The Getaway: A holiday romance for 2021 - perfect summer escapism!

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘Not the cream,’ said Filippo, leaning back so Kate and Toby could see the pet carrier balanced across a bemused Alex’s knees.

  ‘I am the cat who got the cat.’

  Chapter 17

  True to her word, Kate worked tirelessly from dawn through to sundown over the following week, often staying up long after midnight to apply extra coats of clear varnish to upcycled items of furniture or to sew up the hems of curtains for the bunks.

  Toby and Filippo had hired a team of local decorators to help paint the walls and wooden floors, but with the two men often out running errands or ensconced in the small office downstairs working on their marketing plans, it fell to Kate to answer all their queries. Given that she spoke barely a word of Croatian and had no experience whatsoever in supervising anything or anyone, she was pleasantly surprised by how nice it felt to have a semblance of responsibility. The more the hostel started to come together, the more her self-confidence grew, and this gave her the boost she needed to step up and make decisions about the design.

  Having spent a chunk of the morning trying to find a home for the stack of real-life magazines she’d brought over from England and moving a large, jute rug around in the lounge area, seeing how it looked in different positions, Kate now turned to her next project, which she took up to the roof terrace where it was relatively quiet. Toby had found an old wooden chest at a market in Split, which she was planning to sand down, paint white and use to store the hostel’s selection of board games and DVDs. Spreading out a dust sheet and arranging all the pots and brushes she needed on top, Kate sat down cross-legged in her denim shorts and plain vest and was just pulling on her latex gloves when her phone rang.

  It was Robyn, calling through FaceTime, and Kate propped the phone up against the front of the chest before answering.

  ‘Hey!’ Robyn waved. She was in the front seat of her car, by the looks of things. Kate could see the usual stack of folders, crumpled items of clothing and empty crisp packets piled up on the back seat. Despite almost twenty-five years of friendship, Kate had yet to convince her best friend that being neat and tidy was an endeavour worth pursuing.

  ‘I’m just in between appointments, so thought I’d check in,’ Robyn said, unwrapping a Twix with her teeth. ‘How’s it all going? The photos you sent me are amazing.’

  Kate blushed. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I know so,’ Robyn confirmed, taking a bite of the chocolate bar. ‘Oh, that is heaven,’ she said, her mouth half full of biscuit and caramel. ‘Sorry – lunch on the go as per. What are you up to?’

  Kate held up a brush. ‘Painting – what about you?’

  ‘I’m about to see one of my stroke patients. He’s been doing well, actually, but we’ve hit a stumbling block with the writing. My plan today is to help him write a list of all the things he’d buy if he won the lottery; I figure that’d be a good incentive.’

  ‘What would be on your list?’ Kate asked, already knowing the answer.

  ‘A house with its own lake, so I could go wild swimming whenever I liked. And a Twix factory,’ she added, popping in another morsel of her chocolate bar. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Kate grimaced. ‘The only thing I want is a time machine, and not even a rollover-week win can pay for something that doesn’t exist.’

  Robyn looked at her reproachfully. ‘You’re not entering into the spirit of the game. And we agreed, remember, no talking about You Know Who?’

  ‘Voldemort?’ cracked back Kate, earning herself a withering stare.

  ‘So, I’m guessing you and James are still at an impasse?’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘And you honestly haven’t caved and messaged him?’

  ‘There’s been no time,’ Kate said truthfully. ‘I’ve been so busy here this past week. The only things I look at online these days are Pinterest boards and YouTube tutorials about Polyfilla.’

  She decided not to mention her daily foray onto Twitter, or the fact that a well-known reality star had now retweeted the #WannabeWife video, leading to a fresh influx of snarky comments. Kate had watched herself proposing to James so many times now she almost felt removed from it, as if the small, bespectacled, curly-haired woman standing up on that chair was not her at all, but a poor hapless stranger. Someone she could feel sorry for, but not have to engage with. It must be her mind’s attempt at self-protection.

  ‘Talk me through what you’ve done so far then,’ enthused Robyn, her sleek dark bob falling forwards as she wriggled around her car seat trying to get comfortable.

