Summer on the Turquoise Coast

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

  On the far end, stuck through holes in a fence, were hundreds of assorted footwear. A young lad guarded them jealously. Nina spotted her poor flip flop and stretched out a hand to remove it.

  ‘Ten lira,’ he said with a big smile.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Shoe, ten lira.’

  Nina gave him the money, guessing she was being fleeced (she’d got them on sale from Primark for ninety-nine pence), and she put it on, the soles of her feet very grateful even if her purse wasn’t. Her mood didn’t improve when, on the way to the restaurant, they passed several stalls, all selling flip flops and sandals for five lira.

  But it did improve when Nina and Flossie had been shown to a communal table and Nina saw Hunk walk in.

  Another wink. She wasn’t imagining it this time. Using her hands to fan her hot face, she flushed even harder when he walked up to her.

  ‘I thought you were walking further up the gorge,’ she said.

  ‘So did I, but we saw the time and realised it was lunchtime. We’ll come back again and walk it then. I’m Martin, by the way.’ He held out a hand.

  She took it and they shook.

  ‘Nina, and this is Flossie, my grandmother,’ she said. ‘Nice to meet you, and thanks for, you know…’ She jerked her head towards her grandmother who was attacking the wine with enthusiasm. Nina hoped the carafe would be refilled, or everyone else seated at their table would have to make do with water.

  She realised she was still holding his hand and that he had an amused smile on his lips. She let go and looked away. What was wrong with her? He was at least five years too young, and it wasn’t as if this was the first good-looking bloke she’d ever met. On the other hand, most good-looking blokes didn’t look at her the way he had been – with a kind of appreciative light in his eyes.

  ‘You’ll do another excursion to Saklikent?’ she asked.

  I doubt it. We’ll probably get a dolmus next time and do it ourselves. This was just an orienteering mission.’

  ‘Dolmus?’

  ‘Public bus. This excursion is so we can get our bearings.’ He spotted his friends. ‘Over here, bro,’ he called, and five more exuberant, tanned, confident males sauntered over to Nina’s table and sat down. Flossie simpered as the introductions were made. She looked like she was in seventh heaven, with hunk number two on her right, and hunk number three sitting opposite.

  A waiter came around asking for meal choices; chicken, fish, or meatballs. Nina opted for fish. A basket of bread was already on the table, along with a jug of water and the carafe of wine. Half a carafe since Flossie had started on it. The men ordered Efes beer and Nina did the same, feeling reckless.

  The restaurant wasn’t what she had expected when the rep who had sold them the excursion told her lunch was included. Nina had anticipated a quiet little place, with table cloths and more than three choices on the menu. This set-up was worryingly similar to a school dining room, with people who didn’t know each other crammed onto long tables. But the food was nice enough and the company was lively, and not to mention very good-looking. No wonder people enthused about the view at Saklikent!

  During the meal Nina discovered Martin and friends were on a lads’ holiday. They were all into outdoorsy stuff – diving, paragliding, white water rafting, going down the river in an inflated tyre.

  Wait, what? ‘This river?’ Nina pointed towards the gorge and its turbulent contents.

  ‘Yeah, the Xanthos river. You can hire an inflatable here and let the river take you downstream into the middle of nowhere. Our jeep will meet us there. You could have a go?’ Martin suggested.

  ‘No thanks,’ Nina said, at the same time as Flossie cried, ‘Yes, please,’ and clapped her hands together.

  ‘No, Gran, it’s not safe.’

  ‘Life ain’t safe, girl; haven’t you learned that yet? Oh, I forgot, you live in a Nina bubble of too-scared-to-do-anything-outside-your-comfort-zone.’

  ‘Comfort zone?’

  ‘I watch Loose Women. They know all about comfort zones and G-spots.’

  Did her grandmother just say G-spot at the lunch table? Oh dear, she did.

  ‘I’m fed up of you telling me “no”,’ Flossie was saying, as Nina tried to process her grandmother and G-spot in the same sentence.

  Nina turned to Martin in exasperation. ‘See what I have to put up with?’

