall of her chest, until weariness finally took over, pushing aside her misery long enough for a shellshocked Kate to regain some control, stagger to her feet and wrap her arms around her shoulders, her teeth chattering as the useless adrenalin drained away.
This was the real her, a black biro scribble beneath colourful layers of crayon, the sad face below the painted grin she showed the rest of the world. The truth amidst all the lies.
Far from leaving it behind in England, all she had done by coming here was to make herself feel worse.
But she must not let this sadness consume her. She must repeat the pattern she had followed all her life and soldier on regardless.
Avoid conflict, avoid sorrow, avoid confronting the truth.
Pretending was all Kate knew how to do.
Chapter 7
Any residual anxiety lingering within Kate was eradicated as soon as she stepped outside the following morning. The low breeze that greeted her felt warm against her skin, and she paused to let it chase around her legs like a child, her face lifted towards a sun turned milky white by clouds.
She had dressed simply, in functional cotton shorts and a honey-coloured vest that James always said brought out her eyes, with her long russet curls tied back. Warned by her brother that the temperature in Hvar was climbing by the day and that the sunshine, whilst obviously welcome, was a fiery opponent to the fair and freckled complexions of the Nimble family, she had covered her exposed skin in sun lotion and brought along he
r straw hat.
Yesterday’s drive from the ferry port to the hostel had afforded her a glimpse of a town that was arranged on the hillside like a marble run, its upward-snaking roads interconnected by a series of steps and narrow alleyways. Kate suspected that there were a hundred different trails she could take to the harbour, but she did not want to wander with her head buried in a map. After all, the sea was visible from where she was standing, so all she really had to do was continue to head downhill.
Setting off along a street strewn with fallen pine needles, she passed the open door of a tiny bakery and turned left, following a sloping stone path that ran alongside a house with shells set into its outer walls. Kate felt her rigid shoulders slacken as she took in each beautiful detail. Ducking under the overhanging branches of a pomegranate tree heavy with ripening fruit, she almost tripped over a black cat that was washing itself on a step.
‘You could have warned me,’ she chided it a few moments later, when she found herself confronted by a collapsed wall and had to hop over the fallen bricks in order to keep the craggy shoreline in sight. Even at this early hour, the hum of the crickets was shrill and intense, and Kate was surprised not to see clusters of them converging together on every surrounding surface. Squinting into the distance, she saw that the same wind which was blowing jacaranda petals across her sandalled feet was also agitating the surface of the sea below, turning its mirror-like flatness into dappled glass.
Perhaps she should have waited for Toby and Filippo to emerge before venturing out on a solo exploration? Her brother had told her the previous evening that the two of them tended not to get up until mid-morning most days, preferring to indulge in a long, leisurely breakfast before working at the hostel right through lunch and into the early evening, so Kate did not think they would be surprised by her absence. But maybe they would have wanted the opportunity to show her around themselves?
Feeling frustrated, she came to a stop on the path, dithering as she so often seemed to over a seemingly easy decision. It had felt simple when she awoke that morning – she had wanted to go for a walk, and so she did – but now she was riddled by uncertainty. Robyn would tell her to please herself, while James would think her actions impolite. He would point out that Toby was her host, and therefore she should look to him for instruction, just as she looked to James for his when they were at home.
The Getaway: A holiday romance for 2021 - perfect summer escapism! Page 4