Summer on the Turquoise Coast

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

  Nina never realised her grannie could be so adventurous and outgoing, and in a way it was a good thing that Flossie seemed to be coping with Grandad’s death as well as she was, because Nina had imagined a much more sombre holiday, with her Gran sobbing into her beach towel and hours spent talking about him. Not that she’d mind, if that’s what Gran wanted to do, if it made the old lady’s life easier to cope with, but Flossie had surprised her. In a good way. Mostly. Even if the pensioner did seem to be experiencing a second teenage-hood. Nina understood regression into childhood could happen to the elderly, so maybe old people degenerated gradually, and behaving like a teenager was the start of the slippery slide towards a second babyhood.

  The book sat unopened on her lap as Nina drank her coffee and stared unseeingly into the distance. Maybe both her grandparents had been losing their marbles (why else would they book a holiday where the clientele were all under forty, were all single, and were all looking to hook up with the opposite sex). Maybe Grandad dying was a kind of blessing in disguise, because Nina didn’t want to think of her grandfather slowly and inevitably travelling towards the hell of dementia. Susan, a work colleague, had a mother with Alzheimer’s and her descriptions and stories didn’t make for pleasant staffroom conversations.

  Nina smiled to herself; she wanted to remember her grandmother like she was now, dancing on top of a bar or begging to be allowed to float down a raging river on a fragile inflatable tyre. Suddenly she was very thankful she’d been given the chance to spend this time with her, even if the old lady drove her to distraction.

  ‘May I join you?’

  With a mental sigh and an urge to reply “No, you may not”, Nina looked up at the man standing next to her chair and gestured for him to take a seat. After all, it wasn’t his fault if he didn’t know she wasn’t on this holiday for casual sex, or to find The One, or any permutation in between. Besides, on reflection, she was a little tired of her own company and he looked pleasant enough, not in Hunk’s league, but at least he didn’t appear to be young enough to sit in on one of her GCSE classes. GCSE’s – the results of those dreaded exams would be out soon, and she prayed her kids would do well. They deserved to, all of them; most of them, she amended, thinking of Connor Wilson who spent most of every lesson mucking about, annoying the kids who did want to work. Pity, because he was a bright pupil. He just hated school.

  ‘You look like you’re in a world of your own,’ the stranger said. ‘Another?’ He gestured to her empty cup as a waiter appeared.

  ‘Please.’ Glad to have her mind taken off work, this time Nina’s smile was genuine.

  ‘I’ll have the same. Been here long?’ he asked.

  ‘Day three.’

  ‘I’m seven days in,’ he said with a sigh.

  Nina laughed; they sounded like a pair of convicts comparing prison sentences. ‘It’s not that bad, is it?’

  ‘Depends what you’re looking for,’ he replied.

  ‘I’m not looking for anything – I’m here as a sort of plus one.’ She didn’t really want to confess she was on a singles holiday with her gran; it sounded a bit sad, even if it wasn’t strictly true.

  ‘Two girls together, eh? Must be fun.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s so much fun that I’m sitting here on my own, reading a book and drinking coffee,’ she said, with a grimace.

  ‘You don’t have to be on your own,’ the man said.

  Woah, now, Nina thought, hoping he wasn’t suggesting what she thought he was suggesting.

  ‘I like it,’ she replied huffily, wishing he’d take the hint and go away. She had no objection to a civilised conversation but she didn’t fancy being propositioned. Especially since the whole purpose of anyone else coming on a holiday like this was to get your leg over with as many people as possible, in as short a time as possible. Except her. Getting her leg over was the last thing she wanted, thank you very much!

  ‘There are three bars to choose from,’ he continued, ‘and all of them are chock full of singletons wanting a bit of company, myself included, though I think I’m getting a bit old for this chatting women up in bars malarkey – I can hardly hear myself think because the music’s too loud and to be honest, most of the women I’ve met only seem to be after one thing.’

  Maybe she’d misjudged him.

  Leaning back in the squashy seat, she examined him a little more closely. Hmm, not too bad. He seemed nice enough in a lawyer-ish, or accountant-ish way.

