Summer on the Turquoise Coast

by Summer on the Turquoise Coast (retail) (epub)

  Not wanting to be in the place a minute longer than she had to, she opted for asking the bar staff, though most of them appeared to be bopping about on top of the bar, rather than serving behind it. Five men with gleaming bare chests, wearing black jeans and cowboy hats, strutted and preened, gathering yells and whistles, whilst several female party-goers in assorted very short dresses danced alongside them.

  And one old pensioner.

  Nina stopped, mid-step, and her mouth dropped open.

  Flossie fist-pumped the air, holding her skirt up over her bony knees with her other hand and shook her skinny backside from side to side, laughing like a loon.

  ‘Gran!’ Nina yelled, shock abruptly replaced by fear. What if Flossie fell? She could break something, and at her age it might be the end of her. ‘Get down!’

  She looked around for someone to help her lift her grandmother off the treacherously shiny bar. If she slipped on one of those wet patches, it didn’t bear thinking about…

  She liked to think no one heard her, rather than everyone was ignoring her, so she tried again. ‘Gran! You’ll hurt yourself.’ Still no reaction from anyone. Nina might as well be invisible.

  She stood, mouth open, eyes wide, watching her grandmother shake her skinny hips. The old woman’s false teeth glowed eerily white in the UV glare as she grinned widely, stomping her feet and twirling around so her back was to the room and wobbling precariously on the slick wood; then she bent over, flipped up her skirt, and wiggled her bottom at the delighted audience, displaying the biggest pair of knickers Nina had ever seen.

  The only thing running through Nina’s shocked mind was, ‘Thank god she was wearing some!’

  Chapter 11

  Where could they have possibly gone? Nina checked the little dryer on the balcony. Nope, neither of them, though she had expected to see the costume she had worn yesterday, which she’d rinsed out and hung up to dry. The other one should be in a drawer, ready for her to put on today. But neither of them were anywhere to be found. Strange, considering nothing else appeared to be missing.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Flossie was dressed for the beach in a more sedate one-piece and was perched on one of the room’s two chairs, ready to walk to the restaurant and tackle her breakfast. The old lady had gone from one extreme to the other, and rather than four pieces of small triangles trying vainly to cover her elderly assets, this morning Flossie sported a more age-appropriate costume with built-in cups which made her flabby boobs look like a shelf, and had more support in it than the scaffolding supplied by a builder on a two-up, two-down extension. It even had a skirt around the bottom. Now she really did look like a grannie.

  ‘Nothing,’ Nina said, opening a drawer she’d already looked in three times. Her swimming cozzies still weren’t there.

  ‘Clearly it’s something.’

  ‘My swimming costume.’ Nina forced the words out. After last night, her grandmother should consider herself lucky Nina was speaking to her at all.

  ‘You can borrow this.’ Flossie struggled to her feet and brought forth the neon pink monstrosity she’d worn yesterday.

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll find one of mine in a minute.’ There was no way Nina would even consider wearing anything which had been so close to her gran’s undercarriage.

  ‘How about this? It’s still got the tags on.’ Her grandmother held up another bikini, this one in an eye-watering turquoise, though the colour was preferable to the Barbie pink.

  Giving up and vowing to have a word with reception about swimming costume thieves, Nina almost snatched it out of the old lady’s hand and marched off to the bathroom to get dressed. She emerged with far more flesh on show than she was comfortable with, pulling at the strings holding the scraps of material together, while being careful not to take too deep a breath in case the whole thing decided to fall apart, leaving her standing in the buff.

  Flossie whistled wheezily through her teeth. ‘You look hot.’

  Nina caught an unwelcome glance of herself in the mirror. She didn’t look hot (and what did her grandmother know about hot anyway?), she looked downright awkward, and she didn’t feel much better when she’d put on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts over the top. She’d go straight to the nearest shop after breakfast and buy a proper costume.

