Summer on the Turquoise Coast

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

  ‘To have a little tipple in the room,’ Flossie had said, returning from a visit to the loo with the vodka and two hundred cigarettes, having made a detour on the way back, the sneaky madam.

  ‘We’re going all inclusive,’ Nina remembered pointing out to her, and her gran’s reply was ‘you can never have too much booze.’

  Nina unscrewed the top and tipped the neck of the bottle to the heavens. Cheers, Gran, she said and took a hefty swig, spluttering as the liquid burned the back of her throat, and her eyes watered. That stuff had bite.

  Nina stopped at one drink; she wasn’t about to abandon all her caution in one fell swoop. She’d done enough things which were out of character already in the past week or so. She’d take it slowly and become more used to the new improved Nina. Plus, she’d tried the off-her-face thing and she didn’t particularly like it. It wasn’t simply the loss of control, it was the ill feeling afterwards. Why would anyone deliberately want to give themselves a pounding headache and make themselves feel nauseous?

  A knock at the door. When she opened it a man in a polo shirt with “Maintenance” on his chest, held out a large plastic bag. She tipped him and resumed sorting through Flossie’s clothes.

  There wasn’t much to sort – everything went in the case, except for the stupidly high sandals, the ridiculously small bikinis, and other hot-weather holiday stuff which Nina intended to give away, along with some toiletries which went in the bin. Nina nearly came undone when she picked up Flossie’s denture tablets. They still hadn’t found her grandmother’s false teeth.

  The hardest part done, Nina sorted herself out. She stripped off the over-large top she’d borrowed from her mother (she couldn’t have kept on wearing the T-shirt she wore to Dalyan, though she put her foot down at borrowing a pair of her mother’s knickers, so she’d swilled out her bikini yet again, using it instead of underwear), and the trousers which hung off her despite the elasticated waist, and stepped into the shower.

  Water cascading down her face, she tipped her head back and let the memories flow over her, her tears mingling with the spray from the shower. She cried until nothing remained except hiccupping sobs, and slid down to sit in the bottom of the shower, her arms wrapped around her knees, letting the water wash away her tears.

  Her own suitcase finally packed, Nina sat on the edge of the bed wrapped in a towel, and wondered what to do now. She couldn’t face going to the dining room for dinner in case anyone tried to chat her up, but she needed to eat. She hadn’t had a proper meal in days. She’d go out, and have something to eat in one of the restaurants on the front. She wished her despair was as easy to wash away as her tears, remembering strong arms and a loving smile.

  Enough moping, she told herself sternly. Crying over spilled milk wouldn’t make it any less spilled. Besides, Leo had made his position very clear.

  She slipped a dress over her head, walked out of the hotel, and into the bustle of the evening. Picking a place at random, she ordered a Caesar salad, and sat back to people-watch. Flossie loved doing that, commenting on anyone and everyone: what they wore, how they walked, what nationality they could be, what jobs they held, were they drug-dealers (the man on that particular occasion had looked a bit like a gangster, or what Flossie thought a gangster should look like), were they straight or gay, lonely or in love…

  Talking of love… maybe it was right and proper that she sought Leo out. Purely to thank him for his support and kindness, of course. She felt bad at allowing him to slip away, though she understood his reasons.

  They had unfinished business, and though she had no intention of doing what her nutty grandmother wanted, Nina felt she had to see Leo again to put this thing to bed, whatever this thing was.

  Closure, that’s what she needed, a proper goodbye, a wish you well for the future, whenever I think of Elephant I’ll think of you, sort of goodbye. Hope you have a good flight and the weather back home isn’t too much of a shock to the system, sort of goodbye. But her main reason for seeing him again, she convinced herself, was to tell him about Flossie. He’d want to know how she was. He’d taken a shine to the old woman, and after spending all that time in the hospital, it was only right he was kept updated. And maybe he’d want to say his goodbyes to her too, because there had definitely been something between Nina and him, a definite connection, and it wasn’t just all lust and holiday antics.

