Sofia shrugged and shouted something in Greek into the kitchen. Giorgio re-emerged, wiping his fingers delicately on a napkin. ‘Giorgio,’ Andrew continued loudly, ‘settle this matter for us, will you? My dear friend Paul says hummus is Greek. A Greek speciality, he insists.’
Several people on other tables were looking at us, at me. Giorgio bowed his head obsequiously. ‘My dear friend,’ he repeated, ‘is mistaken. Hummus is from the Middle East. But if he would like, I can bring something very similar, very delicious. Fava bean.’
Alice said, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Andrew.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’ll have tzatziki.’
‘We’ve ordered so much anyway,’ Alice said. ‘We can share.’
I smiled, but internally I continued to fume. I wish I hadn’t said ‘speciality’ but of course hummus was Greek. Andrew was bullying me, deploying Giorgio in his little game. It’s how I used to feel sometimes at school. I remember arguing about the spelling of the word ‘desiccate’ with a boy called Jeremy de Beauvoir who rallied a group of fellow trust-funders to support him, even when a dictionary proved me right. People with privilege always think they control the truth.
Alice clearly felt bad on my behalf, which was good. She tried her hardest to make things better, laughing loudly, throwing back her head, her white throat flashing in the light. Under the table, her hand rolled tantalising circles on my thigh. She said to Andrew, ‘Did you know Paul did crosswords?’ (‘I’m more of a sudoku man,’ he answered.) ‘Paul – tell the others about Kate Boxer. He’s got this wonderful picture by her in his flat. What’s it called it again?’ ‘Twiggy Bird,’ I said. (‘Twiggy Bird?’ repeated Andrew, his intonation expressing contempt.) She wanted everything to be all right. She wanted us to be friends. She had no idea how much I had begun to dislike him.
‘I’m thinking of selling the flat,’ I said.
‘Are you?’ Alice looked surprised.
‘I feel like a change.’ I put my hand across her back, slipping it under the fabric of her dress to fondle her shoulder, and as I did so, I brought my mouth to her ear. ‘I want to live closer to you,’ I murmured softly.
A secret smile played on her lips. She looked at me sideways, eyes narrowed, like a cat. ‘Let’s talk about that after the holiday,’ she said, her voice full of promise.
I looked at Andrew to check he was watching.
It became noisy, hard to hear. The music, an electro dance track, was turned up loud and a rowdy group took over the next table – four English couples, the men in short-sleeved shirts, the women with plunging necklines. (‘Delfinos,’ Alice mouthed at Andrew, rolling her eyes.) Most of the kids had wandered off, Alice and Tina were sharing a slice of baklava and I was surreptitiously feeding some cats who had gathered under the table. They were worryingly thin, with jagged haunches; two of them had gammy eyes.
Tina was complaining about Archie, his tendency to get his own way. ‘Not that I can talk,’ she added, ‘being the youngest of three.’
‘Boys or girls?’ I asked, dropping a piece of lamb kebab on the ground, and then another quickly as the cats began to scrap for it.
‘Three girls.’ She laughed merrily. ‘I’m the baby, typical youngest child: spoilt, spoilt, spoilt; used to getting away with murder. What about you?’
‘An only child,’ I said. ‘Like Alice.’
It was one of our late-night topics: the pressure of parental hope, the difficulty with relationships, the sensitivity to criticism – one of the subjects I used to accelerate intimacy. I wiped my hand on a napkin and put my arm around Alice’s shoulder.
‘You and me both,’ she said. Her hand still lay on my thigh and I shifted slightly so that it would move higher. ‘As fucked up as each other.’
‘Get a room,’ Louis said loudly.
Andrew picked up the glass salt cellar and shook it into in the v-shaped crook between his thumb and finger, his lower lip jutting. The cellar rattled, full of rice. Nothing came out.
He put the salt back down on the table and breathed in deeply. He turned to gaze out over the harbour, so intently that I twisted my head to see what he was looking at. There was nothing there – just the gleam of reflected lights, and the water stilled and darkened.
I looked back at him, as Tina carefully lay her arms around his neck. She kissed his cheek, then, arms still in place, drew back to study him. He continued to stare ahead, his mouth a grim line. He was trying to get attention. Personally, I’d have ignored him.