  ‘What do you do when you’re not on holiday?’ Nina asked.

  ‘I’m a stripper.’

  Oh. Nina was at a loss; especially as he looked a bit… well… paunchy. Round the middle. Not much, just a bit. Maybe he sucked his stomach in when he took his clothes off. It would take a bit of sucking though.

  ‘You should see your face,’ he chortled. ‘I wish I was a stripper, but I don’t have the guts for it.’ He grabbed a handful of stomach and squeezed. ‘Guts! Get it?’

  She got it alright.

  ‘No seriously, I do voice-overs for TV adverts.’ He took a breath and said in a dramatic tone, “Panty Pops, so you never get caught unawares”. Yeah, that was one of mine; do you recognise it?’

  ‘I think so. Feminine hygiene, or something similar, aren’t they?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Disposable knickers. Just pop them on and away you go. Aimed at the laugh-and-leak brigade. Not one of my finest moments, admittedly, but it seems to be the most memorable.’ He let out a big sigh. ‘Personally, I prefer to be remembered for the one where I did a voice-over for a well-known brand of shampoo. Pity I wasn’t allowed in the bathroom with her.’

  He saw Nina’s aghast face. Nina knew it was aghast because she was wearing the same expression as she did whenever Romy from the Science Department told a dirty joke, and everyone laughed harder at Nina’s expression than they did at the joke itself. Nina was sure Romy went out of her way to find the filthiest joke possible, just to see Nina’s shocked and rather disgusted face.

  ‘Sorry, I’m trying too hard, aren’t I?’ he said.

  ‘Um… just a bit. Maybe tone it down a little?’

  ‘I blame TV,’ he said. ‘All that innuendo tends to rub off.’

  Now that he wasn’t being such a dick, he seemed a bit nicer. ‘Do you enjoy your job?’ she asked.

  ‘Hell, no. Take, after take, after take. More inflection on the word “cake”, Wayne; can you say that again with a little more feeling, Wayne. Though just how much feeling can you put into double glazing, I don’t know. And none of the millions of takes matter, because after the fiftieth version they usually go back to the very first one you did.’

  ‘Like women and shoes.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The myth is that women go into every shoe shop in town, before coming back to the first pair they saw.’

  ‘My first wife used to do that.’ he said glumly. ‘I hated going shopping with her.’

  Right. First wife, eh. ‘How many times have you been married?’

  ‘Just the once.’

  ‘You said, “first wife”.’

  ‘That’s because she is. I’d dearly like to have a second, but meeting the right woman isn’t easy, is it? And I intend to hang on to the next one.’

  ‘Is that why you came on this holiday? To find a wife?’

  ‘Not exactly, but I did hope to meet some ladies who’d consider going on a date with me after the holiday ends. It’s a bit like speed dating here – you get to talk to lots of different people who are all in the same boat (well, most of them are), and you can decide if you’d like to sit and chat for the rest of the evening, or if it’s time to move on to the next table.’

  Nina was curious. ‘Have you been on many speed dates?’

  ‘A few. Hideous things, they are.’

  ‘Is this any better?’ Nina gestured around the courtyard, with its mosaic tiled wall, lush planting, and soft lights.

  ‘Yes and no. It’s a false situation, being on holiday, don’t you think? If you�
�re not careful you can get seduced by the sea, and the sun, and the exoticness of it. I’ve got a feeling everyone will look a bit different when their tans have faded and they’ve got a mug of cocoa in their hand instead of a glass of raki and ice.’

  Exactly! Holiday romances should remain on holiday. Even Cara in the school kitchen said so, and she’d brought home a Moroccan waiter several years ago and they had three kids together. Actually, three lively, demanding kids may well make you wish you’d left your holiday romance sobbing on the tarmac before you got on the plane. The poor woman looked worn to a frazzle!

  There was no way Nina would ever have her head turned by a bloke on holiday. It was far too risky.

  Chapter 16

  Day five dawned in exactly the same way as days one to four – warm, (sticky if the air con had been turned off in the middle of the night), sunny, blue sky, blue sea, with the prospect of spending the next eight hours or so in a bikini. Nina could get used to this. For the first time ever, she wasn’t wishing the summer away in order to return to school to fill her days with teaching, marking, organising, and planning.