  ‘Well,’ began Kate, pausing to take a mental inventory, ‘we’ve gone for two main shades of wall paint in the dorms – white along the bottom and green above – separated by a strip of pink, while the interior doors are this lovely rich bottle green on one side and a sweet taffy on the other.’

  ‘Taffy?’ Robyn asked.

  ‘It’s a soft pink,’ said Kate. ‘Then, each of the dorms has a vanity unit, which is the focal point, and the wall space behind that is an even darker green – almost juniper.’

  ‘I love how you speak Farrow and Ball now,’ her friend joked, and Kate rolled her eyes.

  ‘That part of the wall had to be darker,’ she explained, ‘because the units are so beautiful I wanted to help them stand out. Plus, with all those bunks in there, the rooms were in danger of looking too uniform and drab, so anything I could do to draw the eye away, I did.’

  ‘It’s nice that you’re filling the place with plants,’ Robyn told her. ‘So good for air quality.’

  ‘That’s one of the nicest things about Hvar,’ said Kate. ‘Everywhere you look, there is foliage of some kind. Toby says it’s because the island is so dry. At home, we have forests and rolling green hills to satisfy our craving for nature, whereas here, natural greenery is harder to find, so people make more effort to surround themselves with it. I did want to decoupage the big ugly storage lockers with a cactus-print wallpaper I found online, but Toby wasn’t keen on the idea.’

  Robyn squinted into the camera and put on her best Detective Columbo voice. ‘Decoupage?’ she said. ‘Who are you – and what have you done with my friend?’

  Kate affected surprise. ‘Is my disguise not fooling you?’

  ‘You may laugh,’ said her friend, ‘but I’m serious. This change in you, this new top-notch designer who’s emerged recently – it’s great. I had no idea you had such a knack for all this stuff.’

  ‘I didn’t either,’ Kate confessed. ‘But honestly, nothing I’ve done is that difficult. James is the architect, the one with all the design knowhow – he would probably cringe if he saw my mood boards and painted gnomes.’

  ‘If anything,’ countered Robyn, starting on a packet of Monster Munch, ‘he should have encouraged this passion in you, given his job.’

  ‘He didn’t know,’ Kate said. ‘How could he, if even I didn’t?’

  ‘You must have had an inkling?’

  ‘Maybe . . . But liking something and being good at it aren’t the same thing. I did suggest that we try a feature wall in the bedroom once and James looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head.’

  She turned as the terrace door was pushed open and Alex emerged, an enormous carboard box in his hands.

  ‘Tiki lanterns,’ he said, in answer to her enquiring expression. ‘For the bar.’

  ‘Er who is that?’ asked Robyn, loudly enough to warrant an interested glance from Alex.

  Kate snatched up the phone. ‘That’s Alex,’ she hissed. ‘I told you about him – he’s the carpenter.’

  ‘He looks like one of the Dothraki from Game Of Thrones – only a blond version.’

  Kate cringed as Alex put down the box.

  ‘Let me see him again,’ pleaded Robyn, laughing as Kate put a finger over the camera.

  ‘Didn’t you say you had that appointment soon?’

  ‘I get it.’ Robyn gave her an exaggerated wink. ‘You want some alone time. I can go.’

  ‘No, no
– it’s fine. Just wait a min––’ But a cackling Robyn had rung off.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Kate said to Alex, wondering as she did so why she ended up apologising to this man so often. ‘That was my friend Robyn – aka London’s primary wind-up merchant.’

  ‘Right.’

  Alex was dressed in his standard ensemble of moth-eaten T-shirt, mangy shorts and a pair of ripped Converse pulled on over bare feet. He had tied a bandana over his dreadlocks, presumably to protect them from flecks of paint, while a colourful pile of woven wristbands pooled together above each of his hands.

  ‘At least I’m not crying after this phone call,’ Kate blundered on, picking up a knife and prising the lid off a tin of white paint.

  ‘You seem to like it a lot,’ Alex observed, folding his arms as she glanced up at him. ‘Your phone, I mean. I see you on it all the time.’