Alice took her hand away from my thigh. She leant across the table. ‘Poor Andrew,’ she said. ‘I miss her so much too.’
‘I’m sorry, Al,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing like losing a husband, I know. It just occasionally comes back and hits me. It’s the guilt, really. Maybe she’d have been with us here now, married, with kids. She’d have loved it here.’
‘Poor Andrew,’ Alice said again. The hand that had fondled my thigh took his hand. At the same time, Tina removed her arm from his shoulders. ‘It’s not about comparisons. In many ways it’s worse – she’d been at your side nearly your whole life. As an older brother, you felt responsible for her, that’s probably why you feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. It wasn’t your fault. It’s just a bugger. An absolute bugger. And it is so unfair. Why your sister? Why my husband? They both died too young.’
‘It’s stupid, isn’t it?’ He thudded his fist against his chest where his heart was. ‘But she’s in here. Always will be.’
An image of Florrie, his sister, came into my head, or I think it was Florrie. It might have been Daisy: boyishly short hair, feathered around her face, a full mouth, a sweet smile. Was it another sister or was it Florrie who was dead? Florrie: could she be dead? If it was her, why had nobody told me? Was it a recent death or an old one? Had I known and forgotten? Was this the sort of thing that could feasibly slip your mind?
‘Dear Florrie,’ Alice said. She tapped her hand on her heart. ‘Me too.’
So it was Florrie. How could I not have known? When had she died, and how? An aggressive cancer – leukaemia, breast – whatever type it is that takes the young? I wanted to know, but I couldn’t think how to ask without sounding insensitive. It looked bad not to have known, or worse to have forgotten. I was peculiarly disturbed. We hadn’t been that close. A Sunday afternoon on the Backs with a bottle of wine; jazz at the Blue Boar; a party – someone’s birthday (was it hers?). Sex, probably – yes, I think we had slept together. A blue tinge to her skin in her student room light, goose-bumps, the rough thinness of her duvet. So yes, just a few dates here and there. So my reaction wasn’t about her; it was more selfish. Death throws you, even if you didn’t know the person well. You sense your own mortality, feel the devil’s breath on your own cheek.
‘She was a wonderful person,’ I said. ‘I’m glad I got to meet her.’
The three of them looked at me, as if I’d said something unexpected. Tina said: ‘You knew her?’ She looked at Andrew. ‘Did I know that?’
‘Yes. At Cambridge,’ I said. ‘She was the year below.’
‘Two years below,’ Andrew said.
‘Yes of course.’
‘And you dated,’ Alice said, smiling strangely. ‘You knew her well.’
‘Really?’ Tina asked.
‘It depends on your definition of “dated”,’ I said. ‘It was more casual than that.’
One of the women on the next-door table let out a scream of laughter.
Tina looked at Andrew. ‘I didn’t know.’
He ignored her. Raising his eyebrows, he said: ‘I think Florrie thought you were dating.’
‘Oh.’ I laughed sheepishly. ‘I suppose what I mean is, to use the current parlance, we weren’t “exclusive”. Which is not to say I didn’t think she was a super girl.’ A super girl: why did I say that? It wasn’t even language I used. Possibly because I hadn’t really got to know her. It had been a casual thing, and I couldn’t admit to that now. ‘Special, actually . . . Really a lot
of fun . . . The kind of person you don’t forget . . .’ Though of course I had. Shit. Death makes one nervous, does odd things to one’s tongue.
‘She liked you,’ Alice said, still with that unreadable expression. ‘She used to write to me about you, talked about you all the time.’
‘How come I didn’t know any of this?’ Tina asked.
Alice was sitting back in her chair rather stiffly and it struck me that perhaps she wasn’t wild about the thought of me with another woman, that she was jealous.
I smiled back reassuringly. ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said.
Andrew insisted on paying the bill. ‘No, no, no, my turn,’ he said. He held the plate out of Alice’s reach.
‘You’re very bad,’ she said,
‘You paid yesterday,’ he replied.
He batted away the ten-euro note I was holding between my fingers. ‘My shout, Paul. You can do another night.’