  Salad finished and paid for, Nina grabbed her bag, checking her phone yet again (no missed call from him, no text) and wondered where she should start. There were many, many hotels in the resort, and she couldn’t possibly check them all, but she knew the coaches tended to pick up from the far end of the town, and work their way towards the main road (the only road) leading up the side of the mountain and out of the valley. Leo had already been on the bus when it had collected her and Flossie for the Elephant and Pinky Moon trip, so by deduction Leo’s hotel must be to the left of the resort.

  Retracing her steps to Hotel Aphrodite, Nina started with those hotels on the road nearest the sea, figuring she’d work her way inland in a grid pattern, making sure she didn’t miss any.

  Fingers crossed, she entered the lobby of hotel number one.

  ‘Sorry, no. We do not have any guest by that name,’ the woman behind the desk said.

  The man on reception in the next hotel said more or less the same thing, as did the one after that. By hotel number nine, Nina was hot, tired, and her feet hurt. Not expecting good news, and beginning to wonder if the staff manning the front desks were really checking, or they were just saying “no” because they weren’t allowed to give out any information about their guests, Nina had to hold on to the wooden counter in shock when the elderly gentleman behind it checked his computer. She’d almost passed the place by because it looked more like a bar from the outside, and it was only when she’d glanced inside the practically empty restaurant area, she noticed a sign saying “rooms free”. With scant hope, but in the interests of being thorough, she popped inside and asked the question.

  ‘No, sorry, no Mr Waters here,’ the gentleman had said in stilted English.

  Nina expected nothing less, and smiled her thanks, turning wearily on her heel. This was quickly becoming a thankless task. Leo had her number and hadn’t called, so what was she doing chasing after a man who obviously didn’t want anything to do with her, when the man said, ‘He left yesterday. Sorry.’

  She stopped. ‘Yesterday? Are you sure?’

  He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes. Yesterday. They go to England.’ He made a taking-off motion.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Yesterday. He’d gone. He was home now, wherever home was, practically on a different continent. Back to normality, back to his everyday life. No wonder he hadn’t contacted her. For him, the holiday was clearly over. Maybe he’d tell his friends how he was a knight in shining armour to Nina’s damsel in distress, and maybe he’d remember the night they spent together, but she wasn’t counting on it.

  Their brief fling was exactly that – a fling, a holiday romance, a fleeting connection between two people who could pretend to be someone else for a short while, before they were catapulted back into their everyday lives.

  To Leo, Nina realised, she was now nothing but a holiday memory.

  Time for her to go home herself, and forget all about her holiday romance.

  Chapter 35

  Funerals were supposed to be sombre, no matter how much the deceased insisted on it being a celebration of their life. You might wear red and dye your hair purple, but there was always going to be a darkness inside, no matter how colourful the outside. After all, it was death’s party and death was the belle of the ball.

  ‘It’s your party and I’ll cry if I want to…’ Nina crooned under her breath, as the mourners made their way out of the chapel and into their cars. The day was overcast, just like her mood and the black dress she wore suited her state of mind.

  She glanced at her phone again, hoping for the unlikely.

  St
ill no call, no message.

  Though she knew it was fruitless, Nina kept hoping Leo would get in contact. Ever since her return, she’d been checking her phone to make sure it hadn’t abruptly lost all its charge since the last time she’d looked, ten seconds ago. She’d gone from a woman who wasn’t too bothered about her phone and often forgot it, or couldn’t be bothered to charge it, to having to have the damned thing surgically removed from her hand if she wasn’t careful.

  ‘Hurry up Nina, and put that thing away – it’s disrespectful.’

  Her mother was right. Nina took a final glance at the screen, slipped the phone in her pocket, and climbed into the funeral car, to be sandwiched in the back seat between her father and her mother, who clutched a hankie in her hand. Nina had yet to see her mother use it – none of the family had been close to Aunt Mabel, not even Gran, who’d predicted her sister’s demise with a certain detachment, even before they’d gone on holiday. Flossie had been dry-eyed throughout the entire service, and the rest of them had headed back to the car, leaving Flossie basking in the mourners’ attentions. Her brother Ben, awkward in his newish suit (he’d gotten to wear it for their grandfather’s funeral and now he got to wear it again – he’d taken to calling it his death suit) sat on a backward-facing seat. Nina hoped he wouldn’t throw up on the way home.