  ‘To check stuff online for the hostel,’ she protested. ‘I’m in about seven bidding wars on eBay for various things at the moment.’

  ‘I see.’

  Kate shuffled closer to the wooden chest and began to apply the first coat. She figured she would need at least three to get the pure-white finish she was after.

  ‘I’m not on it all the time,’ she went on, slightly defensively. ‘My mum checks in a lot and I like talking to Robyn. She is my best friend, so it’s natural that she’d want to make sure I’m OK. The last thing I want to do is worry anyone – especially not my family.’

  Something seemed to flicker across Alex’s face at her words, and he thought for a moment before replying. ‘I guess some folk just do better on their own,’ he said. ‘I know a bloke like that, met him a long time ago now. He always used to say that only when a person is completely alone are they their true self. He said he found it exhausting, all the pretence that you have to put on around other people, so as far as he was concerned, it was easier to distance himself from everyone else.’

  Kate swallowed. Her heart had snagged on the word ‘pretence’; she understood the concept better than he realised, and whoever this acquaintance of his was, they must have struggled as she did to be honest about who they really were.

  ‘Why do you think that is?’ she asked Alex, the words uttered before she thought to stop them.

  He was still standing by the edge of her dust sheet, the arms that had been folded hanging prone by his sides. He didn’t answer at first, merely watched her, a struggle of some kind playing out across his features. Stoic was a good word for Alex, she thought – he never gave away so much as a trace of how he was feeling.

  Finding Kate’s eyes with his own pale-blue pair now, however, he seemed to soften.

  ‘Why what is?’

  ‘Why people are so afraid to be their real selves?’

  ‘Maybe because they don’t like what they see on the inside,’ he murmured. ‘Or because they want to keep that bit of themselves a secret and not share every last part with others. My friend would tell you that – he would say that the lies we tell, that face we put on for the world, is far better, far less ugly, than the truth that we choose to hide.’

  ‘He sounds wise, this friend of yours,’ Kate said lightly, uncomfortable suddenly with how close they were straying towards to her own buried truth. ‘Is his name Yoda?’

  ‘No.’ Alex laughed but didn’t smile.

  ‘He’s called Josh.’

  Dear Josh,

  Do you remember what you were like as a child? Because I do.

  I have been thinking about the early part of your life a lot lately, wondering about all those odd behaviours that hinted at what was to come. It all seems so obvious now, in hindsight.

  As a toddler, you were boisterous and playful at home – but that all changed when you started school. You became so withdrawn and watchful; Mum was told that you resisted attempts to work in groups and would sit in sullen silence on the boundaries.

  It was so frustrating, Josh, because you were clever – exceedingly so. You only had to be told something once and you’d remember it. I can recall being astonished by the nuggets of information you would casually impart – our very own little walking, talking encyclopaedia. But at school, you barely spoke.

  I realise now that it was anxiety, of course. That awful alarm bell in your stomach, telling you to run, the voice in your ear that whispers cruelties. You weren’t being obtuse, as the teachers thought, you were merely scared. Frightened not just of the clutter and chaos of a classroom, but of the undeniable fact that you did not fit in.

  It breaks my heart to think of you then, a confused and desperate boy being endlessly reprimanded for not trying hard enough, when it took every bit of strength you had simply to cross the threshold. I can hardly bear to imagine that – imagine you being punished for doing your very best. How did you find the courage to keep going when every fibre of your body must have been urging you to retreat? I wish I had listened better, been there for you more.

  Things became worse as you got older, didn’t they? I saw you fly into such tempers that you could not recognise us. You started to lock your bedroom door and barely emerge for days, hardly eat, rarely sleep. Your handsome features sunk inwards as the depression pulled you down from the inside out.

  Your form teacher assumed you were autistic (not true); one GP blamed anxiety while borderline personality disorder was suggested by another. At no stage did anyone come up with a definitive diagnosis. The information coming to all of us was that you were different, your mental health something that could not be categorised; you were an anomaly.

  On your eighteenth birthday, you told me that you’d given up on doctors.

  It was another two years before you gave up on me.