  Martin was on Flossie’s side. ‘I think it’s great if she wants to do it.’ He put a hand on Flossie’s arm. ‘You’re only as young as you feel, eh, Flossie?’

  Her grandmother giggled. Nina growled.

  ‘I’ll go with her, if she wants to try it,’ Martin offered. ‘You should have a go too.’

  ‘I’m not in the market for a man,’ Flossie announced. ‘I’ve lost mine. He died, you know,’ she added in a theatrical whisper. ‘But she is.’

  ‘Gran!’ Nina was mortified.

  ‘I’ll be okay on my own. You stick with Nina,’ Flossie said.

  The rest of lunch was spent listening to the guys’ tales of daring and adventure. It was enough to make Nina’s hair curl. Why would anyone want to throw themselves off the side of a mountain, or be spun around in a dingy while hoping a raging river wouldn’t slam you into sharp rocks and drown you? Where was the fun in that?

  Flossie clearly thought there was plenty of fun in it. ‘I wish I’d done those kinds of things,’ she said, wistfully.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ Martin said. ‘You can do whatever you set your mind to. It’s all about attitude, man.’

  ‘It’s all about not ending up in a nursing home,’ Nina said. ‘Because that’s where she’ll be if she isn’t careful. Either that or six-foot under.’

  ‘I don’t want to get to eighty and look back on my life with regret,’ Flossie stated.

  ‘Eighty?’ Nina assumed she had misheard.

  ‘I’m seventy, you know,’ Flossie said to the rest of the table, giving Nina a sneaky kick on the ankle.

  ‘You don’t look a day over sixty,’ one of Hunk and Co said, the one with the bleached blond hair and the spider-web of tattoos over his chest and arms. They suited him.

  Her gran looked every inch her eighty years, but Nina held her tongue as Flossie lapped up the compliment. Age to Flossie, Nina was beginning to understand, was moveable, much like Easter. Any time after the end of February seemed to work for Easter, and anything north of seventy seemed to work for her grandmother – it merely depended on who she was talking to.

  ‘How old are you?’ Flossie asked him, polishing off the rest of the second carafe of wine. No one else had managed as much as a sip of the stuff, and Nina suspected the restaurant owners weren’t prepared to bring out any more for free.

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘Do you like older women?’

  ‘Er…’ The poor bloke was bewildered, and Nina didn’t blame him. Welcome to my world.

  ‘Not for me,’ Flossie said. ‘For her. I like my men with a bit more experience, but I doubt my granddaughter is too fussy.’

  Nina flushed scarlet. How could Flossie do this to her? What was wrong with the woman; didn’t she have a filter on that mouth of hers? Dear lord, take me now before I do something we’ll both regret, Nina prayed.

  ‘Will. You. Stop. Trying. To. Set. Me. Up.’

  As a collective, Hunk and Co were pissing themselves with laughter. No wonder, and Nina would be too, if she were in their shoes. One of them had his hands over his face, shoulders shaking, and odd snorting noises coming out of his nose.

  ‘Sorry guys,’ she said. ‘My Gran seems to think I need a man. I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, Nina love, you’re not a lesbian, are you? Not that I’ve got anything against them, you understand, but I want to see you get married and have babies.’

  More snorting and lots of falling off their seats from the men around them.

  Martin took a shuddering breath, his face bright red, and said, ‘You don’t need a man to have babies.’

  Flossie sa
t up straighter in her chair. ‘I know very well where babies come from, young man, and the immaculate conception only happened once. My Nina is no virgin.’

  ‘Arrggg! Stop, you’ve gotta stop. I can’t take any more,’ Martin cried. The rest of his mates were unable to speak.

  Nina wished Flossie couldn’t speak either, and if the old woman didn’t shut up, Nina was gonna make her.

  ‘Anyone got any gaffer tape?’ Nina asked, and it wasn’t a joke. She turned to Flossie. ‘One, a woman can get sperm from a donor, she doesn’t need to have a husband or a partner to have a baby. Two, women can marry other women, men can marry men. Three, I am not a lesbian, and if I was, it would be none of your business.’

