Summer on the Turquoise Coast

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

  She’d made it. She was alive, and in one piece, and totally and utterly elated.

  ‘Whoop, whoop.’ She fist-pumped the air, as she was helped out of the harness, and had the urge to drive straight back up that mountain to do it all again.

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ Mehmet asked, and Nina saw the twinkle in his almost-black eyes.

  ‘Oh yes!’ she cried, and she kissed him.

  He happily kissed her back, his lips cool on hers, his arms around her waist. She’d never kissed a man with a beard before, and the hairs on his face were soft and tickly.

  He tasted of coffee, cigarettes, and freedom.

  Nina pulled away. ‘Sorry, I… er…’

  ‘No worries. It was good, yes?’

  Nina had no idea whether he referred to the flight or the kiss, and she realised it didn’t matter.

  ‘Yes, very, very good,’ she agreed.

  Chapter 19

  Ephesus. Nina couldn’t wait! Her grandmother might have gotten her out of her “comfort zone” (Nina made quotation mark fingers in her head) on this holiday, but the visit to Ephesus would place Nina firmly back in it. It boasted the Temple of Artemis, for goodness’ sake! – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Who couldn’t fail to be impressed?

  Flossie, for one…

  ‘It’s an awful long way to go to see a lump of stones,’ she grizzled.

  ‘You can always stay here?’ Nina suggested, crossing her fingers Grannie wouldn’t call her bluff and take her up on the offer. There was no way Nina could disappear for a few days, leaving her grandmother free to get up to all sorts, though since the bar-dancing, knicker-showing episode, Flossie had actually behaved herself; it had been Nina doing all the silly dare-devil stuff. Flossie had cheerfully thrown Nina in at the deep end instead, and had laughed when she was drowning, but the pensioner hadn’t actually done anything outrageous herself. However, Nina was well aware of the old saying regarding a cat being away and the mice having a rare old time. There was no telling what her gran would do if she was left to her own devices for forty-eight hours.

  ‘You don’t think I’d let you loose in a foreign country all by yourself?’ Flossie asked. ‘No chance, my girl.’

  ‘What do you think is going to happen? I’ll be fine,’ Nina said, before giving herself a mental slap – at this rate she’d talk Flossie out of going and then Nina would feel obliged to stay with her. Shut up, Nina.

  ‘You could be abducted by slavers. They’d like a nice blond English girl like you.’

  ‘I think I’m a bit old, Gran,’ was Nina’s reply. Slavers, indeed! Where did Flossie get her ideas?

  ‘This is nice,’ Nina said, as she got on the coach half an hour later, expecting Flossie to be right behind her as she traversed the aisle to pick a seat.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Flossie called. ‘I can’t get on, I’ll be sick. I might even have one of my turns.’

  What turns? This was the first Nina had heard of any turns.

  Their tour guide, who had been supervising the loading of their case (one between them, was enough for a couple of changes of clothes and their toiletries, though Nina still felt a little uncomfortable at the thought of her white cotton, short-style knickers snuggled up to Flossie’s simply enormous pants – it didn’t seem right, somehow) came up behind Flossie.

  ‘I am Yasin. I am here to facilitate you.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Flossie said.

  Nina returned to the front of the coach, hovering at the top of the steps, wondering whether she should get out to see what her grandmother was playing at now. If the old biddy really didn’t want to go, she should have said so earlier, not when they were boarding the coach, keeping everyone else waiting. Nina shot apologetic smiles to the man sitting in the front seat and the assorted couples scattered towards the back. She heard a loud sigh from a middle-aged man with a Kiss-Me-Quick hat (did they actually make those – Nina had assumed they were an urban myth) and she did a “what-can-I-do” shrug. Come on, Gran, make your mind up; go, stay, stay, go, just make a bloody decision.

  ‘I need to be facilitated into a front seat, otherwise I can’t travel,’ Flossie stated. ‘Or maybe I’ll get on anyway and we’ll see if we can manage to get to Elephant without having to stop too many times. Or call an ambulance, if I have one of my really bad ones.’

  Nina was flummoxed. She didn’t know whether to applaud the other woman’s bare-faced cheek or give her a good telling off. Those kinds of lies could come back and bite you in the bum – karma, fate, or whatever.