Another night? Please God, tell me I wouldn’t have to pick up the whole tab?
He took his credit card over to where the old lady was hunched at the till. Daisy and Phoebe returned from the bathroom where they had been reapplying their make up. Daisy looked the same, except with red lips, but Phoebe had ramped it up a gear, with heavily lined eyes and a layer of foundation. If she’d been aiming for Egyptian goddess, she’d landed on Soho tart. They stood at the table to discuss their curfew.
‘Come on, honestly, we’re on holiday, this is Agios Stefanos, it’s safe,’ Daisy argued.
‘Midnight,’ Alice replied.
‘That’s insane. You’re always so ridiculously stressy.’
‘I’m not always anything.’
Tina said, ‘Oh, Alice. Let them stay out a little later. They’re eighteen now.’
‘OK. 1 a.m. No later.’
‘And me,’ Louis said, looming into view. ‘You know I’m going.’ He was still in his black hoodie, with a purple baseball cap worn backwards (‘Supreme’ was written across the visor), and a thick silver chain hanging from his belt.
‘Really?’ Phoebe said. ‘Does he have to? Mum? Tell him he can’t come.’
Louis took a step forwards. ‘Tell them I can.’
Phoebe pushed him slightly, her hand flat against his chest. He jostled her, jerking his shoulder in her face. The silver chain whipped against her bare leg. ‘Ow,’ she said.
‘Of course he can go,’ Alice said, her hands out to calm them. ‘You’ll be sensible, won’t you, Louis? You’ve had one beer already. No more drinking.’
‘I don’t know why he even wants to come.’
‘I can come if I want. It’s a free country.’
‘Well. You can’t drink. You won’t get with anyone.’
‘I might.’
‘Well, don’t expect me to babysit.’
It seemed as good a time as any to have a quick smoke, so I pushed my chair back and walked out to the street.
I lit up, leaning against one side of the restaurant’s awning. Andrew was talking to Sofia. ‘How’s your grand-daughter?’ he was saying with fake interest, pushing his numbers into the machine.
‘She is in Elconda, working in the tourist office there.’
‘Lovely,’ Andrew said, taking his card back. ‘Excellent.’
I looked away. By the supermarket opposite, three English lads with tattoos across their necks were horsing around, trying to put ice down the tops of their female companions. ‘You knob,’ one of the girls yelled.
‘OK then.’ Alice had joined me. I threw my cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with my shoe.
Phoebe and Daisy stalked off towards the far end of the harbour, where lights flashed and music throbbed. Louis followed, a few feet behind, a rolling motion to his walk that showed he was trying to be cool. I recognised the bulge in his back pocket as a packet of fags.
‘Do you think they’ll be all right?’ Alice said.
Tina said, ‘Of course they will. They’ve promised to stick together.’ She looked at Alice in the face and continued pointedly. ‘Nothing is going to happen. Just because . . . We mustn’t . . . you know.’ She squeezed her shoulder. ‘They’ll be fine.’
‘Right, we can go home now.’ Andrew was standing by us, too, slipping his wallet into his back pocket. ‘I’m ready for my bed. Where are those boys?’
‘I think they’re looking for crabs on the jetty,’ Alice said. ‘Wait here, I’ll get them.’
The group of lads had crossed the road now, waving their arms and singing. One of the girls with them fell into me as she passed. She said, ‘Hello! I know you!’ She had a Geordie accent, a big red mouth and tight plaits. It was the girl from the bus, the Rita Ora lookalike with the broken flip-flops, though she was barefoot now so she must have given up on them.
I steered her to a standing position and she lurched off. Andrew raised an eyebrow. ‘You know each other?’ he said.
‘I wish.’
Alice and the boys were coming towards us in the crowd. They were behind a group of girls – stupidly high heels, tiny cropped tops, sheets of hair, chattering away in German. How old were they? Fifteen, sixteen, at a shove, though they looked older. I glanced across at Andrew. He was watching them as they tottered towards us, his expression heavy, blank, torpid.
He saw me and shrugged sheepishly, his chin tucked in, and then looked not to Tina but to Alice to check she hadn’t noticed.