  The turn-out had been impressive, even if half of Aunt Mabel’s friends had already passed-on ahead of her. Nina wondered if she could command the same volume of mourners if she died tomorrow, and came to the sober conclusion she couldn’t. It was disconcerting to think she’d be missed less than a little old woman, who had outlived most of her family and nearly all her friends.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ Nina asked, not recognising most of them and wondering if there could be a lost relative or two in the throng.

  ‘It’s the Farewell Committee,’ her mother said, fussing as her father got out of the car for a second time. ‘He’s got ants in his pants today,’ she added, frowning sternly at him.

  ‘The Farewell Committee?’ Nina asked.

  ‘The Reverend calls them that because they often turn up at funerals. There’s a whole gaggle of them. This is only about half, so we’re lucky.’

  ‘Lucky so many turned up?’

  ‘Lucky there aren’t any more of ’em,’ Nina’s mother stated. ‘We haven’t got enough sandwiches to feed the full quota.’

  ‘They’re not all coming back to our house, are they?’ Nina still called the family home “ours”, though she moved out four years ago.

  ‘If they can wheedle the address out of someone, and if it’s not too far away. Some of them still drive, god help us!’

  ‘It’s not that bad—’ Nina began.

  ‘You haven’t seen them behind the wheel, they’re a menace, the lot of them. Someone should revoke their licences. And they’re like gannets once they scent food. They can strip a table bare, faster than a shoal of piranhas on a corpse.’

  ‘I meant, we can pick up some more bread and ham, and I’ll make more sandwiches.’

  Alice gave Nina an incredulous look. ‘Are you suggesting we ask the funeral car to pull over at the corner shop?’

  Ah, now it was put like that, maybe not.

  ‘What can she possibly be doing?’ Alice grumbled, craning her neck.

  ‘Stop fretting, Mum, she’s alright. Gran’s indestructible,’ Ben piped up whilst frantically thumbing his phone with both digits.

  ‘Why is it okay for Ben to play with his phone, but I can’t check mine?’ Nina whined.

  ‘He’s younger than you.’

  ‘He’s old enough to know better,’ Nina retorted.

  ‘What was your excuse then?’ Ben chortled. ‘You’re, like, ancient.’

  ‘Twenty-eight is hardly ancient!’ Why, oh why, did her family make her act like a twelve-year-old, her brother especially. It was a wonder she hadn’t cried, ‘Tell him, Mum’, though if she had to endure her annoying brother’s company much longer, she just might.

  ‘There you are!’ Alice cried, pushing her way out of the car, and relieving the Reverend of his talkative burden. Nina’s dad hovered uncertainly, wondering whether to take over the reins – Flossie had screeched at him before for taking charge of her wheelchair when she wanted someone else to be the favoured person to push her. The Reverend didn’t give her father much choice, handing Flossie over eagerly, and Nina saw the relief on his face.

  She might be wheelchair-bound, but Flossie’s mouth worked just fine, and since she’d had a new set of dentures fitted, she didn’t stop using it.

  ‘If I lift her out of the chair, will you help me swing her round and get her in the car?’ Alice asked Derek. ‘Ben, sort out your Gran’s chair.’

  ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ Ben asked, sitting in it once Flossie had been hoisted out, and moving the contraption backwards and forwards like a kid in a go-cart. ‘Does it do wheelies, Gran?’

  ‘Stop it, Ben, don’t encourage her. She’s bad enough as it is, without you making it worse.’ Alice shooed him out of the wheelchair, making “wind-it-up” signals at him.

  ‘When can I go home?’ Flossie asked in a whiny voice, as Derek bundled her into the front seat and fought with the seatbelt.

  Nina’s heart went out to her. Her gran hated the nursing home, even though she understood it was a temporary situation. She’d been lucky, the damage was minimal and could be rectified (more or less) with intensive physiotherapy.

  Alice said, ‘Not for a while yet, Mum. You’ve only just started treatment. Try not to run before you can walk, eh?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about walking, that’s cruel, that is.’ Flossie shuffled around to give her granddaughter a cheeky wink.