  ‘You need to be sitting in a front seat?’ Yasin clarified.

  ‘Yes, and my granddaughter needs to be sitting with me, just in case.’

  ‘Maybe you should not be going?’ the guide suggested, looking concerned.

  ‘Yes, I should definitely be going,’ Flossie insisted. ‘I will only be unwell if I can’t travel in the front seat.’

  ‘But I am having to sit in the front seat. It is so I can speak to everyones and give informations.’

  ‘There is another pair of front seats,’ Flossie pointed out.

  ‘Peoples are sitting in them.’

  ‘Just the one people,’ Flossie said. ‘Can you ask the people if he would mind moving?’ Flossie raised her voice so the man in question heard. ‘Would you be kind enough to let a ninety-four-year-old woman sit in the front?’ she called to him, her voice quavering.

  Nina knew her gran didn’t quaver. Flossie had never quavered in her life.

  ‘Of course.’ The man in the front seat stood, picked up a rucksack from the floor and moved back one.

  Flossie got on.

  ‘What on earth are you playing at?’ Nina hissed in the old woman’s ear once they were both seated and Flossie had fished a bag of boiled sweets out of her handbag. The driver started the coach and they began to move.

  Flossie hissed back out of the side of her mouth, ‘Shut up – I got you a front seat, didn’t I?’ Then in a more normal voice and with a hand cupped to the side of her head, she said, ‘Sorry lovey, I can’t hear you, you’ll have to speak up.’ She shuffled so she could see the poor bloke behind. ‘I’m a bit deaf, you know,’ she said, throwing him a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth smile.

  Nina gritted her teeth. Flossie needn’t think she’d got away with it. There was always later, even if she had to wait until they were alone in their shared hotel room.

  ‘Would you like a sweet?’ Flossie asked nicely, and the man took one. Nina noticed he didn’t attempt to unwrap the half-melted sticky mess, and she thought he’d only taken it out of politeness. That was nice of him, humouring an old lady. Nina hadn’t done much more than glance at him until now, too embarrassed to notice anything other than he appeared to be on his own.

  ‘Thank you for moving seats to allow my ninety-four-year-old grannie to sit here,’ she said, through stiff lips. When she got to the ninety-four part, she kicked her grandmother on the shin.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘It didn’t hurt. It was a gentle tap,’ Nina said.

  ‘Skin this old is like tissue-paper, you know.’ Flossie lifted her chin. ‘I bruise easily.’

  ‘Like the bloody princess and the pea,’ Nina muttered darkly.

  Thankfully, the bloke behind seemed oblivious to the exchange. ‘My pleasure,’ he said.

  He appeared nice enough, ordinary, was clearly quite considerate and had good manners, Nina thought.

  ‘Are you travelling alone?’ This was from nosey Flossie, who seemed intent on shoving Nina at any, and all, remotely eligible men within a ten-mile radius. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen Nina launch herself at Mehmet, else in Flossie’s mind Nina would be married to him and have had his babies by now. Exciting though the kiss had been, Nina had no intention of repeating such an out-of-character action.

  Nina’s soft feelings and previous closeness to her grandmother, which had lingered through the couple of days since the dive and had grown during the Sunset Cruise, had evaporated quicker than the s
team from a boiling kettle after the paragliding escapade. Flossie, with this kind of talk, was doing nothing to make Nina feel all fuzzy-wuzzy about her again. The way her grandmother was behaving this morning, had Nina seriously contemplating asking the driver to pull over and leave the pensioner on the side of the road. It would serve her right if the old bat was abducted by slavers. Though Nina had a feeling anyone kidnapping her gran would bring her back within half an hour of snatching her, offering Nina their profound commiserations.

  ‘For this excursion, yes,’ the bloke said, ‘but I’m actually on holiday with a friend.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  Nina gasped; her grandmother had no shame.

  ‘Male.’ His smile was bemused and rather indulgent. And rather nice, in a gentle sort of way. He had nice lips.

  ‘Do you bat for the other side,’ Flossie asked.