  I have tortured myself with what ifs and why nots. That is the nature of this vile disease, of anxiety and depression, of all mental health issues – they spread like webs from the sufferer to those closest, holding us fast but rendering us helpless. You and I are connected by more than simply blood, Josh; we are pieces of the same puzzle, shards of the same shattered image.

  To feel whole again, I need you back.

  Love, Angela

  Part Two

  Chapter 18

  In the end, they had named the cat Siva.

  According to the both the vet and the results of an extensive Google search, she was a Peterbald, and according to the microchip on the back of her neck, she belonged to an Italian family – or at least she had, once upon a time. The phone number on the file did not connect, and while Filippo had done the honourable thing and sent a handwritten note to the address, nobody thought it likely that Siva would be reunited with her owners. The vet guessed that either she had come over with her previous family on a yacht and been abandoned or forgotten, or she had made the journey across the water as a stowaway. No matter how the plucky little cat had come to be in Hvar, nobody seemed to be clamouring to get her back. So she stayed, much to her brand-new doting Italian father’s delight, and set about causing as much trouble as possible.

  ‘She’s taking a leaf out of your book,’ joked Toby, when Siva strode nonchalantly through a tray of olive-green paint that Kate was using on the legs of a footstool, and left paw prints all over the white floorboards. She was also a shameless thief, stealing every bit of food she could, including buttered slices of toast, cocktail cherries off the bar and even an ice cream, which she swiped clean out of a decorator’s hands.

  Siva tolerated Kate and Toby and begrudgingly allowed Filippo to pet her occasionally, but her real love was Alex. On the days he didn’t work late and unroll his sleeping bag in one of the dorms or up on the roof, she would sit by the downstairs front window after he’d departed and wail forlornly into the night – so loudly that the neighbourhood dogs often joined in. She was also very stubborn, literally chewing up and spitting out the fancy diamanté collar that was bought for her and turning up her snub nose at the dry food recommended by the vet, because she knew Filippo would eventually relent and grill her fresh fish on his beloved barbec
ue instead.

  But despite Siva’s many calamities and histrionics, they all adored her – as did many of the locals, more of whom Kate was meeting every day. It was easy to like the people of Hvar, who always seemed so happy to help and never made her feel as if she was being judged. They were friendly without being nosy and kind yet not overbearing. Toby and Filippo had hired an office manager called Nika, who was a few years older than Kate and a good foot taller, with dark hair that she wore in a long plait and eyes the colour and shape of Brazil nuts. Manning the reception desk each day would be Noa, who drove a dilapidated scooter and had a full beard despite only being nineteen, while married couple Ana and Roko were put in charge of the cleaning duties.

  ‘What are you going to let me do to help?’ Kate had asked her brother, to which he had tutted affectionately.

  ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Tart the place up. Make us look good on Instagram or whatever.’

  Today she had been tasked with delivering a handful of invitations for Sul Tetto’s opening party, which Toby and Filippo were hosting in just a few days’ time. As well as friends, guests and staff, Kate had suggested they also add local businesspeople to the list, such as those who ran touring companies or excursions, as well as bar and restaurant owners who might be interested in offering discounted deals for the backpackers who would soon be filling the dorms.

  Having followed the coastal path from the centre of town all the way across to Majerovica Bay in the west that afternoon, dropping off printed invites as she went, Kate retraced her steps and ambled through the cobbled backstreets behind St Stephen’s Square, pausing to browse at several gift shops and clothing boutiques along the way.

  It was the sleepiest part of the day, that lull she had grown to love so much between lunchtime and sundown, when bellies were full, and moods were contented. Kate found herself enraptured as she often was by the sounds and sights of a town that had become like a second home to her, marvelling at how a place that was teeming over with exploring tourists continued to feel so serene. Was it the heat slowing everything down, or the surrounding echoes of the past? Hvar’s culture and history fitted together so seamlessly with the moneyed extravagance being flaunted down in the harbour, while the plethora of visitors from every notch along the wealth scale made for an eclectic atmosphere. There was room for all, and all made room for each other, and Kate, who had always felt much like a square peg in a round hole, found that she was completely at ease here.