  Today they were going diving, and though Nina was hesitant (because of her grandmother, not because of the actual diving), she was looking forward to it too. If she bottled out, there was always the option of being a bubble-watcher, someone who sat on the side and watched everyone else try their hand at organised drowning. She’d also made a purchase of a mask and snorkel, to join in a bit if she didn’t fancy going all the way, as a sort of halfway house.

  It was Gran she was worried about. It had taken Flossie all day yesterday to recover from the jeep safari, and it wasn’t until she’d got on the outside of several vodka cocktails (called, rather inappropriately, Nina thought, Sex on the Beach) that Flossie started to move less like an old woman and more like her old self. She’d also lost the pinched, drained look she’d been wearing all day. Nina had been quite worried, and was fully prepared to call the diving off if her grandmother didn’t perk up.

  By last night, Flossie had perked up all right, enough to drink the bar dry of peach schnapps – an essential ingredient of the cocktail, it seemed. Nina hoped it was because the bottle of schnapps had been almost empty and not because Gran had been grabbing secret top-ups every time one or the other of them went to the loo.

  ‘I hope I won’t be sea sick,’ Nina said as they settled into a seat in the room where the predive talk was being held. ‘I’m not usually too good on boats.’

  ‘When was the last time you were on a boat?’

  ‘I was about twelve, I think.’

  ‘I remember. It was a rowboat on Wetherton Lake when we went for a camping holiday. Your mother insisted we come along, but your grandad and I booked a guest house, because I didn’t fancy peeing in a bucket.’ Flossie paused. ‘You’d eaten half a ton of candy floss and a three-scoop ice cream. No wonder you were sick.’

  ‘Oh yes, so I did.’

  ‘You’ll probably keep your fruit and rabbit food down,’ her grandmother stated. ‘And if you don’t, it’ll be food for the fish.’

  ‘Ug. Ew. Not nice.’

  ‘Then try not to chunder,’ Flossie suggested bluntly.

  The boat itself was lovely, with a carved dolphin on the front. It was run by a lively British bloke by the name of Alan, who was in his late fifties, still fit, funny and enthusiastic. He had everyone on board laughing with tales of the antics of scores of previous novice divers. Nina hoped she wouldn’t add a tale to his extensive repertoire.

  He stressed that this was a ten-foot, three-metre-maximum taster dive, and he was shit-hot on health and safety. He went through all the hand signals, making them laugh when he did the signal for shark.

  ‘No seriously, this means shark,’ he said, placing his hand on the top of his head, thumb pointing backwards while resting on his hair, fingers aimed at the sky. ‘It means the last one out is lunch – the shark’s lunch,’ he joked, while Nina peered over the side of the boat nervously, expecting to see a torpedo shape shadowing the hull.

  The sea today was choppy but not enough to make her feel sick, though Nina did suspect Alan’s jokes and constant stream of chatter was a method he used often to put his new divers at ease and to keep their nerves in check.

  By the time the boat chugged into a sheltered cove, Nina was ready to get in the water. Alan made it sound so easy, and as everyone was helped into their wet-suits and the equipment was secured, he appointed one instructor to every two divers.

  ‘Your instructor will not leave you. If one of you has to ascend, the both of you will. You will never, ever be left alone under any circumstances. Follow your instructor’s directions,’ Alan said, serious for the first time since they’d left the busy harbour. ‘They know what they’re doing and they’ll keep you safe.’

  Nina was suited up well before Flossie, and she had to bite back laughter as she watched an instructor trying to stuff the old lady into a wet suit. Gran fussed and flirted, and made him laugh, which Nina hoped wasn’t at her expense as the pair of them stared in her direction. The instructor nodded. Nina had a feeling something was going on, but forgot about it when Alan, seeing that the instructors were ready, sent them into the water ahead of the newbies.

  He selected Nina to descend with another woman.

  ‘Can I go down with my grandmother?’ she asked.