  His smile widened, and he took off his sunglasses to reveal quite blue and very amused eyes.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he said. His voice was nice too, not too deep, but manly all the same, and he sounded quite well-spoken, with a faint accent she couldn’t quite place.

  ‘Married?’ Flossie asked.

  Bloody hell, the woman was relentless.

  ‘No.’ He bit his lip.

  Nina turned around to face the front, shrank down in her seat, and cringed in embarrassment.

  ‘Fiancée? Girlfriend?’

  ‘No, and no.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Got a nasty habit?’ Flossie demanded with all the force of the Gestapo questioning a prisoner.

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. I’m single by choice.’

  ‘More of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am type, then?’

  Nina sneaked a peep at him through the space between the headrests, wondering what his reaction would be. If Nina was in his shoes, she’d tell the nosey old biddy to mind her own business.

  He guffawed, a deep belly laugh which shook his whole frame. ‘Certainly not. I respect women. I just haven’t found one I want to have a long-term relationship with.’

  ‘Have you met my granddaughter?’ Flossie asked, with an excruciatingly bright smile.

  Oh. My. God. Her gran didn’t just say that, did she?

  Nina sat up sharply and whipped her head around fast enough to cause a serious crick. ‘Ignore her,’ Nina said to the poor bloke. ‘She’s going gaga.’

  He smiled (he had nice lips, Nina noticed again, irrelevantly). ‘She seems lucid enough to me.’

  ‘No, believe me, she doesn’t. She’s missing some marbles. The deck is half empty, or whatever the collective noun for a pack of marbles is.’

  ‘A round of marbles, a play, a bag?’ he offered.

  ‘Her name is Nina,’ Flossie said.

  The man’s eyes crinkled and his lips narrowed. Nina simply knew he was trying not to laugh. ‘Leo,’ he said.

  ‘The lion? As in the star sign?’ Flossie asked with a frown.

  ‘Er… no, Capricorn, I think.’

  ‘Goodie,’ she said, clapping her hands. ‘She’s a Virgo, all precise, fussy and a bit narrow-minded. You’re a perfect match for her.’

  ‘I’m not any of those things!’ Nina protested. ‘Anyway, it’s all a load of bull.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Flossie said with a pleased grin, and did Nina imagine it, or was there a cunning glint in the other woman’s eye?

  Nina leaned in close to her gran and whispered, ‘Don’t say you can’t hear me, because I know you can. If this is another one of your plans to get me to let my hair down, then stop it right now. I’m not looking for romance, and especially not a quick holiday fling.’

  Flossie produced another one of her mega-watt smiles and Nina knew she was up to something.

  ‘My dearest wish is to see my granddaughter married before I die,’ the old lady announced solemnly. ‘Which won’t be long. Did I tell you I am ninety-four?’

  Leo barked out a laugh. ‘You did. Oh, I am so going to enjoy this trip.’

  ‘Glad one of us is,’ Nina growled.

  He shuffled forward. ‘Don’t worry, I’m taking it all with a large pinch of salt,’ he said in a low voice to Nina. ‘But you’ve got to admit it, she is funny. I love old people.’

  She’s not and I don’t, Nina wanted to say. ‘She’s lovely in small doses,’ she actually said instead. ‘You try living with this twenty-four seven.’

  ‘Yet, you are on holiday with her,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I was conned into it. I didn’t realise she was this bad. She hid it well.’

  Leo laughed again. He had a nice laugh. Everything about him seemed nice; in a nice way, not a boring way. Mr Slightly-Above-Average. Not too good-looking for his own good, and not too nerdy (though who would go on a trip like this if they weren’t a bit of a nerd – oh, yes, she would…).

  ‘Do you like history?’ she asked.

  ‘I do. It’s one of the reasons I booked this excursion.’

  ‘What are the other reasons?’

  ‘There’s only one other reason, and that’s to get away from my friend, David.’

  That sounded a bit mean. Maybe Leo wasn’t quite as nice as he first seemed. ‘Oh?’ Nina questioned.

  ‘He came out of a bad relationship a couple of months ago, and hasn’t been coping well. He caught his fiancée in bed with another guy, yet he still thinks the sun shines out of her arse – sorry for swearing,’ he added to Flossie who was following the exchange avidly.