  Flossie thought for a moment. Hunk and Co waited with barely supressed excitement for the old woman’s next words.

  They weren’t disappointed.

  ‘I have got this bit right though,’ her gran said. ‘You’re definitely not a virgin, are you?’

  Chapter 14

  Flossie couldn’t understand why Nina was in such desperate haste to leave the restaurant and return to their jeep, and Nina was too incensed and humiliated to enlighten her.

  ‘Lovely boys, didn’t you think?’ Flossie asked. ‘Such good manners. Not many young people are willing to spend time with the elderly, and listen to what they’ve got to say. You could learn summat from them.’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I? Be grateful.’ If Mum didn’t have Flossie committed when she got home, Nina would never speak to her mother again. Her and her bloody ears. There was nothing wrong with her mother’s ears; it had been an excuse not to go with Flossie. Her mother had set her up. Nina had been plucked, stuffed and trussed like a chicken for the oven. Mum had known exactly what she’d been doing and she’d happily sacrificed her daughter’s sanity for her own.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ Flossie said, looking hurt.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Nina snarled, but her mother did, that woman who was supposed to love her and keep her safe, had gaily thrown her to the lions. Flossie was like a pack of them, all lying innocently in the sun one minute and savaging you to death the next. Who needed claws and teeth when Flossie had her mouth and a brain without a filter. And Nina wished her gran would stop saying she hadn’t asked Nina to come. It made her feel guilty, and that was one emotion Nina could do without right now, since she had so many others vying for attention: shame, embarrassment, humiliation, anger, despair. The despair bit was knowing that they were only three days into their holiday, and the remaining days would be spent on the edge of her seat, waiting for Flossie to say or do something else outrageous.

  For a second, Nina seriously contemplated Googling any and all available flights. There must be a plane leaving tomorrow; she didn’t care where it was going, though the further away the better, as far as she was concerned. Let Flossie fall off a bar-top and break her hip, let her drink herself to death, or drown, Nina didn’t care. Flossie was right, Nina wasn’t her keeper or her carer – she was her granddaughter, and Flossie was a grown-up who hadn’t been sectioned (yet), and Nina ought to just let her get on with it.

  Which was exactly why, when they arrived at Patara Beach, a twelve kilometre stretch of golden sand, bordered by sand dunes, and famed for where turtles nested, Nina made sure she picked a decent spot to lay out their towels. It was also why she bought a couple of cold bottles of water from the jeep driver, and ensured Flossie was comfortable before she went off to explore the beach (not that she intended to go too far, she wanted to try to keep Flossie in view, even though she felt like staking her grandmother out in the sun, smearing her with jam, and letting the ants do their work).

  The beach was beautiful, mile after mile of golden sand, with a backdrop of trees, with the glittering sea with long rolling waves and the Xanthos River flowing into it. Nina hoped she wouldn’t see Martin and friends shoot by because they’d missed being picked up.

  At this stage in its life, the Xanthos didn’t appear to be the same river. If she looked upstream (and not down, where the water became a cauldron of choppy waves and swirling eddies at the point where the river poured into the sea), the water was smooth and placid, flowing serenely with barely a ripple.

  She dipped a toe in – it was icy, but refreshing, and she sat on the grassy bank for a while, letting the peace soothe her. Birds chirped in the trees, the river gurgled drowsily, and she almost fell asleep until her conscience prodded her. She’d left her grandmother alone for long enough. Reluctantly, she stood, taking one last lingering look, soaking up the calm before returning to the storm that was her grandmother.

  Nina cut across the beach towards the sea and paddled through the wavelets, careful not to enter the water too close to where the river flowed into it. She’d heard about rip tides and stuff.

  The sea was warm, and she ventured a bit further in, up to her knees. Soft golden sand swirled around her feet, tickling her skin. She dug her toes in, and smiled. Hot sun (maybe a bit too hot, but she had a hat and T-shirt on), the never-ending sea with waves rolling in for what seemed like miles away, a beautiful beach, and the absence of other people and their noise. Others were in sight, but they were far enough away not to bother her, and she certainly couldn’t hear them. The only sound came from those wonderful waves, and Nina had the urge to jump through them, to kick and splash, and dance in the water.