  ‘Because of her age, she’s going to have an instructor all to herself, aren’t you, my darling?’ he called to Flossie, and gave her a wink.

  Flossie waggled her fingers at him, unable to do anything else because she’d put the goggles on and shoved the regulator in her mouth (Nina had recently learned the name of the breathing thing) and her grandmother looked like a cross between an elderly Biggles and a space man.

  Starting off in the shallows, getting used to putting their heads underwater and breathing through their mouths, Nina quickly got the hang of it. She had one dodgy moment, when they started the dive proper, and she looked up to see the underside of the sea, the wrong side (humans were meant to be above the divide, not below it), and she felt a bit panicky, but she breathed slowly and regularly, as per Alan’s instructions, and the moment passed. It helped that Nina was a strong swimmer, and the surface was only a few feet above.

  When she settled down, she finally looked about her. What she saw stole her breath. Never, in all her twenty-eight years, had Nina experienced anything like the sensation of floating in the middle of the ocean. She forgot her diving companion; she forgot the instructor; she forgot the rest of the world existed. All that mattered was here. Now. A deep serenity swept over her. She felt like Alice in her looking-glass and Lucy slipping through the wardrobe, rolled into one, awed, mystified, and slightly disbelieving at the same time. She never imagined it could be so magical.

  A tap on her arm. She made the “okay” sign with her thumb and forefinger. She was more than okay, she was bloomin’ marvellous.

  The three of them swam slowly and majestically toward the sea bed, only a few feet below, and their instructor halted. He pointed to a pile of rocks, then to his eyes and back to the rocks again.

  Oh, yes, they were going to feed the fish; Nina had forgotten, in her excitement. But it wasn’t fish they were going to feed, she discovered, it was something much more thrilling.

  Octopus. A little one, admittedly, but a real live octopus all the same.

  It crept and flowed out of its miniscule hole, while Nina marvelled at how it could possibly have fitted into so tiny a crack in the rocks. It reminded her of the expanding foam her dad had once used; a tiny squirt had turned into a massive dollop which grew and grew with an alien determination.

  She squealed into her regulator when the creature gently touched her hand with a tentacle, gliding over her skin until it came to the little silver ring she wore, with its turquoise stone. The octopus stoked it, appearing fascinated.

  Nina held her breath until the instructor, who was positioned directly behind her, gave her a nudge to re
mind her to breathe. She resented the intrusion, however necessary it might be. For a blissful minute nothing else and no one else had existed – just her and the cute, enchanting, incredible creature from another world, and she sent a silent thank you to it for allowing her this brief contact.

  If Nina lived to be as old as her grandmother, she would never forget this. And she vowed she’d never eat octopus again, either.

  ‘Oh my god, it was fantastic,’ she enthused as she was helped (or rather, hauled) aboard, turning to her instructor who was still bobbing in the water, awaiting his next assignment of newbie divers. Nina wanted to go again. And again. Maybe she’d see if there were any diving lessons she could sign up for when she got home and-Flossie sat there in her normal clothes, wet suit off, with a huge grin on her face.

  ‘Did you see it?’ Nina said. ‘The octopus?’ Oh, she couldn’t have. It had only been Nina, the other woman, and the instructor around her octopus. Maybe there were more of them, secreted all over the seafloor, waiting for their complimentary meal of fish scraps from successive boatloads of tourists.

  Flossie shook her head. ‘I didn’t go down.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gran.’ She sat by her grandmother and dug a bottle of water out of her bag to wash away the salt-taste. ‘Did you lose your nerve?’

  ‘I never had any to start with.’

  Nina blinked, confused. ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’

  Flossie accepted the water, taking a slug. ‘I didn’t have any intention of diving,’ she said.

  ‘But you were all suited up – I saw you.’

  ‘Would you have gone, if you thought I wasn’t going to?’

  Nina had nothing to say.

  ‘Thought not,’ Flossie smirked.

  ‘You mean to tell me, you had no intention of diving, even when you booked this trip?’

  ‘Give the girl a medal.’ The words were a tad on the sarcastic side, but Flossie’s expression was all smiles and love.