  ‘Nothing wrong with “arse”,’ Flossie said. ‘I’ve got one myself.’

  Leo chuckled. ‘Anyway, I persuaded him to come on holiday to try to cheer him up and take his mind off her, thinking a change of scenery would do him good.’ He frowned. ‘Unfortunately, it worked a bit better than I thought.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He’s only gone and fallen in love with some German bird, and they’ve spent every day and night together for the past week. I’ve resorted to sleeping on the balcony with the door firmly shut.’

  ‘Why would you…? Oh! I see.’

  ‘They can’t use her room because she’s sharing with three others,’ he explained, wearily. ‘I wonder if you can buy ear defenders in Turkey because the pair of them are at it every night like a couple of rabbits. Once or twice I’ve stayed on the beach, watching the stars, and gone back to the room to sleep after the love-birds had gone to the pool.’ He sighed. ‘Not only is the lack of proper sleep killing me, but I’m worried about the fallout when Frieda leaves. Dave will be in bits again.’

  ‘Nah, he’ll be fine,’ Flossie interjected. ‘He’s just shagging that other one out of his system. He’ll feel better when he goes home, mark my words.’

  Did Flossie just say “shagging”? Nina blew out her cheeks and prayed Leo hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I just hope he’s not getting in too deep. I’d hate to see him hurt all over again.’ He sat back in his seat and pulled some headphones out of his pocket. ‘That’s the problem with holiday romances – they burn too fast and too hot, and when you add several hundred miles into the mix once each party is back home…’ he trailed off.

  Amen to that, Nina thought, and reached for her trusty guidebook.

  Chapter 20

  It might have been the bang that woke her or the coach’s abrupt deceleration, but when Nina opened her eyes to see the driver on his mobile yet again (weren’t there any laws in this country against using a mobile phone whilst driving?) and heard his rapid-fire Turkish, she experienced a flash of irritation. Their guide, Yasin, was reaching for the microphone. He hadn’t said much after the coach had picked up the rest of the passengers from an assortment of hotels and apartments along the way, except for introducing himself and giving them a brief rundown of what to expect during the day, then left them to it for the past hour. Nina spent some of that time watching Turkey speed past at sixty miles an hour, before the rhythm of tyres on tarmac and the heat sent her to sleep.

  She was wide awake now and watching the drama unfold. Flat
tyre apparently, she gathered, as they pulled over onto the side of the dusty road.

  No one got out, apart from the driver and Yasin, everyone else was content to wait in the comfort of the air-conditioned coach until the tyre fairy solved the problem.

  Only, the tyre fairy wasn’t able to come to them any time soon, and after half an hour everyone piled off. Yasin led them across the road and into what looked like someone’s back garden. A few large tables were set out under some trees, and a boy gestured for them to sit. His father (Nina assumed it was his father) brought out several huge green melons and cut them open with a massive knife.

  She understood the coach had broken down, but couldn’t they have gone somewhere else, like a proper service station, or a café?

  Nina realised she was being grumpy and put it down to having been woken from a lovely nap. Her mood lifted when Leo approached, asking if he might sit with them. Flossie gave him a watermelon grin, juice dripping down her chin, and he sat down, accepting his own slice with a smile.

  ‘Have you seen the size of that man’s knife?’ Nina hissed, taking a piece gratefully. ‘He could be an axe murderer.’

  ‘An axe murderer who used a knife instead, and feeds you water melon before he kills you?’ Leo bit into the melon, and pink juice dribbled down his own chin. He and Flossie grinned at each other.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Nina said, smiling at a woman (the mother?) who held aloft a large silver teapot whilst one of the other children grasped a tray of small Turkish tea glasses sitting on individual silver saucers.

  ‘Cay?’ the woman asked, and the child shoved the tray in their direction.

  ‘Got any Tetley?’ Flossie asked hopefully.

  The question was met with blank stares.

  ‘Cay?’ the woman repeated.

  ‘I suppose.’ Flossie gave in and the child handed her a glass. A bowl of sugar was placed on the table.

  Flossie’s dentures rattled against the glass as she took a sip. ‘Not bad, for foreign muck,’ she said.