by Chloe Rayban
Ari paused, looking doubtful.
The two of them talked rapidly in Greek. Then Stavros waded into the water and looked straight at Ari and asked him something.
Ari put on that arrogant look of his and shrugged. The two of them stood face to face – the skinny little lad and the great mountain of a man. More words were exchanged. Stavros seemed to lose patience – he threw his arms up in the air and turned back to the shore. Then Ari shouted something after him. Stavros turned back shrugging his shoulders.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘He bring back my windsurf. He bring back my waiter. So I ask him if he want his job back. Give him another try,’ said Stavros.
‘Good – that’s great,’ I said.
‘No, this boy he want more money. He want double money!’
Ari had his back to us, pushing the boat out. I helped by giving it a shove, then I turned back to Stavros. It was a risk, but I reckoned a risk worth taking.
‘Well if you don’t give him the money he wants, I quit,’ I said. ‘So you’re on your own.’
‘What?’ roared Stavros.
‘You heard.’
Stavros stood hesitating on the shore.
‘Go on, Ari,’ I said.
Ari climbed into the boat and started rowing.
‘OK. OK! You win! He has job back – double money,’ said Stavros.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Yassos – Ben,’ Ari called out as his boat slid off into the darkness.
Chapter Eighteen
We had just one week left. When I look back, I realise those days together were about as perfect as life gets. Ari was working at the taverna again, so I went back to the serious business of having a holiday.
Lucy and I spent every moment we could together. I don’t know whether it was my lousy experience on the broken windsurfer, but I actually lost interest in windsurfing for a while. Instead, we explored the island together. We even went to that tiny island I’d spotted. The one with the whitewashed chapel and the tree and the tiny hidden beach just big enough for two. Lucy refused to swim there, so I hired a boat and brought a picnic and rowed us over.
I think they were wrong to call that shabby old black sand beach Paradiso. Paradise itself is a bit further out and has a smaller beach altogether. At least, that’s what Lucy and I discovered that day. And I reckon ever since I’ve been trying to kind of replay the excitement, the exhilaration, the sheer over-the-top intoxication of a girl like Lucy. And in all the girls after her, I’ve in a way been trying to rediscover her. Lovely, lovely Lucy – I’ve found a little bit of you in all of them.
I know you want to know the obvious. Did it last? I thought it would. We rang each other a lot – but back home, we lived miles apart, practically opposite ends of the country, and we both had our heads down for exams.
We met up in London over the Christmas holidays. I bought really good seats for a show Lucy had been longing to see – they cost a fortune. I planned the best evening, used all my Christmas money – and I booked a restaurant in Chinatown for afterwards.
She came looking so different. She had earrings and lipstick on and she’d done her hair a different way. I felt really awkward, as if this girl wasn’t really Lucy. All through the evening I kept on wondering where she’d gone, that long-legged, easy-going girl I’d met on Lexos.
We ran out of things to say over the meal. And when I saw her to her train we kissed really long and passionately. But it had gone – she knew it and I knew it – I saw it in her face, through the grimy window as the train slid out of the station.
I was so gutted I didn’t have the heart to call her for days. And then she called me and we had this really grim conversation when we both admitted it was over.
But I still think about her a lot, the real Lucy, the one I knew on Lexos. I like to think she’s still there somehow, at the end of those footprints in the sand, staying just as she was, forever – a perfect golden memory.
If you enjoyed Footprints in the Sand, check out this other great Chloe Rayban title.
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Copyright
HarperCollins Children’s Books
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First published in Great Britain by Collins in 1999.
Text copyright © Chloë Rayban
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780006753032
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007400621
Version: 2013-12-10
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