  ‘Oi, stop wriggling. I can’t do up the seat belt with you squirming like a cat in a sack,’ Derek protested.

  Nina winked back. There was nothing her grandmother enjoyed more than winding Alice up. ‘Bites every time, she does,’ Flossie was fond of saying, and Nina guessed Gran had to have some fun in her life, because the nursing home was a bit of a joyless place.

  Nina had taken to smuggling miniature bottles of brandy and whisky in (vodka was a summer drink, apparently), and was in the middle of trying to show the old lady how to use a laptop. It was hard going and Nina had been forced to hide Flossie’s bank card, but at least it gave the pensioner a line to the outside world. Though her gran trying to use Skype was proving to be more interesting than Nina anticipated, having had Flossie Skype her whilst the old lady was in the bath.

  It would take a long time before those particular images were erased from Nina’s mind, and Flossie had got into a shedload of trouble for “a) taking a bath on her own, when she could barely manage one with an auxiliary helping her, b) taking an electrical item into the bathroom and balancing it on the toilet lid, and c) sending indecent images over the internet, even if it wasn’t for pornographic purposes”.

  ‘That nursing home manager has no sense of humour,’ her gran had declared. ‘She could probably do with a good seeing to.’

  The telling off only served to give Flossie ideas – the old woman hadn’t realised the internet could be used for that, and had spent the whole of Nina’s visit one afternoon wondering whether there was a market for Flossie flashing her knickers (‘It went down well in Turkey. They loved it!’ Flossie kept saying). Looked like a bar full of tourists hadn’t been enough of an audience for her!

  ‘It’ll be my turn to die next,’ Flossie announced, sucking on a sticky sweet she’d wrestled out of her coat pocket. ‘I said Mabel wouldn’t last the month, didn’t I?’ The old woman sounded positively delighted she’d outlived her sister. ‘I’m the last of the Varsey girls. There were three of us sisters, you know.’

  ‘We know, Gran,’ Ben sighed. ‘You keep telling us.’

  ‘Don’t be so cheeky, young man, and if I keep telling you it’s because I’m never sure whether you’re listening to me or you’re concentrating on Grindr, or summat.’
>
  ‘Grindr?’ Ben spluttered and turned an odd shade of puce.

  It was left to Nina to explain to the wrinklies what the site was for.

  ‘Why didn’t Aunt Mabel ever get married?’ Nina asked, as the driver finally pulled away from the church grounds. She hadn’t known her aunt all that well, but she felt a little mean leaving the coffin in the chapel all on its own (‘no graveside service for my sister,’ Flossie had insisted. ‘It’s ghoulish to gather round the hole she’ll be planted in’).

  Flossie clacked her dentures as she thought about the answer, and Nina imagined stories of unrequited love, or a man who was unobtainable because he was married to another woman, one he didn’t love but who he was tied to until death did them part…

  ‘She was a lesbian, that’s why,’ Flossie said.

  Ben choked on his astonishment.

  ‘The younger generation didn’t invent woman on woman action,’ the old lady said, seeing his incredulity. ‘You didn’t invent sex either. We old folks did it too – where do you think your mother came from?’

  ‘Oh, gross, Gran.’ Ben grabbed at the headphones hanging around his neck and plugged them into his ears, but not before Gran said, ‘I miss sex.’

  Nina seriously wondered if her brother would ever recover from hearing that. His eyes bugged, and he kept opening and closing his mouth. She was relieved when his phone beeped, snapping him out of his shock and disgust.

  ‘I thought I’d go before her,’ Gran said, ‘after that episode in Turkey.’

  “That episode” was how Flossie referred to her stroke, and the rest of the family had thought the same thing. For a while there, it had been touch and go, but as soon as the swelling had diminished, Flossie rallied within the week and had been allowed to fly home. Though to her intense annoyance, she’d been sent to a nursing home to convalesce, rather than her own home, which was what she’d demanded.

  When the car drew up at the kerb, Ben was the first out, shooting out of the vehicle like a man being chased by a hive of angry bees, followed closely by Nina. ‘I’ll check on the sandwiches,’ she called, leaving her parents to deal with Flossie.