  ‘Well that wasn’t very successful, was it?’ Nina said, forgetting she was supposed to be giving Flossie the silent treatment. Disappointment at discovering none of the local shops sold what Nina would call a “real” cozzie must have thrown her off course. At least Flossie was happy, having gone into raptures of delight at the huge array of water pistols on display. She’d come away with a huge carrier bag and a smug expression. Nina had come away with a bikini not much more substantial than the one her gran had loaned her, but at least it was hers and hadn’t been exposed to her gran’s wrinkly backside.

  ‘Ow!’ Nina cried.

  How was it possible for sand to get so hot? Nina had wanted to feel warm sand between her toes and as the pair of them had stepped off the promenade and onto the beach, Nina had kicked her flip flops off. Hastily, she put them back on again; it wasn’t even midday yet, and already the sand was hot enough to give the unwary third degree burns. She was relieved when it gave way to pebbles nearer the water’s edge, but it wasn’t until they’d chosen a couple of sunbeds and Nina had wrestled another umbrella away from some nearby unoccupied beds, she discovered the pebbles were equally as hot. Already beads of sweat had joined together and trickled between her shoulder blades, making her feel like a ready meal in a microwave.

  She made a mad scramble to dive under the parasol, and hunted frantically for the factor fifty, lathering on several layers. Flossie, as usual, sat back and cooked, not bothering with hat, glasses, or sun tan lotion. It was a wonder the pensioner hadn’t burned to a crisp already.

  ‘Look at those,’ Flossie said, pointing skywards.

  Nina paused, her palm full of white goo, and lifted her head.

  Paragliders, tens of them, swirling and turning in the cloudless sky. One was doing some kind of looping thing. The screams issuing from the poor unfortunate person suspended on a couple of ropes from a sheet of nylon, made Nina shudder.

  ‘These lot are tandem flyers,’ Flossie said, sounding as if she knew what she was talking about. ‘You can pay to go up and one of them will bring you down.’

  ‘You can pay for it. I’m not,’ Nina retorted crossly, then realised what she’d inadvertently implied. ‘I mean, other people can pay for it. Not you. You can’t do something so dangerous.’

  ‘Can, too.’

  ‘Gran, you’re too old. They won’t take you.’

  ‘They will. They said.’

  Nina sighed, wondering when her gran had managed to find the time to talk to a paraglider. Oh yeah, possibly when she was playing drunken pin the cock on the human donkey, or when she’d slipped out last night like a fifteen-year-old scaling a drainpipe to go to a rave, or wherever it was teenagers slipped out to go to these days.

  ‘They take kids as young as five, and adults as old as… well, whatever. They said they’ll take me. It’s about sixty pounds for a flight. Why don’t you have a go? Live a little – what have you got to lose?’

  ‘My life?’

  ‘It’s as safe as houses.’

  ‘Yeah, right. And no, you can’t have a go.’

  ‘Try stopping me.’ Flossie lay down on her sunbed with a huff, and muttered, ‘It’s worse than being on holiday with an old fogey.’

  ‘I’m not an old fogey,’ Nina protested. ‘I’m simply trying to make sure you don’t injure yourself. Look at last night, disappearing off without a word. I was worried sick about you. Anything could have happened.’

  ‘It did – you showed up.’

  ‘You’re more trouble than twenty teenagers on a school trip!’

  ‘No one asked you to come.’

  ‘Yes they did! You did.’

  ‘I didn’t. It was your mother’s idea. I told her it wo
uldn’t work. You’re too anal.’

  ‘Anal?’ Nina screeched. ‘I’ve never been anal in my life!’

  ‘You wanna try loosening up a bit before you give yourself an ulcer. You act like you’re seventy already.’

  ‘And you act like a thirteen-year-old.’

  ‘Better young than dead, my girl. The way you’re going, you’ll be old before you know it and all you’ll have to show for your life is a watch off the school for long service and a couple of cats.’

  ‘I don’t like cats.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You never go anywhere, or do anything. When was the last time you had sex?’

  ‘Gran!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘I’m making it my business. Go get yourself laid. It might make you smile for once. Oh, stop frowning – if the wind blows the wrong way your face will stay like that.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Your grandad and I had a wonderful sex life. At it like rabbits we were – right up to the day he died, more or less. I miss sex.’