I had planned to have sex with Alice but I fell asleep before I had a chance to take off my own clothes, let alone hers. At one point, I was aware of hearing her in the bathroom, a splash and clink at the basin, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and before I could wake properly, I was overtaken by that thick, heavy, gloopy unconsciousness that makes you wonder if you aren’t drugged.
What woke me a few hours later? Thirst? The heat? A mosquito whining in my ear? I lay motionless, fully dressed, on top of the sheet. The ceiling fan droned. A dog in the near distance barked, stopped for a while; then barked again.
It was hot, pitch black in the room, so dark you could forget whether your eyes were open or shut. Alice was motionless. I turned my back to her, as quietly as I could, found a cooler section of the pillow. Something troubling had woken me and it took a moment to work out what. When I remembered it came as a renewed shock. Florrie – the revelation that she was dead.
I turned my body to face Alice, in need of human comfort, and stretched out an exploratory hand. I was awake now, alert. And I realised, a fist clenched, ready to uncurl, down low in my belly, that I was aroused.
My hand met nothing. I moved it, tried somewhere else, padded here, there – a wrinkled sheet, the smooth surface of the pillow, a space where her body, her hair, her face, her mouth had just been. She wasn’t in the bed.
I sat up, stared into the darkness. I had been sure that she had been lying next to me. Could I have fallen asleep for a few seconds and she had slipped out then? Or had I imagined her breathing so quietly beside me? Had she never been in bed at all?
I rolled into the space where she should have been, buried my face in her pillow and breathed in. That slight scent again of fig and quince. The thought of her inner thighs. I groaned and fumbled for the light switch, couldn’t find it and stood up.
The door on to the terrace was open a crack; a tiny sliver of night air lapping the curtain in the motion from the fan. I made my way across the room, jabbing my calf on the post at the end of the bed, and pushed it open. Outside was a fraction lighter; a nail paring of a moon, black shapes to mark the shrubs and trees. The dog was still barking, louder out here, a desperate bay. Impossible to imagine how a creature could keep going like that.
I strained my ears: other noises. A tinkle and a small splash. Laughter. Was she swimming? If so, who with?
I moved across the terrace, barefooted, past the long table and the shuttered door to the kitchen, and round the large gnarled tree where the CDs dangled, to the top of the path. I began to descend, but it was uneven and rocky and I stubbed my toe on a root
, or a stone. Possibly I said, ‘Ouch.’ I hopped, lifted my foot to have a look, saw a blotch of blood on the crescent of flesh above the nail. Another laugh from the direction of the pool.
At the bottom of the path I stood as still as I could under the fig. In the water were Daisy and Phoebe. They were leaning against the side, elbows up, sharing a cigarette; I saw the gleam of it. Their naked bodies shimmered white, distorted, in the underwater lights. Shadows in the copse beyond. The crunch of leaves. Was someone else there with them? No, it was my imagination. They were alone. I watched, the muscles taut across their shoulders, waiting for one of them to turn so I could see their breasts. They were tipsy – tipsy enough to welcome me if I joined them?
No. Bad idea. I mustn’t forget the longer view. Ignoring my throbbing toe, I turned and crept back up the path, resuming my search for Alice.
All the lights were off in the house. I went back to the bedroom, pushing open the door quietly, half expecting to see her asleep. I checked the bathroom. It was empty, but I took a piss while I was there.
The small bathroom window opened onto the front yard. The glass was loose and it rattled very slightly. I moved to look out and picked up in the distance the growl of an engine, getting closer, rearing up the track, and then silence as it was cut. A car door opened.
I got myself in a position to see out.
The silver people carrier was parked close to the house, the passenger door open, and two figures – Alice and Andrew – bent over next to it. They were both dressed, Andrew in his polo shirt, Alice in the T-shirt dress she had been wearing earlier that evening.
They were whispering. I couldn’t catch what they were saying, but then Andrew moved to one side and Alice knelt on the ground. ‘Come on, darling,’ she said, in a louder whisper. ‘Wake up. Come on. We’ve got to get you into bed.’
A groan, and an inarticulate semi-shout: ‘Gerrof.’ An arm flailed and Alice rocked backwards.
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