  She wished she had someone to share it with.

  Sighing, she turned her back to the sea and put her flip flops back on. The sand might look gorgeous, but Nina knew how hot it would be, so she made her way cautiously back up the beach to where she had left Flossie.

  Shielding her eyes with her hand, Nina spotted their towels.

  No Flossie. A trail of grandma sized footprints angled down the beach towards the water’s edge. Nina frowned; she hadn’t spotted her grandmother, but the beach was huge and the people she’d seen dotted across it and in the sea had been exactly that – dots.

  With her hand still over her eyes, Nina scanned the beach, trying to remember what Flossie was wearing, but there was only one solo figure in sight, and though he was at least half a mile away, Nina could tell he was male.

  With dread creeping up her spine, Nina turned her attention to the sea. Maybe Flossie had gone for a paddle, like Nina had just done, but there was no one matching her grandmother’s description in the shallows.

  Wait a sec, could that be her, the distant speck bobbing in the water several hundred feet out? Nina had no idea how good a swimmer Flossie was, and even if she was Olympic standard, there might be off-shore currents and undertows, and sharks…!

  ‘Help!’ Nina cried as she shot off down the beach, kicking her flip flops off as she ran, and discarding her clothing along the way. Thank god she had her bikini on underneath.

  And why wasn’t anyone rushing to her aid. Admittedly her travelling companions were scattered along the sand, as far away from each other as it was possible to get, but surely someone must have heard her cries of alarm.

  She splashed into the water, and began to wade.

  And carried on wading.

  Further out she went, expecting the sand beneath her feet to drop away.

  It didn’t. She was half way to her grannie and the sea, despite the waves, still only came up no further than the tops of her thighs. In fact, the water seemed to be getting shallower.

  It wasn’t until she reached the old lady, that Nina realised Flossie was sitting on her backside on the crest of a sandbank, letting the waves wash over her stomach.

  Nina flopped down beside her, panting, put an arm around her grandmother and squeezed her tight. Flossie gave her a bright, unconcerned smile.

  As her heartrate gradually returned to normal, Nina sincerity thought this keeping-Grannie-company business was going to be the death of her.

  Chapter 15

  Flossie didn’t like being reminded she was old, but this time it was her body doing the reminding and not Nina. The excursion had taken it out of he
r, and Nina was left to her own devices after the jeep dropped them off at their hotel.

  Flossie had needed help to get out of the vehicle and had climbed the steps to their apartment slowly and stiffly. She’d gamely dressed for dinner and had managed a healthy portion (and drank some wine, of course), but when the meal was finished she’d asked to go back to their room.

  Nina saw she was exhausted, and no wonder after a night flight, followed by dancing on the top of a bar in the wee small hours and showing the world her knickers, then a long day out. They’d only been here three days, but it felt like a week already. Nina wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.

  She accompanied her grandmother to their room, saw her into bed, then left the other woman to sleep. Nina was physically tired, in a nice way, but her brain was still very much awake, so she snatched her book off the table along with the room key, and headed for the courtyard. She’d go back and check on Flossie every so often, more to make sure the exhaustion wasn’t a ruse and her gran wasn’t planning on escaping again. Nina knew she had trust issues, but who could blame her – the old woman was sneakier than a weasel. Nina felt sorry for the bad press weasels suffered, because her gran could beat the poor animals hands down when it came to cunning.

  All three hotel bars sounded lively, but she wasn’t in the mood (was she ever?) and instead she wandered into the courtyard with its tinkling fountain and secluded, covered seating area, and ordered a coffee.

  She’d enjoyed today, despite Gran’s indiscretions. Nina had even found the river crossing to be fun. In hindsight, now Nina wasn’t up to her backside in fast-flowing, ice-cold water, Gran was good company. Once Nina had gotten over that final humiliation in the restaurant and her fright at her grandmother’s escapades, Flossie had been unknowingly funny, and if she was anyone else’s gran Nina would have found the whole thing absolutely hilarious. Flossie was stubborn and annoying, but funny with it.