  ‘Ew. No. I don’t want to hear about it’. Nina stuck her fingers in her ears, then took them out again. ‘For your information, I had sex last year.’

  Flossie turned to look at her, interest sparking in her eyes. ‘Who with?’

  ‘A bloke from work.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘His wife.’

  ‘Okay.’ Flossie shrugged. ‘No strings sex can sometimes be the best.’

  ‘It wasn’t okay. His wife found out about the string and I didn’t know he was married. Anyway, how do you know about stuff like that?’

  ‘I wasn’t born eighty-four, you know.’

  ‘According to you, you’re not eighty-four now.’

  Flossie stood up, with a great deal of groaning. ‘I’m going in the sea.’

  ‘Those waves look a bit rough, and the beach is pebbly,’ Nina pointed out.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘You might get… never mind.’

  ‘Good. I’m old enough and ugly enough to look after myself. I don’t need you doing it for me.’

  ‘I thought that’s why I was here,’ Nina muttered, watching her grandmother scramble gingerly down the beach, and almost get bowled over by a wave.

  By the time Flossie had bunny hopped out of the sea and up the treacherously pebbly beach, Nina had come to a decision. The hotel was a stone’s throw away (admittedly, you’d need to be of the standard of a Russian shot-putter to hit it), and she’d only be gone a few minutes.

  ‘I’m popping back to the hotel for a wee,’ she said when Flossie dropped onto her sunbed with all the grace of a sack of spuds.

  ‘Pee in the sea. I just did.’

  ‘Yuck. Remind me never to go in there.’

  ‘Fish pee in the sea, what’s the difference?’

  ‘You’ve told me about it, that’s the difference. Will you be alright on your own for a bit? I won’t be long.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ Flossie got out a book of crosswords and a pen. She clipped on a pair of tinted over-glasses onto her reading glasses and shoved them on her nose. ‘Go on then, what are you waiting for?’

  She’ll be fine, Nina convinced herself as she winced all the way up the beach, scalding sand spraying the back of her legs; the heat was even noticeable through the bottom of her flip flops. She was glad to step onto the promenade.

  ‘Move! Move!’ a voice yelled at her.

  A faint whooshing came from almost directly overhead. Nina looked up, screamed and lunged to the side.

  An incoming paraglider and passenger missed her by inches.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Er… yeah… I think.’ She checked herself over.

  The man who had shouted pointed to a sign. Paragliders landing. Caution. She’d seen it, and she’d noticed some of them landing along the front, but it hadn’t really registered until she’d almost been flattened by one. Unnerved, she did a meerkat impression, checking the sky for danger as she scuttled across the open area to the safety of the hotel.

  What a stupid place for a landing site, people walked across there for goodness sake, children, old people, and the disabled. In Britain, there would be a dedicated, cordoned-off area, with the St Johns Ambulance volunteers standing by, and marshals in hi-viz jackets to make sure the public stayed out of the danger zone, not parachutes randomly falling out of the sky wherever they felt like, not caring who they landed on. Nina was flabbergasted at the speed of their descent as she scanned the sky one final time before ducking into the relative cool of the hotel’s interior.

  ‘What can I help you with today?’ The rep sat in the courtyard with an empty cup on a table in front of her and paperwork strewn over a wicker sofa.

  ‘I don’t think this hotel is for us. We need to move,’ Nina said.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not with the hotel as such, but with the guests.’

  ‘Some of them can be a bit boisterous,’ the rep said with a smile. ‘But that’s part of the charm of this type of holiday.’

  ‘I think my grandmother booked it by mistake.’

  ‘Your grandmother.’ This was said in a flat, disbelieving voice.

  ‘Yes, you see, she booked to go away with my grandad, but he died before… you know… and my mother persuaded me to come with her to keep an eye on her, but I don’t think Gran realised she’d booked a hotel for singles.’

  ‘Are you single?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You’ll fit in nicely.’

  ‘I don’t want to fit in. I want a hotel suitable for my eighty-four, I mean three, year old grandmother.’

  ‘Admittedly, she is outside our normal demographic, but you’re not. Is she with you?’ The rep scoured the courtyard as if she expected to see an old lady hiding behind a fountain.

  ‘But that’s the point, I’m not inside the “demographic” either. I’m most definitely outside it.’

  ‘Wow, you look good for your age, you must tell me your secret.’

  ‘I’m not too old to be here, I’m too young!’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, for a second there I thought… oops. I did say you looked good for your age though, didn’t I?’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight.’

  ‘Yes. Right. Back to your… er… problem. We can’t move you to another hotel.’

  ‘Why not? Clearly you can see we don’t fit in here. They had Gran prancing around holding a cardboard penis yesterday, and last night she sneaked out at god knows what time to go dancing on top of a bar.’

  ‘Talk of the Town? I love it there.’ The rep clapped her hands together. ‘Such a good atmosphere.’

  ‘Not for someone in their eighties.’

  The rep gave Nina a shrewd look. ‘How does your grandmother feel about moving hotels?’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ Nina muttered. ‘Just put us somewhere a bit more suitable.’

  ‘But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Athena Holidays only caters for the thirty-to-forty-five age bracket.’

  ‘And that’s what I’m trying to tell you, both of us are outside that “age bracket”.’ Nina used her fingers to make quotation marks. ‘One of us is double your upper age limit. She should never have been allowed to make the booking in the first place.’

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with your travel agent when you go back home. In the meantime, I’m telling you we can’t put you anywhere else.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Athena Holidays has only got one hotel in this area – we don’t want to saturate the market. Our nearest hotel is in Antalya, and you’ll have the same problem there. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you checking out of this hotel and checking into another.’

  Nina seized on the suggestion. ‘We’ll do that then. Can you arrange it?’

  ‘Sorry, but you’ll have to do that yourself, and cover the cost of accommodation.’

  Wonderful. Nina didn’t have the funds avai
lable for that, and she suspected Flossie didn’t either. Even if her grandmother did, Nina suspected Flossie would refuse anyway; for some reason, the old lady seemed to like it here.

  Nina slunk back to the beach (keeping a look-out for potential sky hazards at the same time) and sat on the edge of her sunbed, cross and hot.

  One good thing – Flossie was where Nina had left her, with an untouched crossword in her hand and a smile on her face. At least her grandmother was having a good time.

  Chapter 12

  ‘You were the one who wanted to go on this bloody jeep thing in the first place, so move it, grumpy.’ Nina gave her grandmother a nudge. They were being picked up from the hotel in just under an hour, and Flossie would need her breakfast first, or else her insides would suffer.

  Flossie rolled over and opened one eye. ‘Shut up. There’s a ruin or two for you to moon over, so the day won’t be all about me.’

  Later, sitting in the jeep, Nina was not so apprehensive about the excursion. It promised to be a long and possibly wet day, but at least they’d get to see something of Turkey other than the hotel and the resort. After the not-as-bad-as-she-remembered climb up the steep road from the coast into the hills, Nina didn’t want to admit it, but the journey to their first stop at the ruins at Tlos was quite a pleasant one – if you ignored driving under waterfalls and being shot at by rival jeeps. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration; the waterfalls were in fact sprays from strategically placed overhead pipes with holes in them which the driver of each jeep deliberately drove under. With the temperatures already hitting thirty-seven degrees Celsius at ten thirty in the morning (just short of ninety-nine degrees in old money as her gran would say because she still worked off Fahrenheit – but only when it was hot; when it was freezing Flossie liked to think it was zero degrees along with everyone else in Europe), a gentle spray was quite refreshing, and Nina found herself looking forward to the next drive-under.

  She wasn’t as keen on being bombarded by water guns wielded by a truckload of delinquent children and their equally mad parents, though – until Flossie produced two massive water pistols, unwrapping them from their carrier bag with a flourish and presented one to Nina the next time the jeep pulled alongside a large barrel filled with water to “reload”.